Calf prices 2022

Took 6 fr bulls to the mart yesterday. Between 2 and 3 weeks old. Made between 5 and 70 euro. Average 27 euro. Whoever bought them can't lose anyway and all the hard work done for them.

Jeez, don't use grease. You don't want that in a calf's stomach.

Just put them on once a day with a first of nuts. Plenty hay/straw. The dairy farmer has the work done. They'll be worth multiple times their cost in 12 months.

I wouldn't have jerseys inside the gate here. The smallest guy was off a heifer so he just needs time. Surely there isn't too many lads renting land for calves.

I don't agree with that at all. I've seen plenty of calves from JEX and they turned into Savage animals

I know a fella here that got AA out of JEX. Barely got meal and we're sold at 22months old for nearly 1200 just after Christmas. They just got grass and barely any at that. Didn't get alot of loving. In my experience it's the way the bull calves are treated in the first few weeks. Many farmers just give them enough to keep them alive and only concentrate on the heifers. This reflects on them further on in thier lives.

I think they were comparing it to Wednesday night which was atrocious. A neighbor no saled his fr bulls at 35 Wednesday night got 85 today. There was a local lad here who buys 200 calves every year in about 4 sales landed and only bought 22 calves.

Again an awful lot of young calves.

There was two new northern lads upset the whole thing. One lad just sat up the back bought out every thing he bid on. Must have bought 200 calved between them.

What about Roan heifers? 😀

Got some BB heifers that I want to sell at mart. We raised them from suck calves. 11 months old averaging 275kg. Are we best aiming to sell at a certain date or weight?

Plan was to add some of them to the herd and reseed some ground this year, but with increasing costs of diesel and fertiliser we are thinking of selling them to maintain herd size and pushing out the reseeding to hopefully next year.

Milk powder gone up €9 a bag here since this time last year. Considering each calf should only need about 1.5 bags it’s not a massive extra expense per head. I think calves are the best value stock to be got at the minute. I bought a batch of white head heifers over the weekend and they’re €20 a head less than last year. The extra cost of the milk powder, and some of the ration cost, is covered in that.

On a side note, do any of ye feed natural yogurt to calves in with the milk replacer after buying them?

How does he sleep at night. He must have no conscience.

One of the hex we bought last year is similar, she’s stacked on the weight but no height.

more worrying she has a terrible temperament. Never seen that in hex before.

Picking calves at 3 weeks in a mart is hard going. Something that’s 10% jex is near impossible to spot at that age.

I find we always get a spread of quality that balance out good one with the other, bit o wish I could be picking the top 1/3 all the time, some difference in thrive for the same conditions.

If you get walking through calves beforehand. Any calf that isn’t going mad to get your fingers is going to take work to get onto a feeder.

Any body using HerdApp, they now have online calf sale listings. Not many using it yet, but it gives the full breakdown of the dam's back breeding and the sire, and the tag number and & dob of the calf for sale.

Seller's name and contact number.