Future of the suckler cow

Grassnslurry

Grassnslurry

Well-Known Member
What's the future of the suckler cow hold in Ireland? With the cost of keeping the cow over the year, costs rising, poor weanling and beef prices, climate getting wetter and longer winter's indoor. Has many of ye changed systems away from cows? I'm selling most my calves as weanlings and few heifers as stores at the moment
 
Grassnslurry said:
What's the future of the suckler cow hold in Ireland? With the cost of keeping the cow over the year, costs rising, poor weanling and beef prices, climate getting wetter and longer winter's indoor. Has many of ye changed systems away from cows? I'm selling most my calves as weanlings and few heifers as stores at the moment
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Weanling price hasn't been that bad in the last 3 years if you have the right animal at the right time.

Hopefully to stay at suckler here and that things might improve another bit in the coming years.

I sat in the mart for an hour at the weanling bulll sale last year. Recorded every price on my phone and got the average. It was less than €725 and there was no bucket fed lads in that. That's not enough of an average price to keep a farmer in suckling. Lads need to get out if they aren't making anything instead of flooding the market with cattle sold for less than it cost to produce them.
 
muckymanor said:
Weanling price hasn't been that bad in the last 3 years if you have the right animal at the right time.

Hopefully to stay at suckler here and that things might improve another bit in the coming years.

I sat in the mart for an hour at the weanling bulll sale last year. Recorded every price on my phone and got the average. It was less than €725 and there was no bucket fed lads in that. That's not enough of an average price to keep a farmer in suckling. Lads need to get out if they aren't making anything instead of flooding the market with cattle sold for less than it cost to produce them.
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I presume you averaged more than that, why would the likes of these stock be only making handy money, breed of cows/bull or just done badly or what would you think?
 
Blackwater boy said:
I presume you averaged more than that, why would the likes of these stock be only making handy money, breed of cows/bull or just done badly or what would you think?
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We average a bit better than that. But look at it this way. See the price table that the Journal or indo publish for weanlings. There's a big difference between the top and the bottom. I'd also suggest that these figures are often manipulated to make the marts look better.

Why are they only making handy money?

Bad cows
Bad bulls
Bad ai choice
Poor feed quality

It takes time and lot of work to breed good weanlings. A small bit of creep at the right time. Cows with milk. Cows that breed muscle. I'm not saying that we are any good at it, but we get better than average prices. Some lads don't put in the work because they dont seem too worried about price. Cattle appear to be kept to fulfil stocking requirements for payments. Sale price is just a top up.
 
muckymanor said:
Weanling price hasn't been that bad in the last 3 years if you have the right animal at the right time.

Hopefully to stay at suckler here and that things might improve another bit in the coming years.

I sat in the mart for an hour at the weanling bulll sale last year. Recorded every price on my phone and got the average. It was less than €725 and there was no bucket fed lads in that. That's not enough of an average price to keep a farmer in suckling. Lads need to get out if they aren't making anything instead of flooding the market with cattle sold for less than it cost to produce them.
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Prices weren't bad the start of last year for them. Like you said the average price of weanlings that day you were at the Mary was €725, the average there making all over the country isn't probably much more than that. Were not getting paid for the quality of weanling were producing.
 
I think to help the beef system for a start the grading system needs to change as it pays better for the beef that the consumer isn't looking, VIA grading helps for the value of cut and showing how much of each cut the carcase has but then the grading system doesn't pay on that setup, not too many people want a big cut of beef but the gradding system is leaning that way so farmers have to aim to breed for what they are best paid for yet not what the market really wants.

suckler will have a future but I cant see it being based around the continental cow, easier kept cow to mange the country to get payments and produce a calf similar or slightly better than that of the dairy system to leave a evenness of meat eating experience for the consumer, isn't that what pork and chicken is, similar product from multiple produces but same eating experince
 
Grassnslurry said:
Were not getting paid for the quality of weanling were producing.
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The problem is the definition of quality.

I define quality as something that an animal has from birth. It can be magnified with some feeding. But the feed conversion rate will be very good.

Others think that quality is achieved by feeding an animal to the gills with creep.

Hence you can get over €3/kg for a 275kg golden colour weanling bull. But a mouse coloured weanling that's €350kg might only make €2.50/kg.

I have rarely seen quality not win out over feeding.

Biggest reason why lads aren't getting descent average prices is quality.
 
