Beef price tracker 2

Dunedin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123009731#Comment_123009731

I’m on 60 acres with half of it reseeded in last 5 years

50HX

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123010606#Comment_123010606

Out of interest did you ever look at the numbers of say buying yearlings/store to finish?

If you've good ground & half of it reseeded it would be like rocket fuel for weight gain rather than the cow sucking it up

memorystick

I’ve a pen of AA bullocks almost fat. I’d say 290kg carcass. Any idea of prices? I bought them in September for €1000 each. On meal since October 17. On 4 kgs now and fairly firm.

epfff

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123010739#Comment_123010739

620 flat

Dunedin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123010680#Comment_123010680

I’ve often thought about it but to be honest, never really a serious thought.

I genuinely enjoy the sucklers and they have being doing very well for me so it would take a lot to make me change. My father had cows so it’s what has always been done here and I’d hate to give them up.

But there’s a calf, a yearling and a 2 year old there as well sucking up the rocket fuel…..

If I was ever to change it would be to do with the workload of the sucklers;

1. Calving
2. Getting calves going
3. Turning cows and calves to field for first time (calves likely to do anything)
4. Tagging/dehorning/banding (bull calves)
5. Dosing calves 3 times over course of first grazing season
6. Cleaning out and power washing sheds
7. Breeding and dangers of bull on farm
8. Scanning cows
9. Weaning

kk.man

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123010739#Comment_123010739

Some UK factories had a 10p (gbp) jump over last couple of days. I know 6.20 was got Christmas week plus transport for the type of stock you have. I think Paddy Irish factories will try to keep a lid on it but wont be successful for long. If you could hold to the week after next i predict a good jump. You have cold weather now and frozen pipes maybe cut back on the grub if you thought they be going fat.

WoozieWu

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123006937#Comment_123006937

at the other end of the scale you have places like this

https://www.agriland.ie/farming-news/breeding-for-efficiency-series-jersey-cross-driving-production/

Grueller

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123013350#Comment_123013350

Absolutely Woozie. It has it's merits in many ways but wouldn't be for me, or be common around here.

I don't claim to be at the top of the scale though, but my background of being in suckling for my lifetime has me psychologically scarred against the idea of breeding a deliberately poor calf. You get enough poor ones while trying to breed quality without deliberately doing it.

mr.stonewall

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123014286#Comment_123014286

Super honest post Grueller. If that mantra could be imparted by teagasc, icbf and IFJ, it would be a key foundation to a sustainable dairy beef sector

memorystick

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123013207#Comment_123013207

Overfat isn’t a problem with these new AA with a hint of jersey in them. Country is polluted with them

Bass Reeves

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123013350#Comment_123013350

He has 275 cows and breeds 170 ish of them toa HE bull admittedly easy calving abd short gestation. The article says the calves sell well.i. Thurles mart.

At present a plain HE killing 265 kgs @ 5.85 all in willmake 1550. The trend is that farmers producing these calves if they arenot of a fairly decent quality will end up holding them until 20+ days, new regs are pushing it to 30+ days. The slightly better quality averaging 280 DW making 6/ kg is hitting 1680. Stocked at 2+ to a suckler unit the numbers add up.

I have a suckler CH heifer 26 months old not much with 500 kgs, she cane in at 280 kgs last autumn 12 months, she was with FRX heifers ( I say mostly 2nd cross) that were 275 last March. The FRX are keeping up with her weight gain wise about 415kgs average. There is a lot of fairly poor quality sucklers cattle bred in this country that are no better than average dairy beef stock.

WoozieWu

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123014632#Comment_123014632

why wouldnt the article say that, its an ad for an AI company

yewdairy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123014632#Comment_123014632

I often look at balla mart on the phone and the weight for age of a huge %of suckler bred cattle is appalling.

I have crossbred heifers that would regularly weight more than a big percentage of suckler bred cattle going through the marts

Who2

bass when you say 2+ to the suckler cow can you throw out in simple terms what that is. Is it 2 12 month calves or 2 24 month animals.

Bass Reeves

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123014684#Comment_123014684

If you are killing @ 18-24ish months. You buy as calves so for a summer you have your first season calves and second season yearlings. You are either slaughtering off grass at 18+ months or kill out of the shed at 20-24 months, you have the option as well as you stocking rate will be very low in the spring to carry over the winter and slaughter May/June or mix and match to suit particular animals.

Everything depends on̈ your land and the length of winter.

Bass Reeves

It's not just weight for age. It's actually genetic potential as well. When you look at suckler statistics ( 2022 and before as I have seen very little latly) for every suckler cow only 0.8 calves weaned per year. Then you have some very average calves as well.

