Beef price tracker 2

For all the talk of large suckler herds they were always in the minority, 50 cows would still be a large herd in this part of the northwest and most lads were always sub 20 cows. There's not many lunatics to take on the bother of 100+ suckler herds around here anyway and this would always have been a traditional suckler area. The workload of running that amount of cows to produce a good continental type weanling to suit the traditional export market would be enormous and up until this year the financial return wasn't in it to cover the cost and provide a return. That's the main reason why there's very few left running those numbers of cows as for the last decade you'd want a significant SFP, a penchant for hardship, a strong heart and a weak mind to make it work.

Granted atm if you'd 100 average AA cows and put a good AA bull on them you'd have a weanling to come into €1200-€1500 at 250kg+ off the cow but that's a recent development. For years those sort of cattle weren't really wanted at all and the resulting weanling was from €400-€700 at the same weights. If you were to run 100 continental type cows and put a CH bull over them you're into a different ballgame as regards management and I'd be sure you'd wind up with lots of sad stories about calving ect.

The issue with running that number of cows is that the losses would be in all likelihood enormous. I'd know a good few lads in Fermanagh running 80+ cows and the workload is never ending and there's lots of sad outcomes between hard calvings, scours, pneumonia ect alongside all the other potholes you can fall into in the suckler job. I could go on for pages as to all the reasons that large herds of sucklers aren't for the faint hearted but suffice to say if it was that profitable there'd be more at it.

Edit to say maybe we've turned a corner as regards the profitability of sucklers and there will be brighter days ahead but from what I've seen in recent years the cattle have disappeared and so have the men that used to farm them.