tanko wrote: » Where is this 60% thing coming from, i cant find anything about it.
coolshannagh28 wrote: » More jumping through hoops for peanuts.
charolais0153 wrote: » Do u know which cows are performing worst, if so why do u still have them? Youd swear running the cows or calves over a weighing scale is a huge job. By right it should be done when dosing so that the correct dosage is administered.
Farmer wrote: » I dont get the weight thing. Can't they use the mart sale weights, we'll give then a calf at birth size on a scale of one to three. Let them subtract the two and divide by the days in between whether it be 4 months or 30.
_Brian wrote: » Biosecurity !! Cattle repeatedly drawn into the mart and all driven through scales over and over. Surely multiplying the chances for disease spread.
Anto_Meath wrote: » Hi Bass, along with my few suckler cows I also rear about 20 AAx / HEx calves, I kill them as bullocks under 30 months, they generally grade O's at around 350Kgs and come into circa €1,300 - €1,400. There is a good bit of work with them for the first fee weeks and you have to buy a fairly good calf at around €200. They have to be fit to be killed before the 1st August off grass. Would an extra €200 - €300 plus €120 subsidy justify keeping the suckler cow, I don't think so and that is the the problem. The problem with buying calves now is the Jex influence has destroyed the AAx calf and HEx calf isn't much better either so an average calf now in the mart looks like a good one....
Hard Knocks wrote: » Personally I think it’s a better scheme to the BDGS, just a pity the money is less. I think dry stock should be included too & this would give a better understanding to the performance of bulls progeny. There are lots of great bulls out there with poor stars because they haven’t the latest big thing in their breeding. To me the 3 key times for weighing are birth, 100-150 days & 250-350 days. I’ve a scales, I bought because of first KT program & find it useful for lambs also, the cost of weighing was €40 for first 10 calves back then. If you had 10 calves @ €400 less €60 for ICBF & €40 for weighing, that’s €300 extra in your pocket Just 1 more thing (maybe dreamworld) if you had weights could you sell from the field/yard & save a day at the mart, commission & stress on the animal & you
Dunedin wrote: » How do you assume that the worst one is a bad one? I kill all steers at under 30 months and they’d range between 420 - 500 kgs DW so I’d say that the ‘worst’ one is still worth keeping. We’ve talked on the other suckler thread about the amount of work with suckers so I won’t go into it here and this scheme just adds to the workload and for what? I’ve had bad cows in the past, everyone does. But sometimes there’s a reason we hang on to them for longer than we should - ease of calving, doctility, very easy to get into the yard and the others follow, etc. My weighing scales is the factory returns and only having circa 20 cows, I know them fairly well and weighing calves is not going to tell me anything I don’t already know. My current ICBF report shows 80% 4/5 Star in the herd. And I have two cows that are 2 Star and they are amongst the best I have.
K9 wrote: » As it stands icbf are reliant on you to put a score on your cows milk ability. Would you agree that if you were to weigh your calves at 150 days and after 3 years icbf would then have a far more accurate figure for your cows milk potential. Which in turn would improve the reliability of your cows euro star value. I’d agree that the star system has its flaws but icbf can only base it on the information that they have. Not much point criticising inaccuracies and at the same time giving out about measures that will improve reliability of figures
Dunedin wrote: » Listen, I subscribe to ICBF and agree to an extent what you’re saying re the data but if ICBF are relying on me in the first place to tell them about my cows performance, then you’d have to a kind of agree that’s it’s me that knows it in the first place......
K9 wrote: » That’s not much use to the rest of us tho. Just say you used a bull to breed replacements, surely the sooner icbf can get reliable information re that bulls performance on replacement traits the better it would be for the rest of us
Dunedin wrote: » I thought we were talking about cows ?
patsy_mccabe wrote: » I've always felt that a small easily kept suckler cow that produced a good calf was the most profitable. 50 cows at 800kgs will eat the same as 80 cows at 500kgs. Just try telling that to those that produce the €1000 fancy weanling.
patsy_mccabe wrote: I've always felt that a small easily kept suckler cow that produced a good calf was the most profitable. 50 cows at 800kgs will eat the same as 80 cows at 500kgs. Just try telling that to those that produce the €1000 fancy weanling.
blue5000 wrote: » Believe it or not NZ! The first time I heard it mentioned was at a teagasc demo in Johnstown castle and a NZ beef expert was on about it, it's their target weaning weight for cows. Can't remember what year it was, same year that the ploughing match was in Wexford.
Who2 wrote: » Realistically any lad wanting to stay in sucklers needs to be chasing 1000 euro weanlings. For that you need reasonable size cows. I’ve done the billing at 400 kg and it just doesn’t work. Decent sized cows at 650-700 kg so you can afford to put that slightly harder calving bull on. Well shaped with growth. If this year doesn’t prove anything else but the difference in quality and price then we shouldn’t be at it. Middle of the road sucklers aren’t covering themselves. It shows when the big lads doing under 16 month bulls go to the mart. It’s not pride, polling or any other rooting it’s just that good u grade weanlings with weight for age turn a decent profit for them.
High bike wrote: » how reliable is weight for age when some lads have calves lying in the rushes for 3 mts before the register them.Was at a mart a couple of weeks ago and saw plenty 5 mt old weanlings go through at well over 400 kgs and it didn’t seem to bother lads they still bought em
Who2 wrote: » And why would it bother them if they were that age. They want their animals killed under a certain age.
patsy_mccabe wrote: » There was a few lads at that crack in the pedigree limousin game. Very big bulls for their age. The society payed them a surprise visit. They are no longer in the society.
sonnybill wrote: » Did anyone have a link or scheme details ? Wondering is this for Bdgp herds only or anyone ? Which reference year are they using ?
milligan2 wrote: » Loads of lads registering them very late around here to get into the u 16 month market,impossible to police if they have a stock bull but some are all AI and in the Genomics scheme. It goes to show the amount of raving info being sent into said scheme,ADG,calving interval,cow back in calf,kill out etc all skewed by false DOB of calf
