Accounts attached - The current reality facing beef farmers - Any advice?

Hard Knocks

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118637622#Comment_118637622

Organic isn’t an option for allot of Suckler farmer as most sheds are just slats

Cavanjack

Is meal bill not very high also for 75 sucklers?

€320 a head? You’d finish 250 continental cattle off grass with that sort of meal bill.

James2020App

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118637438#Comment_118637438

No offence taken, yeah the more responses that I have typed up the more this was coming to my head too.

No point in working very hard, general stress that comes around silage and calving particularly. All for €10k profit with zero wages paid at that...

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118637622#Comment_118637622

Thanks definitely going to research more into this organic option. Have to read the ins and out of it to see if it suits or not. Call me mad but I do enjoy sucklers, would be happy enough with smaller numbers. It is the type of farming that have been used to growing up and have experience in. Many would recommend sheep but just don't have the gra for it.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118637638#Comment_118637638

Will look into this, all slatted units here so may not work. Have to read into it next few days.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118637651#Comment_118637651

I also finished twenty-five weanlings I bought the prior year at the beginning of 2021, so there was a reasonable sized meal bin paid at the start of the yearfor it.

mayota

You should reduce sucklers by half and keep weanlings to finish or even sell as stores. It's crazy the time your spending farming. Have you an OH and/or children? Remember life and family should come first. Not having a go and well done for posting.

Rusheseverywhere

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118635253#Comment_118635253

You are way out on the organic payment. The current max is 60 hectares at 170 and every hectare over is 30 per hectare or slightly over 10 euros and acre. The new max area is 70 hectares so the max annual organic payment is essentially 12k a year. I am in the organic suckler game similar enough to the op and meal is 630 a tonne in small bags or 550 a tonne loose and 40 euros delivery. Weanlings have to be squezzed at 5 months old and that hits them hard. Alot of lads in organic do not squeeze, take calves straight off cows and generally mess around so they have no meal expenses. Organic Sale this Saturday in Drumshanbo and another in Roscommon early March OP watch on mart bids give you an idea of prices. In my experience no premiium on organic weanlings or even older cattle if you have decent continental cattle make more in ordinary trade as more around the ring. Long story short organic not the answer. I am staying at sucklers 1 more year than prob to a clear out and go to min stocking farm system.

James2020App

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118637733#Comment_118637733

Thanks appreciate the concern and you make a very good point. Have OH not yet marrried, won't be long though. This excessive farming was conducive enough when in lock-down but now with country back open not so much. I'm 28 and this last three years has been a very good learning experience making plenty of silly errors along the way. As can clearly be seen from the above.

I do agree that long the sucklers are just heartache from a time investment perspective. Can't imagine what they'd be like with young kids. Actually it easy enough to imagine, it would be an ultimatum from herself either cows or the OH. Not both!

minerleague

Just to note if you are spreading a lot of fertilizer you probably wont have the grasses/ clovers to thrive in organics straight away, you will have good fertility built up though, thinking of organic here but never spread much fertilizer anyway. Straw is expensive further away from tillage country for bedding.

James2020App

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118637825#Comment_118637825

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118637862#Comment_118637862

Interesting input on the organic side lads. Really an area haven't even considered before. Any websites or areas to look at to get an initial look into it?

Could even potentially use a section of the farm for organic. Totally thinking out loud here though, and would need to do way more research and looking into it. Intrigued to see what kind of premium organic cattle go for, or if it is even a runner at all with slats etc.

Don't get me started on straw, it is the transport costs that really inflate it. There is a reason why there are so many lorries drawing straw around the country all Autumn.

FintanMcluskey

You gave a contractor €18,000 and a further €4000 for diesel, but still had to spend €150 on grease for your own machinery!!

I would expect to see cobwebs on the steering wheel of BOTH tractors you own, if your contracting bill is that high for 75 sucklers!

mayota

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118637830#Comment_118637830

And she would well within her rights. It's unsustainable in every way what you're at. I realise I'm lucky here farming only 45 acres and a bigger area takes more management. How did the purchased weanlings do for you? If I were you I'd put 35 or maybe 40 to the bull this year for spring calving and fatten the rest. See how that goes.

K.G.

I suspect the land is the type that if it was run organic all you will have is rushes but maybe I m wrong.anyone here turningprofit out of sucklers that would like to mentor the decisions ahead privately.are you any good to judge cattle .if you were you could go one day a every month and buy cattle in a mart.by going every month you are averaging the prices and you can plan for cattle coming and going around work commitments .with no tillage available for finishing aim to finish cattle off grass as much as possible and winter on the best possible silage.i must admit I'm taken aback that 75 cows could loose that much money

Who2

75 sucklers on 250 acres shouldn’t have costs near what your at.

the 18000 on contractor costs should be capable of buying your full winters feed on the sucklers, dropped into the yard.

the simplest thing I can see is for you to tighten the calving period and have all your weanlings gone in Oct. 75 calves at 2kg per day for 90 days will cost you 5k in meal.

your costs are haywire.

