Anyone sell calves yet?
Mostly lads putting them on cows, waiting on a lad to come now. All the money is going in a money tin for our holidays
Saw two bought in carriegallon, weaned for 275, doesn't make sense.
If they were weaned what age were they.
I hear that the feedlots are buying 14 month old cattle, feeding them for 2 months and killing them. So I guess cattle will be scarce next year too....
What would be the outcome to take few hereford heifers calves to the mart that can't be exported because of post de restriction tb test calves less than 6 weeks are exempt from this restriction however they cannot be exported
Probably bulls. You often can find very hot yearlings coming off slats. Those young cattle if on decent silage and 3 kgs of ration can be fleshly and very hot off slats. These might be easy to feed into FS 3 and slaughtered. They could also be experimenting to see what way it works out.
With the 100 euro U24 month slaughter premium the economics may be there
Not bulls. Your man in gortatlea is trying to source them. They can't get enough stock at the moment I'm told. Factories are talking of going to a 3 day week.
There was 33K killed weekending 20/05 this year corrosponding week last year 31K so kill is remain fairy strong.
Looking at the headcount it looks to be a strong kill alright but I brought cattle to the factory last Thursday morning and there’s an awful lot of young and light cattle being killed. I’d love to see the ton’s of meat going through rather than the head count.
Remember an animal can only be slaughtered once. As long as numbers are going through and he price holding I would not worry
Yep, the higher the numbers with the prices as they are the better for all farmers but I would still love to see the figures. I’d be thinking that while the head count is up the volume of meat is down which is all helping to rise the prices.
What is keeping prices up with s ration costs. It's costing a fortune to feed cattle. Ration is 380-450/ ton. In any county where cattle are being fed in feedlots it's costing. It's probably costing 3/ kg of liveweight gain. At 55% killout it's costing 5/kg of carcase weight to produce.
Feedlots are not like pork producers who have everything on one site. They buy an animal 80-200 days from finish. Unless they are paid for what they produce they shut up shop. While Irish feeflits only have a 50-110 day finishing period, in other countries it's generally 200+ days. Cattle are on a growing diet and then transfer to finishing diet.
In the US steers go to the feedlot at 300-350kgs and are finished at 550-600kgs LW.
300 each for a mix of whitehead and Angus reared calves, born Feb/Mar - that sound OK? Seems alright to me
I think that’s reasonably good value. It’s costing €150-€200 to rear a calf if you bought it at 3 weeks old so €300 for a reared calf and a lot less risk is good value to me.
I've never come across figures for head of cattle versus tonnage of beef.
Have a look at the link - having said that it's from Bord Bia 😏
https://www.bordbia.ie/farmers-growers/prices-markets/agri-market-insights/european-beef-demand-driving-irish-cattle-price/
Two March calves, limo heifer and wh bull that was a long big frame with lovely soft hair. Thought it's great value.
Plot twist - there's a bit of cross in a few of them. They look OK all the same
Quick update on those 30 calves I bought and posted their details on here a while back...
The image shows their age at weaning. Nothing out of the ordinary I think. I wean them in groups of 5. The last group to be weaned are older than the first group, but that's just stating the obvious: if they had done better, they would be weaned earlier and wouldn't be in the last group!
The €50 HE (3148) sticks out - she'll be the oldest at weaning. The cost of the extra milk she drank will have to be added to her purchase price.
Nothing else really sticks out I think and I'm happy with the feeding/weaning system I had this year. Had a few with a touch of pneumonia (mostly the last-to-be-weaned group) and lost one (one of the most expensive ones obviously!) but no real problems other than that during this stage of their lives.
Anyway, just thought I'd share.
If I was you, I'd put them on once a day when I buy them. Wean them at 8 weeks. It's easier and cheaper to push them with nuts and grass than milk imo.
Did something of a variant of that this year: cut back from 5 to 4 litres of milk for a month before weaning, then onto 3 litres for the last few days. They moved onto the nuts much better then. Previous years I was following "best practice" advice and weaning them from 5 to 0 over a week but they never really got going on the nuts then
Calves in New Ross this morning. Breed, sex, age, price
Do all marts not weigh calves now?
Weights weren’t on the app this morning anyway. And New Ross didn’t have them on the screen when I bought there in person back in March
Weighing in bandon and a few more now. How often their calibrated with the rate that calves go thru i dunno
Of the four marts that we'd be at - Ballyjamesduff, Carrigallen, Carnaross and Granard only Carnaross weigh the calves and that's probably because the ship calves themselves. Non of those marts show the dam's breed code either ☹️
Sold calves today in Mautys. Got on ok , up n down I suppose. 345 for as bulls , 340 for as heifers, 450 for a he heifer which was single sucking a cow. I thought the better ones would make more but the lesser ones done very well. All early April calves double sucking.
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