Anyone sell calves yet?
Again I stand over my statement as I speak from personal experience. This is the way we mange our affairs. Have borrowings but only for land purchase. Have put up lots of sheds over the years. SH industrial buildings from UK. All our own machinery but never bought new. How much is your 250K milking parlour worth now.
Some of us have more smarts than that. Have 440 cow cubicles here plus weanling cubicles all roofed with all slatted tank slurry storage and some auto scrapers and one robotic scraper. All done over the last 30 years out of cash flow. Tax man paid for half of it.
Fair play to you, we've done the same but nowhere near those numbers.
While I do not totally agree with G22 he has a valid point. There is a lot of lads carrying around debt that they did not need. Take the dairy farmers who banks forced to fix there milk price bid you borrow at that level where a Bank is making business decisions for you then you have too much borrowed
As well organic growth using funds generated are more sustainable. Ya if you can get a bit of the SCBI funds I would always take them. I know a lad that took 50k lately off them, he is not sure what he is going to do with it but the numbers added up for him to take it.
But borrowing for the nice tractor or slurry equipment @ 6-8% is self defeating. You are making yourself a busy fool.
When you get to a certain level you can grow organically very fast. It's getting there is the issue. However continually drawing down debt is self defeating.
Fairplay to you, that's good going. No doubt you worked hard for it and I believe in lads making their own luck but individual circumstances come into play as well. Some lads may require very little drawings others may not and everyone has different start points, level of family involvement, etc. Some projects done here out of cashflow when it suited and indeed all debt so far is associated with land also. However I have investment to make in the yard and doing it out of cashflow is a extremely unlikely to be possible. I have 25 to 30 years ahead of me so have to drive on imo.
Don't have a 250k parlour but whether it was borrowed for or paid for out of cashflow it would depreciate all the same. The extra bit your paying for is the interest which is also a business cost but allows it to be paid for in a more manageable way.
Maybe mods could move this to a farm investment/ management thread maybe as these are interesting posts but for those of us selling calves they won't contribute a whole lot in this regard this year anyway!
On the calves expect it to get worse and earlier next year. There will be so e lads slower to buy early calves next year. Every year from now on because of increased number expect calf price to drop a bit.
Just filled out the SBCI form and posted it today. Interest rate is 3.7% compared to 6.4% for a regular loan with the banks or Credit Union.
Downside is paying it back over 6 years rather than 7 with banks/CU. Repayments are around €4.5k per annum compared to €3.5k with banks/CU. Upside is it’ll cost around €1k less due to lower interest rate.
These figures might not be exact as I’m recalling phone conversations rather than having all figures in front of me.
Maybe splitting out into a farm financing thread would be an idea alright.
OH watched some of the calf sale in Carnaross yesterday and he reckoned prices were back. I didn't see the sale myself.
I think there was a ship cancelled this week so that probably had an effect on the prices too.
Yes Carnaross was back yesterday, May Bank Holiday used to be a good enough day for calf prices.
We used Kieran’s milk powder for few years and find it good. I thought it was dear at €48 a bag.
make yoghurt and add a litre every feed
What kind of yogurt?
Re price of milk powder: I think I paid €52 for 20kg bags of Volac Blossom. It's 23% protein as far as I remember.
Are you farming as a company and purchased the land through a company. I did most of my building the hard way myself with cash flow but it would have been impossible to run a house and pay for everything out of cash flow without the sfp unless well setup to start with Especially when you are also paying for land purchased. You are pretty much paying twice for land by the time you pay the income tax first. I wouldn't be recommending it to anyone. Take out a loan and pay it off early where possible.
Have other income running the house and living expenses. SFP 36000
He Sold the fr calves I think they done all right
The above gives you a savage advantage to be fair, your sfp if at 36k now must of been well north of 50k before convergence kicked in
Some repayments on the 300 acres and expansion though. 100 acres for sale beside me for 1 million euro at the moment. I couldn't justify it not to mind afford it. Also I wouldn't have the drive to take on all that extra work anymore.
Any hope of getting an neighbour or two involved and divide the place.
Ya, did that but it fell through after. Back to the drawing board as they say....
Not many in that position re taking no drawings to be fair. Still everyone has to work their own situations to their advantage
It's borrowings though that make people vulnerable. Grand when things go right, but get you when they go wrong. Higher interest rates, disease outbreak, family sickness, sudden death etc.
€12 yogurt maker from Aldi, takes 2L milk and use natural yogurt and kefir as a starter. Use half the contents at feeding and replace with milk.
Now that the calves (dairy calf to finished beef) are starting to be weaned & out, looking for a covered round bale hay rack - looked at the jfc bell but once bale is opened you couldn’t move it without a mess.
Just wondering if any of ye have purchased these or any advice on them….
Calves are flying at the moment. I got 220 for a fr bull and 230 for a 15 day old Angus yesterday. It's amazing how they have such value all of a sudden.
There are some things that make no sense. Early this year in January and early February there was lads paying 100+ for 3-4 week old Friesian calves. If you went to a runner weanling mart you would buy a Friesian yearling 250 kgs for less than 400 euro.
A HE calf was making 300 a Suckler runner 180-229 6-7 months old could be bought for 500 euro. The excess supply for March and April is having an impact on prices. Too many calves hitting the market at once
Have an old one that I got second hand a hew years ago. They are handy as you can keep a bale up of the ground and they can nip away. A small problem is that calves nip away and after a bit of time you will have to knock the top of the bales down as calves can eat the very bottom of the bale like sheep. I start them on it in the shed and it stays with calves for most of the 1st year. If they want a bite of hay they can have it. You would notice in wet weather and after grass they could polish bale very quick. I would always keep a bit of dry roughage with calves for most of the year after a few cases of Summer scour a few years ago.
The one above looks handy with the roof tilting on it. This makes it so much easier to drop the bale and run.
have an ibc tank with barley straw out with 30 weaned calves on grass here ,they are probably eating a good wheel barrow load out of it each day
Calves are flying in the mart. Took 3 Angus to the mart yesterday and got 700 euro. Big change from the peak prices a few weeks ago
Cant keep up with demand for calves here atm.
They should have bought them when they were cheap. 🙂🙂