Danzy

I think your cattle might be too good and done too well, might be trying to be too good a handler.

If you had a 75 or so white head bullocks, even a hundred, dairy bred, autumn to autumn you'd be really cutting back on the 50k+ spent on silage/Straw/fertilizer/ration. Your gross cattle sales will go up, 20k readily enough and a very large cut back on work.

Hell, if you had 70 of the plainest dairy bred heifers in existence and carried them for 12 months, you would be better off. Your

We live in an age where retailers sell farm produce at a loss to get customers in, where people who drink Almond milk from California despise the man evil farmer next door with his Friesian cow and hardly any one puts value on food production.

Plus side,you have a big spread with a Great payment. The rest you can fix, I finish bout 60 dairy bred heifers and bullocks most years, aax,fr, White heads, some chx etc. It would take me the most of a decade to hit your 2021 ration bill.

One of the most important lessons I learnt in farming was that having it run well, leaving money at 65 cattle was to not aim to hit 70 I dropped Instead.

Your first goal is to protect the payment and work back from there, second is make it manageable part time both are very doable

You are starting with a very high cost system, with a very high payment, it's a great place to be starting from, little fixes will yield.

[Deleted User]

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118637622#Comment_118637622

Don’t you need a straw lie back area for cows in organic?

Lets say a beef farmer uses no sprays, little fertiliser and minimal meal. How hard is it to go organic then?

Bass Reeves

Organic is the latest buzz. Too many lads see the payment similar to BEEP or other Suckler schemes. Unless your ruthlessly look at your system in drystock you can lose a fortune as the OP is doing.

Organics is not the answer by itself OP. On 80 Suckler cows your direct costs are over 1k/ cow. And on top of that you pay over 2k on consultancy. And to lose more money you bought 25 weanling. WTF did you buy weanling to finish if you produce weanling.

Start cutting back cows to below 50% of present numbers. This year as cows have calved, start looking at culling. Select your cows sell the calves straight off the cows at 3 months. Any autumn born calves( Oct-Dec born) should be sold as runners this year in April and May. Do not bull these cows. If they are incalf already inject them. If you have two bulls cull one. Any cows that calf after April sell the calf at 6-8 weeks. Aim to fatten 20-30 of these cows this year. Any cows not fat by autumn overwinter on your poorer quality silage. Any weanling over 250 kgs next autumn should be sold

Your land must be very marginal as your stocking rate is low a cow/4 acres. If you do as above you silage requirements for next year will be cut by 50%, your straw by 60%+, fertlizer by 60% and most other costs by 50-70%%.

If you cut you stocking rate back you will find you can let lower numbers out later in the Autumn and earlier in the spring your aim should be to cut back your direct costs by 60-80% within 12-15 months.

Turnover will be stable this year but profitability will be up. As you destock the reduction in stock value should prevent a tax issue. 7k in bank interest and charges indicates loans use extra sales value this year to pay down some of this.

I imagine you are running continental cows. Over the next 5 years replace them with HEX or AAX type cows. Run an HE bull with them consider finishing progeny off grass at 30 months. Then consider organics

From your figures the more you produce the more you lose.

Neddyusa

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118638569#Comment_118638569

"the more you produce the more you lose"

That's pretty much the case for every suckler farmer in Ireland.....not just the OP.

Although the OP presents a classic example!

Bass Reeves

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118638807#Comment_118638807

The problem is he is hemorrhaging cash in his production system. His direct costs are above 1k/cow. Looking at his figures the only place he could have serious personal expenses hidden is in contractor costs( maybe digger work for. House). His farm vehicles expenses are modest 7k which is not outlandish.

I suspect that all the better land is closed for the summer for silage. This probably impedes the ability to finish cow or take progeny further.

The larger a farm is the harder it should be to hide personal spending. It's a unlikely he can hide personal spending in his fertlizer, feed, straw and vet bills. Even some of the rest such as Animal transport, insurance and machinery costs are not high enough to be hiding expenses.

He should consider 50-80 acted of Forrestery or the more marginal land. Reducing output below 50% will reduce workload in half and costs by 60-70%

TBH if he put 50-60 yearlings each year and carried them to finish at 30 months he probably retain all his payments. His payments will probably reduce because of the loss of Suckler money BEEP etc. His base premia (BPS and ANC) will be around 30 k, his GLAS should be 5k+.