Bass Reeves

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123014649#Comment_123014649

The risk with that is it's too easily contradicted by locals and people watching sales in marts. I am not in favor of these cow types either but the product is there. The

Those calf types are bought sub 100 euro. Often they are purchased privately with 25L of beatings or other withheld milk often free with other calves

Who2

you are regularly quoting about letting animals going over 30 and even 36 months. Let’s try to work out a straight honest comparison here without going of the few exceptions. There aren’t many dairy cross that get 1kg over the first winter and a few kg for the last few weeks going to kill 280 kg at 18 months let alone 24 months.
it’s like me telling you lads calving sucklers in April can get 1500 in the September sales, the odd one will but it’s very rare.

I calve most of mine down from now until the end of March.

The cows have been on hay and poor silage since they went in. They’ll go onto good silage as they go back into the pens as they calve down and the early ones will be in until April and from March the last will be let straight out to the fields. The calves are realistically eating nothing for the first two months. I’ve a small creep feeder in the creep area for a while as calves and a bag of crunch lasts a long time. They are on grass may, June and July, the creep feeders go in in July . Bulls get as much as they can eat and heifers onto 2.5kg. The bulls are all gone from mid September to mid October. I ve a couple left, two pneumonia cases and a meningitis case that will come into more than a finished dairy cross in February these are on 3kg of meal and silage.
Heifers are sold with the bulls and the only ones kept are ones I believe are suitable for breeding I kept extra this year as I couldn’t decide which I wanted to keep, there’s two lads waiting to buy what I don’t want to keep, these aren’t usually there but I’m being upfront about the system.

I’ve a cow with a calf (for 6 months of the year getting crept fed) in a place where you’re talking of carrying 2 finishers for 12 months of the year.

Bass Reeves

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123015135#Comment_123015135

I was comparing a suckler cow with progeny carried to finish,in the case of a suckler cow with the weanling sold at 6 months then it's 1 unit +, probably up on 1.5 units. WoozieWu posted a link to a crossbreed dairy unit and disparage it's progeny, he has actually disparage most dairy criss beef, I just gave examples of the output of a dairy beef system with these sort of limited stock.

My own system is store to beef and I buy at the bottom end of the market. I make no apologies for that. I buy lighter weanlings and stores ( it immaterial whether its suckler or dairy bred) and stock them up at 170kgsN/HA. I work to the strength of my land and I optimise my finishing of them. I buy stores 18 months old that are sometimes under 300kgs.

A suckler cow will consume some quantity of silage it's immaterial whether its good or bad quality. Over a winter she will eat more than a dairy cross weanling and a finishing animal sub 24 months.

There's a reason lads are exiting sucklers and very few ate opting to go back. I know one lad that has and he admitted the numbers do not stack up but he missed the cows.

3-4+ years ago processors were starting to look at penalising 400+kg carcasses because they had too many of them and limited market ,it was only as sucklers nu.bers declined and beef weights in general declined they stopped. However they ate not premium priced compared to AA stock.

Who2

bass decent suckler weanlings are making more in a lot of instances than finished dairy cross. Like everything there are good and bad operations

Flicking through donedeal there’s another suckler sale coming up with some lad with 50 sucklers, the truth is going by the pictures there are at least thirty shouldn’t have been let near the bull. There was another large sale in Carnaross a while back and like that they may have been sucklers on paper the majority of them weren’t good enough quality to be called sucklers. I know from my own an average one is not a lot dearer than a bad one but if you’ve good ones you’ll get paid. Like that I can’t just load them up and drop them all to the one mart either, I have to know which mart to bring which animals to and at what weight they’ll suit.
the reason a lot can’t make it work is they followed the Teagasc crap and wouldn’t think for themselves.

I done the same myself for a while and listened to sh1t talk on here about people didn’t mind colour or didn’t want an over fed calf.
stand into any suckler sale and a well fed calf of the right colour well presented is what sells.
You’re not going to get that with second generation dairy bred sucklers and in my mind it’s the reason a lot have failed to make it work.

Breed the best you can and draw down whatever schemes available that suit and suckler beef will hold its own with the pick of dairy calf to bed operations.

WoozieWu

my original comment here was about native breed bonuses potentially being removed due to strong supply

i dont believe i have ever disparaged dairy beef stock, all systems have their place

my posting the article above was to show that many dairy farms prioritize milk production over calf value and will use easy calving short gestation angus and hereford sires with little regard to beef value irrespective of breed bonuses

Grueller

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123015281#Comment_123015281

I have been dipping in and out of this debate and as I said, I like to try breed a good calf, but make no mistake Woozie ALL dairy farmers, myself included, prioritise milk over the calf. Economics dictate that you must.

