Mart Price Tracker

If you need to make money out of your stock you’ll have to buy the HEX or AAX, if making money out of stock is not a requirement and you just need a stocking rate for payments or only want a few as a hobby, buy the friesian.

Bass even in your dream world of such grading, weight and pricing on a friesian there will still be, as you stated yourself also, “very little between them”. The difference being you will have made your money in the HEX or AAX 10 months sooner and will already be half way through making the same money again on the next AAX or HEX before the friesian is gone.

And that’s all before getting to the fact there would be more P grades than O’s with the friesian’s, a lot less of them will make QA, there will be a hell of a lot more low weight gain calves, higher mortality rates and the fact that they will eat far more than the AA or HE. I know you but a lot of friesian’s and turn a few pound on them but you’re buying them as forward stores when all the hard work is already done, that’s no comparison to buying calves.

The difference in friesian calves now compared to 10 - 25 years ago is worlds apart.

I’d be very disappointed with any stock doing 500 grams a day and wouldn’t be purchasing from that farm again. HEX bought as calves here and all killed at 20 - 21 months averaging about 570 - 580kgs. Take a 40kg birth weight and that’s averaging 800 - 850 grams a day over their lifetime. They only get about 150-200kgs of ration and 350-450kgs of beet to finish them so no massive feeding either.

Your point about the good AA/HE versus the average to poor one is irrelevant really as the same would be the case for the friesian, and in fact it’s probably the case that it’s a lot worse for the friesian. There’s be an awful lot of friesian bullocks that need feeding on to 33 or 36 months to finish. Your second whitehead is almost ready to kill at that stage versus the same buying date as the friesian calf!

What sort of money were they making and what age/style were they?

How are they being weighed. While its one thing to pay it in a mart for empty cattle that are 4-5 ours in a mart and after a bit of a spin, I be very wary of paying it for fresh weight

Not buy them fresh weigh is could be 7-15% of an animals body weight. At the very least I want them spinning somewhere and empty the truck slurry tank before weighing. You are looking at paying 1400 for 540 kg AA/HE and 1600 for 570 kg LMx. To achieve a 300 euro margin you need them cattle to be making 5/kg+ in 5-7 months time.

Thanks for that insight...ill bear that in mind

5% weight loss in 8 hours dose.not stack up. One of the scales was wrong.

Buying heavy store in spring is a tight margin business. 10c/ kg extra on those cattle is 50-60 euro/head. I usually expect a 8-10% weight loss between fresh and mart weight. For me to consider travelling with cattle to slaughter between extra transport and weight.loss everything thing else being equal I need about 10c/kg DW to break even. Transport alone is about 6-8c/kg along. Vet and dosing us 4-6c/kg. Mart and slaughter fees are 6-7c/kg between them. Transport from a mart at 12 euro/head is 3.5-4c/kg.

If I do not understand every cost and how it interacts in the system I be losing money. I work on a margin. Summer grazing is the tightest game of the lot. You are stocked at a minimum of an animals an acre maybe higher.

At Toast's projected prices for those stock it would cost 60 k to have cattle on 40 acres. Most lads would be stocked 50% higher in a summer grazing system.

Assuming 40 cattle@300/ head he will have 12k gross margin. Transport and slaughter fees will swallow 15-1800 of that. Ration about 1600-1800 euro. If you borrow 40k for six months at 7% it will cost 1400 euro.

I have kinda of given up buying out of farmers yards. All the costs seem to be thrown onto the buyer.

Call me any sort of a miserable f@@ker you like to stay at this game I need to watch my margin.

At present an 600 kg AA bullock killing 310 kgs is just about making 1450 euro before stoppages. A LM bullock 660 LW killing 360 kgs at U-3= is making 1735 euro.

I cannot change those figures.