Organics is grand. If you cut numbers I. Half like he has you can convert sone the d the area to straw/ woodchip and be organic compliant. However until you rationalise your system you cannot do this

trg

Well done OP on putting your figures out here.

mr.stonewall

A compact calving system is key, it's as easy to watch 5-6 cows calving as one.

Consider late spring calving as you said you are on marginal land. This would mean cows calving in April, May. This lends to outdoor calving and weather tends to be on your side. It will really cut your straw bill and will let you have options to sell weanlings in the autumn or yearlings in the spring, even a bit of both would help with cashflow. Smaller cow will eat less

Secondly stick to the mantra of cow must go in calf, calf on own and calf get going on it own. This leads to focus on calf per cow produced.

The Suckler cow is a huge cost for what she produces, but we all have a bug for breeding stock and calving. Potential is to reduce these as they are so time hungry. Consider even the purchase of reared or nearly reared calves. These are light on land and can be kept out a bit longer in the back end of year 1 and can get out early in the spring of year 2.

Clear focus on maximising days at grass for all stock within reason. I let out most of my yearlings in January ( on heavy ground). Ok they are back in 12 days, but it helps. It drives down cost, with feed, and slurry storage etc

Just a few bits, again part time here, with 30 suckler to beef and 50 calf to beef.

The farm must work around you, not you around the farm

eire23

On that amount of land would you not go down the sheep route?

Far less costs, probably more work but you would have a lot more out of it. Have horned ewes lambing outside in April and sell the lambs as stores or finish a certain amount of them. I'm sure you have a dry field or sandpit etc that you could feed bales in for the winter?

Lime Tree Farm

.

All of Stonewall,s advice above. Vaccinate cows for rotavirus pre calving, treat calves for coccidiosis if showing symptoms at 18 days. Give cows Allsure bolus prior to breeding and calves at grass. Vaccinate for blackleg,(IBR & RSP pre weaning). Prevention is better than cure. Compact calving

James2020App

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118638031#Comment_118638031

Fair a good part of that went on reseeding 15 acres but yeah contractor cost was simply too high last year.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118638275#Comment_118638275

There is an element of overfeeding the meal alright for cattle are being sold as weanling, albeit very good weanlings.

Can imagine those bullocks would eat a hell of a lot less silage and ration than cows, plus way less labour intensive. Would you find diseases much of a problem in buying them in?

Yeah totally, very fortunate to have the ground and the grant. I feel bad letting the grant be ate away by expenses. That is one of the main reasons for coming on here. Holding hands up so to speak and trying to figure out the best way to attempt to keep more of it. The reality is in years going forward the grants are going to decrease and unless the farm is almost self sufficient without large government payments, whole thing is a waste of resources.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118638569#Comment_118638569

I don't think organics is the answer to this riddle here. The farm size is almost a bit on the big side for it. The weanling purchase in 2020 actually worked out well enough and in the end. It did make a bit of money all in all. The main reason for that was the increase in the price of beef. In 2021 I did sell my own stock as weanlings as just didn't have the desire to tie myself up in more ration costs so got rid of them early.

I do agree on the advice to cut back the cows by what percent I will have to have a good think about.

The land isn't really that marginal. I would call it good rather than marginal to be honest. It has just been badly managed really. There would have to be more of a focus on my behalf on grassland management. Moving the cattle more from field to field and maybe even grazing them in smaller numbers. With fertiliser this year no option but to cut back on it too. So third cuts are out.

That €7k is interest & repayments and after next year there will be no debt on the farm so that should help.

Yeah running mainly Charolais or Limousines. Charolais' especially are heavy and eat serious amounts of everything plus calving isn't straightforward. Think LM are better in that regard as generally calf easier and are good mothers.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118638807#Comment_118638807

This is unfortunately very true. Says a lot about the environment we find ourselves in. Granted expenses have been too high on this side this last while. Still though with beef the struggle is real.

The one alternative that I have is to lease it. The going rate here is around (€180 to €250 an acre without entitlements) so take €200*250 acres so about €50k. somewhere around €200 an acre, so could bring in €50,000 a year. If the lease was 15 years €40k of that would be free from income tax and the remaining €10k would have tax of about €5k against it. That would be a net of €45k. That is with next to no work beside it.

Or maybe even lease 80% of it and do a bit of hobby farming on 40 acres and keep a shed for fattening a small number of cattle and some sucklers. This farming is a drug to be honest.

