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

Given that every article we read tells us that sucklers loose money plus the extra work why are people advising that a number of them be retained.?

I’ve never done it but first you synchronise the animals using cidrs or prids, then Ai them ten days (I think) later, hopefully a lot of them will go in calf but it would be a bit drastic to cull anything that repeated three weeks later i think. I suppose you could just Ai any repeats after three weeks, or let a bull out, maybe any repeats after another three weeks could be culled depending on how long of a calving season you want. A pre breeding scanning check before you start any of this might be advisable to sort out any problem animals.

Just wanted to say well done for posting figures, i'll chip in with my 2 cent later on tonight when i get infront of the laptop.

i think from my experience of taking over the farm about 8 years ago that cash flow is king. there are now no months where money isnt coming in outside of subs, it really helps to pay bills. i got rid of the few sucklers , i had about 20 kind of by accident and kept all to beef. I found there was far to much risk and labour vs reward. Now its all weanling and yearling heifer to beef, biggest finding was massive reduction on labour, vets bill and feed. younger and store heifers so easily fed and finished. i now have 120 ewes and 30 in lamb ewes and buy in around 200 store lambs each august and september although this year only bought 100 as too dear i felt. but you are in the north west so its pretty much a different world to south meath. im fearful of every lad getting in on ewe game but would a ewe flock not suit a lot better than big continental sucklers? i guess store lambs are out the window where you are for buying and killing but maybe hold over dry and sell nice hoggets for breeding in autumn? they wuld take no meal if kept dry. you need to get some way of getting cheques in every month of the year. the only month of the year i dont have money coming in is April unless a few runt store lambs/hoggets.

Dunno. I'm only saying what I'm doing really. I'm not keeping them for financial reasons.

sorry meant to say im working as well, but locally enough o no long commute, leave at 8am home at 4:30, a very odd evening i have a meeting or in autumn training a team.

If virtually all your ground is capable of producing silage, I would get rid of the suckler's over 3-4 years. Change over to a summer finishing system. Buy in bucket fed weanlings and yearlings. My own preference is for Friesians but everyone to there own as long as you keep an eye on profitability.

Watching a few marts this week 220-280 kg Fr yearlings can be bought for 350-450 euro. You would probably pick up a few coloured yearling for value as well. These sort of cattle could go to grass in Mid late March maybe even earlier. 85% of these sort of cattle ran in a paddock system will finish July-September 12 months at 330-370kgs. You would average 1350-1400 euro/ head at a 4/kg base price.

Suckler's are inherently unprofitable. Most lads cannot grasp that. On better type land you have other options. System such as Calf, weanling/yearling or store to finish systems are a much better option well.

If your internal fencing (around fields) is ok it fairly easy to work a paddock system using pigtails and reels even if you have to work off battery fencers. In time move water troughs to middle of the fields and put three posts around them. You can work paddocking very hard asy off them.

Straight away your straw cist will be gone. Your fertlizer cost will remain much the same. Silage only for store cattle being over wintered. I even question the use of ration on bucket fed weanlings if you have decent silage. Plenty of bagged minerals over the winter.

During the winter most days you will be in and out of the yard in an hour. There are days I have the silage pushed in to the barriers in twenty minutes.

First off, I'm not a farmer so I'm looking at this from the outside.

It seems to me that there are a lot of people in the business who are not worried if they don't make a profit - i.e. they have other income and are farming because they want to keep the land or because they like the lifestyle and maybe save a bit on tax.

If these people are prepared to sell at or below cost, how can someone who is trying to make a profit possibly compete with them? Any market that is flooded like this will be destroyed, whether you are selling cattle, televisions or tulips.

Farmers complain about supermarkets selling below cost (and I agree with them), but if they are doing the same thing themselves they need to stop and think and take a good look at themselves.

Is the paperwork that bad or are you trying to put off people from joining to protect organic premium ?😉

Another thing about organics is that in previous organic scheme's a lot of environmental scheme options were not available. It reduced the ability to get a decent payment off GLAS. In general it cost lads 2-4 k.in environment schemes. There is talks that this will not be a problem in future.

"...If these people are prepared to sell at or below cost" - what other option do they have? Farming is not like any other business. You can't refuse to sell. Most land in this country is only suitable for livestock. Cycle times in beef are also very long, up to 3 years and so farmers can't react to market prices quickly. All farmers can do is reduce output and try to improve efficiencies, but even that is limited.

Don’t mind all the shyte you’ve heard so far, here is what to do.

1. lease 230 acres at €200 acre - €46k straight off there.
2. assuming all your neighbours are working off farm, bore a few holes in the ditch and let the cows into the neighbors when they’re gone to work and have them back in yours by time they’re home in the evening. that’ll save a fortune in fertiliser
3. surely the neighbors have plenty of big stacks of bales in their yard and the odd field. Rob circa 10 every few days and they won’t notice them gone. That’ll save a lot in contractors bill
4. Increase sucklers to 100 (in the first year and extra 10 every year till you hit 200)
5. gross profit in year 1 - €40k subs, €46k rent, sale of 100 weanlings at €900 a pop =€90k total €176k
6. less expenses: €45 euro for round of drinks in local on the Monday evening you sell the weanlings: €8.50 for rasher sandwich, club milk and tae in the mart
7. haulage fees - tell yer man ya’ll pay him the next time you see him.
8. Net profit €175,946.50
9. use the 20 acres to park the new John Deere, new 10’ krone mower and you’ll need 30’ trailer for drawing the bales from the neighbors (can’t be doing two trips in case their missus spots ya)
10. and to think you spending €2.5k on consultancy 🙈🙈🙈

Crap. It not rely helpful to the post OP put up