Heard same.
I was talking to an agent a few days ago and he told me the feedlot men have been told to fill sheds too.
They’ll still find it hard to part with the 10cents
Agreed. The average seller has to drag every cent out of them.
I know it's not how they operate, but a rise of 10c and they'd have all the cattle they want.
Not necessarily. I’ve a couple of pens of bulls near fit. The plan was to kill in the first week in December. If it’s a thing they start rising 5/10 cent a week and the cattle are still thriving I’d hold them another week or two.
And as an agent said to me last year when cattle were tight “they can give all the money they want but it’s not going to make more cattle”.
Plus when cattle are scarce the number of movements or QA status means nothing.
Feedlot man said to me cattle are tight but that doesn't mean they are going to pay much more for them.
Just saw on the news that “special recognition” has been given to Irish “grass-fed beef”, which I’m assuming relates to the PGI application a while back.
Will it make the slightest difference to farm-gate price?
Not one bit. It’ll probably mean more paperwork to hold onto what we have and They’ll probably introduce a penalty on cattle finished out of a shed .
8-10 years ago there was always a nice twist out of cattle fed for the Christmas market. But over the last 5+ years the factories have have refused to pay premium for this market. While they will pay the feedlot type finishers a premium and gaurantees them a price that is often 20-40c above what the average Joe gets to control the market they expect Joe to feed cattle for no margin.
There problem is the average Joe is now moving more towards summer finishing or finishing cattle @20 months off grass
They used feedlots to replace the dairy man that was finishing 30-50 bullocks during February as the cows calved. It's just too risky any longer to put a few cattle I to the shed and feed for to slaughter before and after Christmas. The las dropping 2-3 in now and again has move to the summer as well.
It's interesting in that I heard Justin McCarthy say one the day of the small finisher was gone. As I walked out the door an ould lad near me said the day the lad with the Jeep and box stopped dropping off cattle was the day the factories would struggle. The other men goo busy too fast he said
How many here have taken time to look at the spec for PGI grass feed beef. It's a catch all for nearly 85% of beef produced here. The criteria are set out in such away that it will be next to near on impossible to not met the requirements. Its requirement is QA and feed grass silage or hay in the diet.
Grass, silage or hay must make up 90%fresh weight of the animals lifetime consumption.
Surely most cattle would comply with that over their lifetime
Correct if they were qa for life. Now join the dots with scep. All dairy farmers are qa. The bit in the middle is the farmer that brings them to stores or the summer grazers.
The best move farm orgs could make if when the push for QA for life comes is to tie the PGI to cattle that serve a min of 180 on the final farm prior to slaughter. This will eliminate dealers and snip the feedlots
I'd guess that even if the beast got intensive feeding for the last 120days of it's life it would still ,on average, have got 90% of its lifes' food from silage hay and grass
Beef kill: Supply bounces back to over 40,000 head
Looks to be strong supplies predicted for the rest of the year so there probably won’t be much of a price rise.
Up 10cent according to beef plans message yesterday evening. 4.80 for bullocks
Did I see somewhere that the beef kill is way behind last year, yet factories are paying less
We were supposed to have 60k less time cattle. At present we are 37k + 14k young bulls behind last year's kill. So about 9k short to end of year.
Cows and aged bulls 1500 ahead of last year. Often a strong kill can indicate a price increase to get them
An awful lot of ex parlour cows in some factory lairages over the past two months. Some are reducing numbers due to the nitrates directive, a lot more tb reactors from what I hear and the usual supply of empty cows and heifers.
Bullocks were on 4.55 or maybe even 4.50 at the end of October last year if memory serves me right. Come the middle of December we got €5.10 for bulls (not sure what bullocks were making but probably round €5.
Bullocks are round 4.80 and Bulls are €5 now and meal is back €70 a tonne so I’d say we are on par with last year if not ahead going by this very rough calculation.
Were they not more this time last year. Cows were at least €5/kg in factories in December last year, i got €2.70/kg in the mart for good cows in the mart in December, they’re a long way of that now.
Cattle never went below a base of 4.6 last year if I remember right. They were slow enough to rise.
Just looked back there. Took 4.55 the last week in October.
Same here on the first week of November.
Price peaked in early February 2023. Got €5.60 flat price for O- and O= whiteheads on 1st February.
I started recording the weekly price of bullocks on a spreadsheet from 1 Jan 2021. Just because my memory isn't what it used to be. I take the lowest quoted price, for the factory in the midlands I use, from the weekly one issued by the IFA. This is just to make comparatives easier.
Last year, the price dipped to 4.50 for the first 2 weeks in November. It started rising then and rose for 12 consecutive weeks, believe it or not. Peaked at 5.25 in early February this year. Dipped by 5 cent then, until early April when it rose by 5 cent again and stayed at 5.25 for 5 weeks.
Over the next 16 weeks, it fell steadily, to 4.60. It was up and down a bit since that, but has started rising again now.
Hope this helps.
A graph of this data might be helpful. If it could be correlated to feedlot numbers killed it would be even more interesting
Agents are ringing looking for cattle. Can’t be a bad sign.
What are Heifers this week ?
4.85 with the beef plan.
Agent rang me earlier looking to make up a lorry load to kill tomorrow,took the pen of Angus and Hereford bullocks I posted yesterday..475 base + 20 cent Hereford/30c Angus bonus
