Beef price tracker 2

If the price was decided by market rather than cartel.

Depends if farmers panic and off load cattle now or not

The factories are playing a blinder and if we get drought ,it game ,set and match to the pr!cks for the rest of the year.Marts are small at the moment so factories wont pick up much fat cattle there ,you woud think with fine weather there woud be a bit more demand and they must have worked trough all the cattle they backed up all along and all shed cattle must be gone at this stage but what do I know

When the dairy lads start killing cows in a few weeks if rain doesn’t come the factories will have a field day.

They were badly stung this time last year and were not going to get caught the same way this year. In saying that, I presume they were involved in buying what were perceived to be expensive cattle early this year in order to have a supply in May and June. They will have a supply of farmers cattle coming up on 30 months from July onwards. The weanling man is the man that will take the beating again this Autumn.

Dairy farmers have already been culling heavily in the past two weeks.

If you were relying on the beef game as your only income, you'd have my every sympathy.....

If there is a good supply prices will only go one way. My gut feeling is we will be in for a year or two of poor prices right across the board.

Speaking with a big finisher the weekend...lots of shed cattle still there..I was shocked.

Not six months back. If they gave a fixed price they may or may not be ok. Larger FL get gauranteed rates, however many are on prices linked to the market. They may be getting 20ishc/kg over the market average. However many are not these are the lads with 100-150 cattle feeding.

As well because there is so much shed cattle about the processes have slaughtered there own feedlot cattle and those that are gauranteed forward prices to limit there liability to them. Now they are trickling the rest through the system.

You are right to an extent Sheepbreeder. However you have to remember that most cow beef goes into manufacturing or catering beef. Not all P grade cows are are the same. Many will get well fed. However the processors jast spring paid through the way over the top for canner beef to get throughput. As one finisher who normally dose cattle very well said ''what could we do if you took her straight from the mart to the factory there was a good twist ( I say many were making 200/cow) out of them that might not have been there if you finished them properly ( they would hardly have been another 100 euro out of them)

If you had well finished ''P'' cows you would be taking some hit at present. It nit so much it will cost processors to fill and maintain chills, it's that they know that there is about 80k less in the system this year and they intend to manage that through to November when 2022 cattle come on stream.

It would depend on the cow and the level of finish. You could have loads of flesh on a cow at 700 kgs LW but she might not get into an O grade until 850 kgs LW. Both are totally different cows but you could compare neither to a p grade straight from the parlour at a bit with 600 kgs.

Killed a P grade bullock FS 3+@ nearly 380 DW or about 760 LW and those mature cows are different again

What would ye do 26/27 month old continental heifers (char/lim out of char/lim x cows) at the moment.

Asking for a friend😅

Well sort of true, cousin has a bunch non qa, and I have a small bunch qa, must get them in and weigh them but to my eye somewhere around 550 - 590 kg.....nice sorts, some tasty ones...probably another 5/6 weeks grass in front of them

Agree with you, a burger factory I know of is using a lot of the off cuts from FR bullocks at present for supplying a better burger, a lot of the dairy cows nowadays are from 480 to 550kg at present coming out of the milking parlour. Have a friend working as a sparks in a pizza factory and he was saying they can’t make product quick enough due to the weather for here and the UK. The trade dictates the price and farmers at times get greedy waiting on the price to go up extra 5 or 10 cent and back up cattle.