Beef price tracker 2

THere was a lad on here doing friesians from calves he was hanging them at about 360 kgs at 28 months. Lads are buying friesian calves 4 weeks old at sub 50 euro at present. That lad would have turned 1800/head last year. He feeds no meal the second winter. You have a mental block about production. There is a lot of us know its about keeping costs low. With friesians its a matter of not tying to finish over a winter. At that calf cost if prices hold this year that lad will have a net margin og 800+/head. If he can keep 1.5/ suckler unit he will have a comparable net margin of 1200 euro compared to a suckler farmer selling his calf as a weanling. How many sucklers average that for weanlings in the country I say I could count them on one hand.

I am not saying you are a hypocrite for staying in sucklers but you are for being against the suckler exit payment as were the FJ journalists and the farm organisations. Yes I took the payment just like I took what I got from the second BF payment, I had to pay back the first one as I only got 400 euro and I was unwlling to reduce by stocking level by 5%.

Other than as a calf I think he was feeding 1kg during the first winter and 3kgs 6-8 weeks pre finish probably sub 300 kgs.

Had my agent onto me over the weekend looking for bulls. It’s a good sign but has the price rise slowed down a bit this week?

I saw that too and was wondering was it a misprint. That would be a very bad price for Angus heifers at current base price unless they were very poor stock or from non QA farms.

Angus would generally average O+ killout. At €5.20 base that would be €5.08. Add 20 cent for QA and its €5.28. There’s minimum 20 cent and in some places up to 30 cent AA bonus so that would have you at €5.48 - €5.58 on the grid.

O+ E4.50

it is as well you were busy since!!!

Beef price keeps gradually climbing week on week. I personally can't see it hitting €6.00 base this year. Where and when does everyone see it topping out before the inevitable fall? With the prices empty store cattle are making the last few weeks it wouldn't want to fall back to €4.50 / €4.60 again or fatteners will go broke!

God love the poor aul fatteners, now where’s me violin.

Feedlots won't fill there orders. I think Larry kills about 7 or 8000 cattle a week alone. Want serious feedlots to keep them going

I wouldn’t say they made any mistakes last year. They might have had to pay for beef last summer but they wouldn’t have paid it if they weren’t going to make a profit on it.

They f@@king coined it from October until Christmas. They had a 50-70c/ kg difference compared to the UK.

If a factory kills 1500 - 2000 head a week, they might loose a few euro on a % of them from there own feedlot but you can guarantee that the majority of them a leaving a lot more profit for the factory than for the farmer. While there is massive overheads alot of them are fixed costs. You can bet the energy costs put more of a dent in factory profits than the few weeks where beef prices were seen as high.

I’d hold until grass buyers are out.

at 17 months probably bit heavier than you think (or did you weigh them?)

I would expect them to be heavier than that at 17 months. Did you weigh them or are you estimating.