Which in turn will get the finishing man burned at some stage. Costs are too high at present. More money to be made when inputs are low.... less chance of getting burned
Was talking to an agent today, for AAx heifers he said the factory is offering €5.15, plus 20 cent QA and the 30 cent AA bonus. Wouldn't be a bad twist.
Sounds good. Was €5:50 all in down here last week for polly heifers.
That is it in a nutshell. An animal slaughtered over the winter has to have the margin banked in since coming off grass.
The real question is with margin so low in winter finishing is why you would consider it of you have other options.
Producing excess beef off ration is actually competing against our selves. Processors will always have a need for winter finished beef.....they just will not pay us to produce it until we stop doing it for free
Cost of producing grass and Silage is crazy at present. Hard to make money at any system when fertiliser is €1000 a ton and Silage €35-40 a bale to make.
Heading for €6 as I said 😀
That’s gas. Reduced output guarantees higher price. Might work if you are opec.
Gas prices are on the slide. Hopefully fertiliser prices will follow, however, fertiliser companies tend to buy there gas ahead of time.
Maybe lads will shift from winter finishing to contract rearing combined with a few of the environment schemes
Any time I ever saw cattle dear, they were scarce. There is no guarantee but there is a correlation. If it was analysed by any data analytics company I am sure they would agree.
Beef prices are high while supply is low. As soon as all these 30 month old cattle hit the market in mid summer then the price generally falls.
The winter finishers supposedly need €6 a kilo. I don’t know how long more they can manage. Maybe some are getting stock away late in the year at say 20 months.
Not getting your point here. If your point is you have to be a better farmer than your average farmer then that’s obvious.
Foyle meats in donegal down to 4 day kill from this week
Cheaper gas is bad news for the average Irish farmer. We are getting high output prices because the high input model of agriculture is suffering with the high costs. Once the input like fert, diesel, feed go down the output prices will plummet again.
I have a much higher margin with fert at 1000/t and feed and 500/t and beef at €5.20/kg than fert at 350/t, feed at 250/t and beef at €3.60/kg because I am not intensive and am grass based. Feedlots will clean-up again when inputs go back down.
Irish farmers have an edge in times of high input costs (provided that is the case globally) so I don't understand all the praying fert etc will drop to the floor.
Is it a lack of supplies or a way to panic suppliers
The reality is that if you can keep your inputs down then you won’t be as vulnerable to input cost fluctuations and will be able to benefit more when farm gate prices rise.
Prices only went that low at the peak of the pandemic and it was more associated with collapse in demand rather than low input prices
Have to agree on inputs being cheaper, that only helps the feed lot operation.
The margin in beef is increasingly going to be either a handy few Bob from extensive grass based or intensive lot based and high volume low margin per head. If inputs drop it will just accelerate the move towards feed lots.
Feed lots must be coming up on a quarter of the kill now.
That's only going to increase,
The cartel are going to be reluctant to pay a price that's viable no matter the situation, at least grass fed have a chance to minimize cost, 500 cattle in Sheds A waiting to be fed is more challenging.
I can think of a lad locally who has a mini feed lot, 600 a year finished. I don't include the likes of him in the feed lot future, he is tomorrow's small farmer being squeezed out by the big fella, he knows it too, it will be a good few years probably but the trend is there.
Prices went lower during pandemic. Prices were very rarely above €4 anytime from 2016-20.
Other markets have opened up since then. If the factory price is low and you have big input costs then you really get screwed.
Really interesting article by John Henry
I'll have to pick up the paper and read it in a shop as that's behind a paywall, but I can only guess there are several prominent "industry experts" having heart attacks at the very mention of continentals being a questionable enterprise 😀
He quoted as well from Jim Power's report where a Teagasc advisor said that even with present beef prices sucklers are not profitable. Well put together piece again by JH
Went into the shed when I arrived on the farm today to find this
Not a beast at the feedface. A couple lying down and another few looking out over the gate
Nothing like a simple system
You have the independent, farmers journal, teagasc and agri land all promoting the end of sucklers.
Could be time to expand.
We can’t all go milking cows and I’d say they are running out of saints to take the scrub calves and bucket rear them to sell them at the mart a year later for 600 after buying them for 100
I'm envious of that setup Bass. Great to have everything under the one roof, crush and all.
Tough weather to be working outside. Is bad weather good or bad for prices?
Ah Bass, careful now. I see a simmental and a limousin amongst the vermin. Don't start getting big ideas about finishing fancy continental cattle 😉
Push it in a bit they can't reach it lol
He photoshopped the silage in after
build in two stages the pens you are looking at were orginall strawbedded with a slope up to the crush. Dug it out around 2012/13 and put a tank in. Other side was slatted from day one. Put the crush in from day one, 9''and 6'' soap makes the step.There is a gate closed out against the outside gate so you can dose and fill that pen before running them back accross the central passage. Loading area in front of the crush is 8' wide should have made it 6-8'' wider so a truck ramp would drop into it easier. they get caught in the gate and the closing hanger
I never discrimate agaist coloured cattle, nothing is black and white with me. If I see a margin I buy. The Simentals cost 680@370kgs last August if I remember right. The LM was 360 and cost 660 he was April 21 born I think. The rest are what is often described as scrub calves by some here
They were cheap weanlings; off dairy or suckler bred?
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