Fireside Solicitor wrote: » There is a businessman near us inherited the place off his father. It is a good farm with 20k sfp. Yer man if he looks at it once a week that’s it. He has 70 bullocks and tells me he doesn’t care if they make anything once they don’t cost him anything......he wouldn’t have clue what happens with them.He was joking with one of the lads that the farm was great for hiding expenses from the tax man. This man drives a 100k bmw. When the system treats him the same as me sure it will never be right
wrangler wrote: » Surest way of getting the grade that they want is to penalise the grades they don't want. Same with overweight lambs, it doesn't mean they can't sell them, they don't want a lot of them. I know one factory that has a premium market for overweight lambs if farmers are foolish enough to supply them...they get plenty of lambs for that market
White Clover wrote: » There's no denying the blatant under grading of carcasses that has gone on since manual grading finished. You'd need an exceptionally good animal to grade R nowadays.
wrangler wrote: » I'd be in no hurry to look for electronic grading of the lambs, farmers couldn't trust the human graders for beef. There's no doubt it's hard to understand the lamb grading some days but on average it's alright. Grades are just a number, I've no doubt that if the electronic grader was less severe they'd just stop paying QA on Os
White Clover wrote: » I have no problem with lamb grades but the cattle are so disappointing. If they stopped paying qa on O's, the little bit of credibility that the qa has would be lost completely. Weren't the factories also looking for lighter carcasses for the supermarket trade....as a rule these will be dairy cross cattle..... It's heads the factories win and tails the farmer loses
wrangler wrote: » Why were farmers giving out about the department graders, we haven't even dept graders grading our lambs but factory graders and we get along. Wonder how many people that complain actually see their cattle hanging up. Those talking about altering the grades might as well be accusing them of adjusting the scales..... I wouldn't count dairy cross cattle as R grades, most haven't the front shoulder to pull it off....the bulls might though Twenty years ago I was selling growthy charolais out of simmenthal cows and they were mostly Rs, Granted they were young but grading wouldn't have changed much according to that
White Clover wrote: » I wouldn't expect dairy cross cattle to be R's either wrangler. It's that too many of them fail to even make an O= heading for 30 months....and it's the carcass that they want. In other words, the farmer is penalised for giving them what they want. It comes back to the point I made in my post above.
wrangler wrote: » Well you know my views on dairy bred cattle, I hate the sight of them, so I suppose I'm biased. I can't understand guys giving what they give for calves Grades weren't split into 3 sections when I was at it but I always considered mine to be the top end of the R grade.
White Clover wrote: » We all like the fancy ones but the factories told us the carcasses were too big....the steaks wouldn't fit on the trays. We can't win when the goal posts keep moving...
oneten wrote: » Manual grading still goes on, if the grader code on your kill docket is anything other than 001 then your cattle have been manually graded, and is definitely being used by one factory to downgrade carcasses. I've been on the receiving end of this thievery. I'm told you can request the still images from the grading machine and have them assessed by an " independent " assessor with the IFA if you are a member. I don't know how true this is.
wrangler wrote: » I doubt there's any thievery going on.https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=11&v=4rGBkQ1zYhw I wonder how far you have to go back in these cows breeding to get a f.....ng Holstein,.....are we not destroying the beef industry
Who2 wrote: » I agree to a point. i seen cows being hung up recently. there were two batches. one batch of super continental cows with no feeding but fleshed. nearly all graded o. another batch of lesser quality cows but fed and nearly all graded r. i think a lot of it has to do with rose tinted glasses, no different than lads thinking their best weanling is a super star, until they land in beside even better stock. its pretty hard pull a u out of most dairy bred animals.
wrangler wrote: » Is there a maximum weight now on beef cattle same as sheep, I've been through Camolins cutting up plant and have seen them putting the chops on the trays and the need for small legs and portions in an effort to compete with pork and chicken. I always sold steers around 400kg and heifers around 370, but that's 20 years ago now and they didn't want them any heavier even then but they always took them and paid for them, it suited my system to sell them at 18 to 22 mths. It's like the ram lambs, they're always complaining about them, and yet they take them, and TBH some of them taste like sh..e
Limestone Cowboy wrote: » That is the finest herd of cows I have ever seen.
wrangler wrote: » They are out on their own, they've had a few open days well worth seeing.
wrangler wrote: » I doubt there's any thievery going on.
Muckit wrote: » You're not a bad herd of cows yourself LC. Throw up a pic of your calves when you are weaning them.
