Margins from suckler beef

grassroot1 wrote: »

I am afraid the only show in town is dairying and I am not criticising your move its logical but you can move to dairy and hold you bps which is based on historical production in suckler beef.
I just think a coupled payment is better than a payment per acre.
Poor performing suckler farmers wont make excellent calf to beef units either.
The reality is no beef system is viable

Unfortunately Grassroot I was a young farmer that bought his entitlements himself. I could only afford units of €78 value at the time. Convergence has helped but trust me, I have no big legacy payments from sucklers.

grassroot1 wrote: »

I am afraid the only show in town is dairying and I am not criticising your move its logical but you can move to dairy and hold you bps which is based on historical production in suckler beef.
I just think a coupled payment is better than a payment per acre.
Poor performing suckler farmers wont make excellent calf to beef units either.
The reality is no beef system is viable

The problem is if no beef system is viable ( and I disagree) and thee is little difference in margin why do you subsidize one to maintain or increase production which pulls down the price of all product. It really come down to farmers unwilling to change there system.

There are a few other reasons to stay away from coupling. On better land it may encourage farmers to remain in sucklers rather than change to Dairy X beef or to dairying and even into sheep. While on marginal land where often BPS payments are small you are double rewarding some farmers with increased unit payments and a coupled payment. Suckler payments decimated sheep production from a lot of marginal land. Neither do I think that there should be a ewe premia as sheep is now the most profitable drystock sector and there should be no encouragement given to lads to enter it which may drag down profitability again.

Whether we like it or not milk production will expand for a while more. calf numbers will increase and we are only one newspaper or TV scoop/program away from a calf export ban. We have to deal with the reality that we are heading for a kill of over 30K/week from the dairy sector alone if exports are banned. On the other side we have 850-900K suckler cows producing about 650K calves at very low profitability.

Decouple payments give you a choice to what method of production you decide there should be no other encouragement to farm any system.....I even think the suckler and ewe as well as bull calf production schemes should be stopped and let lads manage there system with in a converged payment system with whatever eco payments are available

grassroot1 wrote: »

In effect though you are using beef farmers payments to solve dairy farmers problems.
The suckler is being scapegoated to allow the expansion of dairy on two counts.
1. Remove the suckler and make beef farmers buy the problem excess dairy calves, transferring the beef mans bps to the dairy man in the process.
2. Removing the suckler cow will lessen the need for dairy cows to be removed to sort the climate bill.
If you believe that too many beef animals are coming to market because of the suckler cow Bass then you also have to blame the dairy cross calf and the cull dairy cow.
I agree with you however suckler beef production is unviable.

No I am not. The reality is that calves from the dairy herd will continue to be produced as long as milk is produced for dairy production. There is nothing we can do about that.

The market is demanding carcasses in the 280-350 kgs for the prime beef market. Most of the rest is manufacturing beef. At present the largest demand is for AA beef and it is climbing.

At 4.5/ kg a 360 kg carcasse is worth 1620 euro. Suckler beef cannot be produced for that money in Ireland with QA and and an R+ animal it requires a base of 4.25/ kg for a continental animal. Many larger finishers with the extra 10c/ kg for finishing over 50 AA/ year can achieve that price on the same base with an O+ bullock.

A 330 kg O+ AA bullock would nearly reach 1500 euro on the same base. Guess which leaves the most money to the beef farmer producing them.

I disagree that BPS from beef is subsidizing milk production. With the convergence of payments money will move from dairy BPS to drystock BPS payments.

Dairy culls are a fact of the milk production system. Actually they are only a small piece I. The increase in beef production. EBI has pushed the abity of cows to stay in production and increase in number of lactations has decreased culling rates so the increase in dairy culls is not as pronounced as the effects of extra calves

Anto_Meath wrote: »

If you have a farmer with marginal land and he is running 15 -20 suckler he would lot less work to do than if he was rearing 40 -50 dairy beef calves. Many of these lads are part time farmers so sucklers suits them.

