I expect that the cattle are traveling a distance 80-100 miles. Most lads with a jeep and box would want 100++ to go that distance. Probably an option for 5 but not for 3.
The run them over is a 40 min drive to nearest factory. Not gonna be cheap for 1-2 heads.
The point is just that not every one has the power to make others dance and there are plenty more like me that are more so price takers/service takers than the rest of ye.
We'd always put in our lambs the evening before, load them at 6am next morning, and wouldn't be killed until 3pm then..... it never did the KO any harm, all they lose in gutflll
I usually send mine in the morning around 9 but this year he wanted to go in the evening both times, so we had to load at 3.30pm, would this make much of a difference to my kill out? What would you be talking if they were 700kgs?
Any figures I saw on research over the years was 2% difference. A 700jg animal hanging 370kgs DW the extra loss could up to 7.5kg weight difference.
Now more than likely you will lose a certain amount anyway unless they went straight up the line. There are a few reasons for the losses cattle tend to stand longer in a new environment and tend not to look for drinking points even if present.
Technically lairages are supposed to provide feed. The feed points I say are high above cattles heads and a giraffe is the only animal I think could feed from them........even if there was hay in them.
There is no way I would load cattle at 3pm for slaughter the following day. If I drop in the night before I try to leave it until 9pm or after. At that I would expect them to be going up the line at around 8am.
Would it be fair to assume that finished cattle bought at a mart at 1pm would be heading for slaughter the following morning? And the factory agents bidding on them know they'll lose a bit of weight and so factor this in to what they'll pay?
As Jjam says the buyers are pricing on an empty stomach and will have there figures fairly accurate from constantly buying
I seldom seen cattle in the mart that make more than if they we t straight to the factory. Ya it happens for 4-6 weeks in early summer and maybe one or twice more when processors are short of cattle but generally the buyers are making 100+ after costs
I know a couple of men who nearly lost everything at it and they weren't messers either. Unfortunately for both it became a form of gambling.
You have to be very disciplined. It is very hard to break into as the lads around the rung will seldom leave a man in. They even push the processors who are buying direct to the limit
These two were not novices that was the astonishing thing when both 'empires' collapsed.
I thought you might know him.
So you reckon I would lose a minimum of 5kgs? If so that’s nearly €25 a head
There's no one immune from disaster in the cattle business and often it's only a few bad deals, bounced checks or personal vendetta's away. A local man who spent his entire life at the game had a saying that "you started off with an Ash plant and pair of boots and if you weren't very careful that's what you'd finish up with"
He had first hand experience of the above and went full circle. From doing lots of business and having great jobs for stock, a lorry on the road and seemed to be doing the best. In the finish up he was sleeping in a bad car as he'd lost everything else and died nearly penniless. Once you get to a certain stage of life it's not easy to turn you're back on the job especially as it's often the only thing you know even if it is dragging you under.
Local lad here buys in mart for killing but he leaves them for a week to freshen up after coming home prior to killing. Goes through some amount of stock anything with flesh
That would be more like business, granted there'd still be an odd blowout and they don't all die in profit. I don't know how you'd go about buying them today, hack them about waiting for lorries and to make up a load and expect them to weigh and grade going up the line tomorrow. If it was that easy they'd all be at it, the shine doesn't be long going off a beast after a day or two of standing in a mart or lying about a lairage whilst you're putting together a load.
He is probably on credit with the mart. Alot of the 'little scuts' around here are operating between the processor cheque and the mart.
A lot of factories kill cattle to orders or the boning hall and these hit the chills to be ready for the next day, a lot of factories are bringing cattle in at night to cut down on vet shifts in the lairage and to have them processed on the Dept system for the next morning and don’t mix the kill with cows killed last or TB reactors.
There's a lot of lad's operating those type of setups. There trading on other people's money and balance one against the other to square the circle. It's OK once you can continue to trade and keep the money coming in so that this weeks cheque pays last weeks bill. The wheels only fall off the wagon when there's a blip like a factory folding or something similar that causes the money to stop coming in. If you had access to €50k or so of interest free credit then cash flow could mitigate unprofitability for a lenght of time. If the credit limit could be pushed out further in times of need then you could set yourself up rightly for the whole house of cards to eventually come crashing down.
Or what's being rumored around here...a cover for something else.
Mountbellew mart had to close recently over bad debt. Locals raised 180k to get it going again. No small sum
It's a small world..I heard the same!
Jesus what a ****. 😀😀
Karma will get him on the end.
Sadly not always
The quarry buyer likes playing the big fella spending someone else’s money and look at me I won’t be bet when bidding, how them cattle make money is hard to figure.
There's a few of them arseholes in every mart in the country some of them in our mart don't even own a garden never mind a farm
I heard one well-known dealer stepped in with a loan to get things moving again. Be some feat if locals raised that sum on their own.
Anyway, any price updates for the coming week?
Factories are trying to pull prices. Apparently beef has become too expensive and they're having difficulty selling it 🤔
Once I heard about the drop in milk price I assumed the factories would try the same.
Foyle meats pulled 10 cents
Is it a ploy to get cattle? Killed a few today in a local factory and the place was very quiet.
Its a stall tactic on price rises. Played a blinder with so called backing up cattle since the short week at the start of the month. There is an increased kill so far this year when numbers were predicted to be tight in the 1st and 2nd quarters. The pinch in numbers has to come soon
In the US beef price is at an all time high, so this