There is also an underlying niggle of if you take over the farm and lease it, it is similar to selling it or selling sites. That you are not actually doing with it what has always been done before by working it.

orchard farm

I must say fair play to the op for his honesty and he seems like a respectful nice young lad willing to listen to others advice.Yove a lot going for you and a large farm we’d all love to have.Take some of the advice from the posters on board,every farm is different and organics is in vogue at the moment but it isnt the cash cow people think it is it and can cause more debt if it doesn’t suit your farm,reduce numbers,reduce expenses and your life will be much more rewarding

Furze99

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118636447#Comment_118636447

That's the first thing that struck me too. OP may have rounded a bit but look very odd and no guarantee that these will carry through to 2022.

As self employed the one thing I know is that no year is the same as the last or even the previous. You rise & fall, incomes and expenses change.

James2020App

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118639018#Comment_118639018

I broke down those farm vehicle expenses in post 14, no personal expenses in any of of the above. All genuine farm expenses. A large part of the contracting was reseeding expense for a 15 acre field. If anything would take my personal expenses out to show that I am running a more profitable enterprise than I am but no point in that :)

I think the ground is too good for forestry. Reducing the cow numbers I do agree with. I absolutely am going to change my system. Will look further into organics, but may not follow through there.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118639035#Comment_118639035

Cheers think it is good to be open and transparent about finances and open to criticism and correction.

It is a funny industry we are in and although many of us talk everyday about being squeezed. We don't always really self-evaluate where we are at and how best to readjust going into the future to turn things around.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118639154#Comment_118639154

A lot does come back to the calving system alright. Like currently it is all over the place and this means that even having three pens of cattle to grow at the same rate and finish at the same rate just isn't a viable option.

Compact calving in a certain period probably takes a year planning in advance. Ensuring that I am off work in that period and then being fully at it for say a three week period. Late Spring is what I mainly currently aim for the reasons you mention here.

Yeah focus on cow and more of an intensed focus on days between cow has calf in 2020 and 2021 and keeping this to a minumum.

"The farm must work around you, not you around the farm" This is very true, I've gotten it the wrong way around last while and have to fix the system moreso around the farmer. Going to be cutting suckler cow numbers to begin with.

James2020App

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118639470#Comment_118639470

Maybe I am biased but grew up with cattle and have a good gra for them. Sheep are an animal that I have zero experience or gra for really. Would also have to refence the whole land. There is a 60% grant on that, but the reason I do the farming is because I like cattle.

You could run a good number of sheep here no problem. Just would really be started from scratch with them.

mr.stonewall

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118640103#Comment_118640103

If you are planning on cutting Suckler cow numbers, you have great chance to pick the cows and cow families that are easy care and fit into your system.

C0N0R

First thing I would say is fair play for knowing your costs good or bad.

With that size of land base you could farm full-time if you wanted, but if you don't want to I would really consider leasing a large percentage of it and keep 50 acres and run your sucklers, even if you loose a small bit of money on them, its a hobby that's being paid for by the rental income. But I accept leasing isn't always an easy option when you have just been transferred a farm.

funkey_monkey

I think people are putting the cart before the horse here to a certain extent.

@James2020App I think the first question is how much time can you give to the farm and are you able to get help - either family or paid?

You say you have an off-farm job. Farming 250 acres would take up a lot of anyone's time regardless of the farm type. Did your father (or whoever previously worked it) do it full time?

Bass Reeves

OP the biggest factors in solving any problem is realising you have a.problem. that takes guts. Too may farmers are afraid to adapt there system in case there present system would make money next year. This can leading to losses increasing in a system continuously. You have recognised there is an issue and that is the biggest part of saving any problem.

If the land is capable of being leased at 200/ HA for 200/ HA it.most be fairly decent land. The most effective way of managing land is running cattle in as big as groups as possible from.late April to September. To stretch you year you may need smaller groups on the shoulders of this period. Moving cattle every 3-5 days is a huge bonus but you need a paddock system in place.

Just to give you an idea in cost difference between our systems. I finish 65-70 mainly FR bullocks on 35 HA. Mine is a grass based system with ration only fed during the 8-10 week finishing period on grass. I am assuming that you have 175 cows, calves, stock bulls and cull cows.

Fertlizer last year( used more than normally) cost 48/ head, your was 63/ head or 140/ suckker unit

Ration was 60/ head your was 247/ head or 300/ Suckler unit. I would have no straw costs. I think at a guess the rest of my costs would be similarly lower than your. My turnover from stock sales were similar to yours.

The reason I am pointing this out is to show you the effect of costs on profitability. High input drystock systems are virtually possible to maintain a profit level in.