Dry Suckler Cows

TooOldBoots wrote: »

Some amount of suckler cows on offer at Ennis mart today. Must be up on 500 cows in total, a lot of them young enough too.
Definitely an exodus out of suckling in progress.

I don't know if it's a exodus as such. There's a few factors at play that lead to large show's of cull cow's at this time of year. Spring calver's are often scanned around now and empty cows are offloaded, there's only a few marts left until Xmas and we're approaching the end of autumn trading, the bad weather means it's time to either house or sell these cows. Good quality springers are dearer than ever and all types of incalfs are a good trade so lads are replacing culls for the most part.

As for the influx of young culls I always found that a large percentage of suckler's were culled for various reasons before there 3rd calf. Between calf mortality, cow's failing to go back incalf, mastitis, poor milkers ect there's a lot of things that can lead to a cow being culled in first few year's. I'd love to see what the average lifespan of a suckler cow is but I'd be surprised if it was more than 6-7 year's. For every cow that stays producing until she's 15+ there's multiples that were culled before there 5th birthday.

Any reasonably fleshy type cows are a good trade atm but backward store cows are coming back in price daily. There's not much heavy cow's left and anything reasonably fleshy is being bought for immediate slaughter. The bulk of the younger store cow's being showed atm are only suitable for putting back to grass in the spring. Some of the older or poorer cows are also being slaughtered straight away but the money is small. Most cow's locally would have been rearing a calf until sale day and the bad weather of recent weeks is showing on them.

FeelTheBern wrote: »

Clearance sales of a few herds of sucklers this evening in Kilkenny. Watched some of it. Nice ch/lm cows 4/5 years old calving Feb/Mar bought at 1300. Older cows back 1200 and lower. Very odd cow made 14/1500.

Lad had bunch of SM x heifers off dairy stock - calving at 3 yo in Feb/Mar - Most made about 1200.

Think those fancy sales for 9K you read about have lads on donedeal driven delusional selling stock. Know real nice ones will always sell well but a day out at a mart can be a dose of reality.

Those sort of prices would be run of the mill for a mixed bag as regards quality, age ect. I've found that suckler's in the south are often poorer quality but that's not a hard and fast rule by any means. What would it take to feed those cows from now untill calving in let's say early March? You wouldn't find putting €150 of fodder into those types and haulage/commission on top. Your cow at €1300 is now €1500 and calve her afterwards.

The older cows might be better value imo although they were probably bought to be calved and split afterwards. The calf goes into the suck ring and the cow is dried off and fattened. As for the springer heifer's they were probably showing there dairy ancestry, also the time to sell a springer imo is a month or less off calving. I can never understand lads selling springers as 5-6 months incalf as there neither one thing or another. The man that wants a springer now wants her on the point of calving and anyone not calving until Paddy's day won't buy her until February at the earliest.

As for the 9k type setups there based off a totally different way of working so it's a mute point in a sense.