Not sure about this. I left suckling partly because of the hassle and unpredictability of work especially around calving and breeding. Always the problems came when you had to be out the door for work. Retired fathers tipping about disguises a lot.
You can run double the numbers of bucket reared calves for less labour if well set up for milk feeding. Powder milk once a day for about 90 days in spring and job done. Dosing etc can all be planned out fairly well. But I take the point that if sickness gets in bucket calves in the shed or at grass it takes effort to put it right.

Finty Lemon wrote: »

Not sure about this. I left suckling partly because of the hassle and unpredictability of work especially around calving and breeding. Always the problems came when you had to be out the door for work. Retired fathers tipping about disguises a lot.
You can run double the numbers of bucket reared calves for less labour if well set up for milk feeding. Powder milk once a day for about 90 days in spring and job done. Dosing etc can all be planned out fairly well. But I take the point that if sickness gets in bucket calves in the shed or at grass it takes effort to put it right.

I often think the work related to dairy calves is exaggerated if you have fairly decent facilities and these are not overly expensive. As well they are Tam's grant aided. Feeding calves is a structured work. You can plan the rest of your work or life around it. It not like on an evening you intent taking the young lady to music classes and there is a cow calving.

I was at a farm a few weeks ago where a lad was rearing over 70 calves and sin 2019 he has not lost a calf. Lads are getting better at it. As well it getting easier to buy direct from dairy farms with more price reality being within the system

[Deleted User] wrote: »

From my experience a limousin suckler bullock is finished at around 440 kg at 26 months (thats the average) and typically r3.

AA / Freisan are often 100 kg back from that tipping 30 months.

Processed around 60 animals last year around 40 sucklers bred cattle.

This year anyone buying dairy bred yearling bullocks will struggle to turn a profit in 22.

I think its possible to make money from suckling but you can't be entertaining hard calvings, empty cows and needless cost. You need to be aiming for feed efficient cattle that dont eat a load of silage and do not feed meal over the winter.

I also think a farmer could make money at the mart if they are a good judge of stock etc and buy cattle and keep costs down.

You need to aim at what you can succeed at and are good at.

The dairy expansion is totally subsidised by the sfp, a dairy famer rents your land and basically pays you your entitlements after drawing them.

440 kgs DW would be above average for Suckler bred cattle. There is a reason why Friesians are carried to thirty months it's because ration has gone too expensive. If I reared Friesian's from calves to 30 months I be disappointed if they were many that were less that 350 kgs DW. I often bought them at 5-6 months of age and hung them above 350 at 28/29 months.

The big fact is however that not all calves from the dairy herd are FR's there are a lot of AA's HE's and dairyX continentals.

In most leasing situations SFP is paid separately to lease money or topped up onto it in stronger dairying area's.

Bass Reeves wrote: »

No I am not. The reality is that calves from the dairy herd will continue to be produced as long as milk is produced for dairy production. There is nothing we can do about that.

The market is demanding carcasses in the 280-350 kgs for the prime beef market. Most of the rest is manufacturing beef. At present the largest demand is for AA beef and it is climbing.

At 4.5/ kg a 360 kg carcasse is worth 1620 euro. Suckler beef cannot be produced for that money in Ireland with QA and and an R+ animal it requires a base of 4.25/ kg for a continental animal. Many larger finishers with the extra 10c/ kg for finishing over 50 AA/ year can achieve that price on the same base with an O+ bullock.

A 330 kg O+ AA bullock would nearly reach 1500 euro on the same base. Guess which leaves the most money to the beef farmer producing them.

I disagree that BPS from beef is subsidizing milk production. With the convergence of payments money will move from dairy BPS to drystock BPS payments.

Dairy culls are a fact of the milk production system. Actually they are only a small piece I. The increase in beef production. EBI has pushed the abity of cows to stay in production and increase in number of lactations has decreased culling rates so the increase in dairy culls is not as pronounced as the effects of extra calves

There's high input sucklers and no input (or very close to) sucklers. High inputs doesn't pay anywhere in the world but most of the costs could be stripped out if one was to accept a plainer animal at the end.
Strip out dosing, meal, fertiliser, reseeding while allowing for a system better suited to environmental schemes and the difference to rearing dairy calves might not be quite as large as is often made out.
Cluanview farm is an example, pretty much nothing put into them. Might not be the best fit for everyone but definitely deserves consideration

Anto_Meath wrote: »

Another issue with feeding dairy calves that I have noticed this year from the dairy calves I am feed is the Je breeding is now starting to show.
I bought 2 nice little BBx cross calves in March of this year, they were 21 days old @ €175. Nice little pair of calves but when I looked at ICBF 1 of them has 10% JE in him. Now that they are off milk you can see the JE breeding really starting to come out in him. He will be a fine P in 2 years. But in the mart the day he was sold you wouldn't notice it.

