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

Spring calving? Your meal bill and silage/contracting bills are off the reservation, if your spring calving selling the weanlings before housing would lead to huge savings, your sales revenue will obviously be down but the cost of silage and meal to winter your weanlings will be far greater versus what you'll get for them in the spring......

Cutting back suckler numbers will also reduce fertilizer and meal costs, what landbase have you got, are you over-stocked given what your spending on meal/silage/straw yearly

Do you sell bulls entire or as bullocks? Is there a option to sell some weanlings in Sep/Oct if prices are good

Sadly we’re all in the same boat, and with cost rising at alarming rates this is a must do.

I will say don’t drop the contractor to go DIY, you need a work life balance

5k diesel despite that contractor bill?

It is a decent amount of land especially if not fragmented. Leasing some tax free is attractive looking at the accounts. I will do a similar exercise later and post up if I get a chance as I have 2020. And last years totted up. I am only starting out farming in my own name but have pretty much decided to lease out in a few years time once my agri relief time period is up and my father is less active.

Working full time off farm on a good salary. Any farm money is peanuts in comparison when looking at the work involved.

My late father had a saying "the farmer who is overstocked is poor"

A dry spell, an early or late winter and you are under feed pressure, having to get rid of stock as opposed to selling when sales prices are better.

There is an 8k category for the Jeep!

You said you traines as an accountant but I don't think any sane farmer would not hire you as an accountant even if you were free!! Cut numbers drastically even I would go as far as getting rid of suckers cows completely. Your farm is not growing enough grass to sustain your cattle numbers and all your are doing is firing fert. and meal at the problem .Some farms are not capable of high stocking and I would say this is your biggest problem . You have a mighty block of land but in reality making a bad hand of it even if you only managed 70-100 cattle for summer grazing you would be making a better hand .Forget about organics just cut down numbers and you won't need too much fert. or meal as a result and even less contractors around the place

Are these real or make up figures? Like 5k for Insurance and 2.5k for Consultancy? If you presented figures like that to one of the Revenue commissioners auditing your books I'd say you'd be in trouble

Presume 2021 figures are actual, if so to get 40k subs and be left with 9k profit at year end is madness for the work in calving 75 cows. The aim should be at minimum to keep all 40k. I find finishing own suckler stock minimizes no of cows on farm ( cow is the big cost ), reduces workload, reduces risk from TB outbreak.

Don’t mean to sound harsh but the phrase a busy fool comes to mind.40k is a great payment and you should be keeping that and just keep min stock.life is too short

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

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.

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!

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.

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.

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

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