Angus cattle

OliverD

Active Member
Am getting rid of the last of the continentals here and looking at a switch to angus bullocks. Bit of a different ball game then what we are used to. Any tips from people who know them would be appreciated.
 
Am getting rid of the last of the continentals here and looking at a switch to angus bullocks. Bit of a different ball game then what we are used to. Any tips from people who know them would be appreciated.
What production system are you planning, when will they be fit, what is your processors attitude to them, when do they give their best bonuses, if you can buy privately off a number of farmers with a good square cows your half way their, an awful lot of rubbish bulls being used, if you find the right farmer with the right cows and the right bull look after him it will pay.
 
Am getting rid of the last of the continentals here and looking at a switch to angus bullocks. Bit of a different ball game then what we are used to. Any tips from people who know them would be appreciated.
They re a great animal to outwinter if necessary, i find. Also very little ration will finish them. Downside, they get fat too easily sometimes and got caught here with an unexpected factory delay and in a short time, i had overfat stock.
Have a few right little scrappers here too, down to the daddy id say, but no problem if they re not late introducing with other breeds.
 
Talking to an old timer round here just there at the mart and he said the very same about the quality going out of them. He said to go down a different route altogether if we were fed up with the continentals. The local factory is paying bonuses on them but there is doubt over next year as they were due to agree and supposedly last week said they mightn't pay bonuses...
 
Current day Angus cattle dont hold a candle to the breed even 10 yrs ago. Tend to avoid them nowadays, where as 10yrs ago they would have make up a decent % of the herd

We would be pretty close to the heart of Angus Cattle in our area. Carrick on Shannon would be a big centre for sales and local shows would have a lot of angus classes. As a result, there would be a good few angus breeders in the area. Talking to some friends who are heavily involved in teh M&W improvement Soc (Bull sales ring in Carrick), the bottom has fallen out of the Angus Bull market in the last few years. They were achieving great prices for bulls. Plenty of Dairy farmers from the south travelled to buy angus bulls there and kept a good floor in the market. They didn't buy the best bull - but bought most of the bulls in the top 50%. However, this all turned a corner. The Dairy farmers no longer bought the better bulls but instead went for the narrowest and easy calving options. More lads went down the road of breeding easy calving bulls - because that's what the biggest market demanded and this ultimately resulted in a drop in quality.

Bull sales have become complicated and they manipulate the figures quite well to make their breeds appear to be selling well. In Carrick, there is a minimum opening price for bulls. If your bull is not opened at a certain price, then he is not counted as sold or unsold (He is not a stat at all). Only the bulls opened above the minimum price are counted as either sold or unsold. Therefore, you never see the number of buls that didn't reach the minimum price. At one of the more recent sales, there were more bulls sold below the minimum price in the yard than were actually sold in the ring.
 
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