Cavanjack

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123014682#Comment_123014682

Yeah some suckler bred stock have desperate weights for age.
Started rearing a few calves here this last couple of years for the kids.

Have 10 reared from last year and they’ll be coming a year old in feb/march. Brought them in just before Christmas. Mix of blacks 2 friesian’s and 2 ch.

The ch were 370kg. The blacks and the friesians were 330kg. It didn’t take much to get them to this weight. Two bags of milk and a kg of nuts throughout the summer.

I’ve bought in suckler bred weanlings alongside them that aren’t near as strong and they are after sucking out of a cow all year.

Siamsa Sessions

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123015523#Comment_123015523

I’m the same here. I’ll be starting milking cows in about 3 weeks and I’ve a Hol-BR herd because I think they’ll have good calves and cull prices. But first and foremost will be milk production.

I could never imagine having a cow here that produces a €5 calf no matter how high her solids are supposed to be.

Re factories paying HE and AA bonuses: I think part of it is PR but part of it is cut size too. The supermarkets want smaller cuts to make the price of meat look cheaper on the shelf.

Who2

The size of the steak they are after is just another beating stick when there was plenty of big carcasses. I was talking to a lad on one of the kill lines that was giving out that there were far too many small carcasses now and they weren’t getting the same output for the same amount of work. They’ll either raise the minimum carcass weight or put a small carcasses penalty or some bull story to suit themselves and tell us it’s our own fault.

Bass Reeves

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123015567#Comment_123015567

THey are very unlikely to bring in a light carcasse penalty as it would undermine policy to get cattle killed at a younger age. The same time the penalty for heavy cattle was being planned there was plans to penalise light carcases however weight limits were 220kgs for heifers and 240 for bullocks. In the bottom quartile where I buy I think I have only had 1-2 below those limits in the last 5 years.

The lad on the lines issue is Larry and o are dropping the boning out price paid on these lighter carcasses.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123015279#Comment_123015279

There was a robust discussion on sucklers on this forum 3+ years ago when the plan was to bring in a suckler exit payment. Myself and a few others highlighted that the payment was self funding and it would encourage unprofitable suckler farmers away from sucklers. This would reduce the supply of suckler bred cattle and benefit weed farming and suckler farmers. We have been proven right. The FJ, IFA, ICSA, INHFA were all against it they wanted higher suckler payment to encourage suckler supply. Even the proposed 350 euro cow payment is a retrograde step. If processors want suckler bred cattle let them pay for them. However a lot of suckler bred is sold as at commodity prices. The reasonnus tge steak size. Processors still pay 5c/ kg more for heifers due to right sized steaks

weatherbyfoxer

On good quality regularly reseed ground sucklers won't touch a good dairy beef system but on a exstencive rough grazing system sucklers are a far better option.

Its possible sell 1 finished bullock or heifers per acre with a decent dairy beef system which this year would have been €1600-€1800 per acre.Alot of the cost is in the control of the farmer,eg..poor silage and grass management=more meal,Better weaning practice can get a calf weaned on 25kg or milk replacer v 40kg..that's where the profits are made and lost

148multi

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123015281#Comment_123015281

II could be wrong, but I don't believe the breed bonuses will be removed because it's demand based, even in organics where irish beef is over subscribed they are giving a 20cent bonus. Feed lots in Italy that used to fatten bb, ch and lm are now fattening aa due to demand.

ready4road

I keep about a dozen mainly ch & red limo cattle that are bought as weanlings in oct/Nov and held for 15 months and sent to factory. Usually average out about 420 to 450kg carcase.would be getting about 10kg day high quality meal for about 180 days before slaughter along with endless good early June silage. I bought a scales this year. They gaining about 0.7kg live weight/day. I would have taught they should be doing more .Any comments/suggestions

Dunedin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123015279#Comment_123015279

bang on Who. The mediocre to poor suckler cow leads to same in weanling and they die in debt. As you say, good and bad operators out there.

The other things that will drive farmers away from sucklers is the workload, the danger element with cows - sucklers are a dangerous animal at calving time. And of course being tied to the calving period or leaving work a bit early to get home in the evening. Hard to explain to the missus that we can’t do a night away cos you’re in the middle of calving.

It’s a young man’s game and it requires a decent set up to have it any way handy for yourself too.