You did not notice but the trained eye of the jobbers did and any way what sort a bb do you expect for E175

Anto_Meath wrote: »

Another issue with feeding dairy calves that I have noticed this year from the dairy calves I am feed is the Je breeding is now starting to show.
I bought 2 nice little BBx cross calves in March of this year, they were 21 days old @ €175. Nice little pair of calves but when I looked at ICBF 1 of them has 10% JE in him. Now that they are off milk you can see the JE breeding really starting to come out in him. He will be a fine P in 2 years. But in the mart the day he was sold you wouldn't notice it.

DBK1 wrote: »

Agreed on that. You can see it creeping into some of the white heads as well. Unfortunately, as you said, this doesn’t stand out until after they come off the milk. Usually about 4-6 weeks after weaning that you can really pick out the runts from the good calves which will be powering on ahead.

I suspect that if there is an issue with that BB calf it not all down to JE breeding. At 10% it would not be a dominant factor in his breeding. There is probably other issues with either his BB site or his FR breeding.

What is happening with HE and AA is the use of easy calving low genomic bulls. At the end of the day the biggest issue with lads struggling with dairy X calves and profitability is they pay too much for them. Good few lads have changed from suckler's and t
Most find it as or more profitable than suckler's. Most lads struggle with there costs. Most fail to grasp that beef farming dose not give a return on excessive inputs.

I was at a discussion group farm walk a few years ago. Really top class farmer and he was asked ( by a Teagasc advisor) did he vaccinate his calves which were Friesian bulls. He had 100 of them his reply was on average he lost 2 calves per hundred. Vaccination at 6-8/ head would cost 6-800 euro. Even if he called the vet to both calves and had medicine costs it would not run to that after paying knackery.

Just as an aside there are less JE straws being used for the last two years than previous. I always find the cross back from a JEX to be f
Easier to finish and as profitable as many running the mill Fr cattle

In all the discussion here, I'm amazed that nobody mentioned the elephant in the room here - "the price of beef". Even the worst of farmers will make a profit if the beef price is right.

As for handling wild cattle, I've picked up a few tricks over the years. I cringe when I think what we were at here years ago.
I have a few suckler cows and calves in an awkward field on the side of the motorway. Now years ago, it would take 3 or even 4 of us to round them up and load them. This week, I needed to load them as they had the field skinned. Started off 2 days ago with a kg of meal into a half plastic barrel at the top of the field. Yesterday I went into the field, turned over the barrel and all of them came running. I dragged the barrel down the field, into the pen. All 8 of them went straight in. Straight home and got the trailer.
Years ago, it would be mad drama trying to load them.

It's the same with all my neighbours that have sucklers. They can all manage them no problem with a bit of meal training and the odd electric fence reel laid out right.

yosemitesam1 wrote: »

There's high input sucklers and no input (or very close to) sucklers. High inputs doesn't pay anywhere in the world but most of the costs could be stripped out if one was to accept a plainer animal at the end.
Strip out dosing, meal, fertiliser, reseeding while allowing for a system better suited to environmental schemes and the difference to rearing dairy calves might not be quite as large as is often made out.
Cluanview farm is an example, pretty much nothing put into them. Might not be the best fit for everyone but definitely deserves consideration

There are some very high input suckler farms around and its very hard to take any cribbing from them seriously.
Did it ever in the history or suckling pay to have a fine new tractor, big sheds, machinery. I see plenty of these farms and they selling 20 or 30 weanlings a year. Sure the profit couldn't be match the spend.
I'll be lightly stocked with trouble free cows that take as little time off me as possible. Take advantage of any scheme that will suit and leave a few bob.