Beef price tracker 2

Ya if it drys up next week lads will start to hold cattle again

I admire, or maybe more accurately I’m envious of, your innocence.

If I remember correctly from previous posts from yourself you buy cattle for summer grazing and sell again in the mart at the back end of the year? I’m afraid it’s the men at this job that are keeping the factory prices down.

The cheapest place for any factory to buy cattle is in the mart as unfortunately the majority of men selling in marts don’t understand how to calculate the factory value of their stock. Every animal over 450-500kgs that’s sold in a mart is reducing the factory price for finishers as the factory feedlots are buying them in the mart at less than their value.

I won’t even get into the economics of meal feeding over fat cattle or the various penalties as cattle go “over-age”.

I think like @DBK1 says you are very innocent. We can only hold cattle to an extent and the way the year is going it's not possible. Neighbour saw a load of Continental type bullocks 8 in a 14X8 box going for slaughter about 550 kgs. If the jad that owned them could have held them he would have.

Feedlots ( probably most contracted or semi contracted) have 25% of the national kill in the first six months. They can fill any gap for 2-3 weeks where do we go then. It will be the first of September by tgen

It's too late this year to arrange a strike as grass cattle would back up andtoo fast. Anyway if you bought the cattle in the spring and intend to sell in the autumn you are at nothing. It one thing to summer graze and finish, any lad summer grazing yearling to stores is just filling feedlots for the processors. You are buying at the most expensive time of year and selling at the lowest price point. Your are taking cattle from 250-300 kgs to the 450-500 forward store which is the supply feedlots thrive on. Consider as well you have added a movement onto cattle and that between you and the land that sold them to you there was 45 euro handed to marts and probably that or more handed to hauliers.

That has driven the like of me and @Jjameson out of the winter finishing game. If you want to make money out of beef what you buy you finish.

Maybe they will make their true value.

With the way prices are going I am giving some consideration to letting a batch of AAX and HEX (18) go overage and finish them before they are 36 months next Feb/Mar.....

I should have enough grass for them upto December and then finish or put in the shed for a few weeks....

They would pile on some weight and the price will surely recover somewhat....

Any logic to this...they are nicely fleshed at the moment, not sure how overfat they could get?

I paid a good price to the Farmer in Feb for them and id be lucky to get my money back on them the way things are going......

Ya...theyd be hitting 600kgs now...

I think that is a fair point about buying in cheaper replacements in a couple of months...

Thanks