_Brian wrote: » But west Cavan will have long expensive winters for hungry suckler cows, marginal land isn’t the most productive for heavy cows.
grassroot1 wrote: » With respect you would say that, if you are leaving suckler production and moving into dairy/dairy beef I cannot see west Cavan and Leitrim becoming a hot bed of calf to beef units. Historical payments are wrong as are payments for owning land whether producing or not so we are back I guess trying to define an "active" farmer
Albert Johnson wrote: » Marginal ground isn't very productive for anything tbh, the clue being in the term marginal.
Grueller wrote: » But Grassroot, why am I leaving it? If you are involved in the cattle trade in and around Carnew mart you will know the local man that buys the weanlings for shipping. He buys nothing under €3 per kilo. He has bought the lions share of my weanlings with years. I still can't make any meaningful money, even at that money. Why would you couple such a thing again?
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
[Deleted User] wrote: » I despise the term (not your fault at all). A lot of land isn't managed right, it's missing a lot of factors that would improve it significantly and is receiving a lot of treatments that only aid it in failing harder. Abuse something enough through lack of knowledge it won't be productive.
Albert Johnson wrote: » I'm not that fond of the term either but it is what it is. Management does play a part and undoubtedly horsing out slurry and compound fertiliser ab lib isn't a help in most cases. However mankind has spent hundreds if not thousands of years trying to make land out of bog, heather, rock and daub in certain areas. Even after generations of Herculean effort (think of The Field) a lot of it is little better than a resting place for wild fowl. Let it be Frx bullocks or CHx cows and calves I can't see either excelling on such ground.
Bass Reeves wrote: » 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
[Deleted User] wrote: » It is what it is, depending on perspective, it's amazing what a change in perspective does. I would suggest most farmers would benefit considerably spending a few thousand exploring knowledge of soil health, holistic management and the like. Running heavy cont cattle on ground where more suitable primitive breeds would thrive, for example, appears to be a basic error.
Albert Johnson wrote: » I'd be all in favour of the above however it would be a steep learning curve at the start. I know nothing about any of your first points and it's something I should definitely be working on and the same would probably be true of most lads. As for our own native breeds I firmly believe that a lot more could be done to utilise them. How many French farmers run herds of Irish Moiled or Dexters? Yet we've been pushing continental cattle as the only show in town for decades.
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.
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.
Base price wrote: » People are forgetting that proposed Nitrate limitations may possibly reverse some of the recent dairy expansion thus resulting in reduced dairy bred/cross bred stock.https://www.farmersjournal.ie/new-slurry-dates-and-nitrogen-limit-for-all-farmers-630541
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.
Bass Reeves wrote: » 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.
[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.
Bass Reeves wrote: » 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 Val es from the dairy herd are FR's there are a lot of AA's HE's and dairyX continentals
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
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.
cute geoge wrote: » You did not notice but the trained eye of the jobbers did and any way what sort a bb do you expect for E175
patsy_mccabe wrote: » 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
Bullocks wrote: » 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.
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