I think every farmer has issues inside there farm gate,i have a few and it will take time to sort them, no one is going to say that every thing is 100% by them. Are we producing too much beef and not enough markets?
 
wdah said:
I think to help the beef system for a start the grading system needs to change as it pays better for the beef that the consumer isn't looking, VIA grading helps for the value of cut and showing how much of each cut the carcase has but then the grading system doesn't pay on that setup, not too many people want a big cut of beef but the gradding system is leaning that way so farmers have to aim to breed for what they are best paid for yet not what the market really wants.

suckler will have a future but I cant see it being based around the continental cow, easier kept cow to mange the country to get payments and produce a calf similar or slightly better than that of the dairy system to leave a evenness of meat eating experience for the consumer, isn't that what pork and chicken is, similar product from multiple produces but same eating experince
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Is it a Hereford or angus type cow we should be thinking about and a non continental bull as well?
 
Barrowsider said:
But returns are very tight in the weanling to beef sector too. The truth is lot of farmers like to blame their poor margins on an inadequate selling price rather than focus on obvious inefficiencies inside their own gate.
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That's very true. The average cost of keeping a suckler cow for a year that we are being given in colossal. There is a lot of room for improvement. Getting 1 calf per cow per year is a big one. Last figures that I saw were only 80% of cows with 1 calf per year. Also the age that we calve down heifers. The average age is pushing 36 months. There's nothing wrong with calving down a cow at 26 months. The dairy lads can do it. There are lads keeping very big cows that eat a lot of silage to produce a bad calf whereas there are lads with little cows that are easy fed and easy on ground that are producing a €3/kg weanling consistently.
 
Grassnslurry said:
Is it a Hereford or angus type cow we should be thinking about and a non continental bull as well?
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the psot I gave is partially from a meeting we were at, a lot of consumers cook from instructions, the factory are looking a evenness of product with reliable supply and dairy is what will produce that, if a packet says cook for so long and is from a smaller animal it will be thicker for certain weight, than the same cut from a bigger animal at the same weight there for the cooking instrcutions are followed would give a bad eating experience so repeated buying will be longer wait before the consumer tries it again-3 months I think they said.

type of cow doesn't matter as breeds can be changed with selective breeding or a composite of breeds, its the product that the buyer wants that u have to supply to have a future but the system currently has payment not related to this.

for future beef I would say a lot of factorys and farmers will be tied together as in many of the schemes, the meeting we were at focused on beef from dairy replacments, and to me a lot made sense. a lot of farmers don't view farming as a business and therefore look outside the farm gate for the reason they don't make money instead of looking for the efficiency inside it.
 
muckymanor said:
We average a bit better than that. But look at it this way. See the price table that the Journal or indo publish for weanlings. There's a big difference between the top and the bottom. I'd also suggest that these figures are often manipulated to make the marts look better.

Why are they only making handy money?

Bad cows
Bad bulls
Bad ai choice
Poor feed quality

It takes time and lot of work to breed good weanlings. A small bit of creep at the right time. Cows with milk. Cows that breed muscle. I'm not saying that we are any good at it, but we get better than average prices. Some lads don't put in the work because they dont seem too worried about price. Cattle appear to be kept to fulfil stocking requirements for payments. Sale price is just a top up.
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The suckler set up is maybe no different to any other sector of farming really, the guys that are really good and efficient at it are still at it and will be for a long time more, dedicated serious operators, the same in tillage, dairy, sheep and pigs. The best get better, the poorer performing farms wind up packing it in and blame X, Y and Z.
 
Fleckvieh cow, bulled to a charolais, buy in an extra calf from the dairy sector like another fleckvieh or Angus cross, double suck them. We sold a couple heifer calves to a man a few years and that's what he's doing now, came looking for another couple heifer calves a few weeks ago to put along with the cow and her own calf.
 
It's been said already but the problem is there's to many lads with 15/20 cows with a full time job.
More than likely no death middle of the road set up. Breeds middle of the road stock and is happy to take below average prices has a tidy sfp and has a few quid out of it. Those lads will always be there happy our plodding away. He doesn't need to measure grass or be more efficient
 
Carrigogunnell said:
It's been said already but the problem is there's to many lads with 15/20 cows with a full time job.
More than likely no death middle of the road set up. Breeds middle of the road stock and is happy to take below average prices has a tidy sfp and has a few quid out of it. Those lads will always be there happy our plodding away. He doesn't need to measure grass or be more efficient
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I work for a few like that, bit of a hobby for them but its just their thing instead of golf, again might be a lot more in the future but not a serious long term outlook for secure beef production
 
I know an awful lot of good efficient suckler farmers that have an off farm job. I don't think it's fair to to pigeon hole those that work off farm. A lot of the inefficient ones that I know are lads that have hefty SFP's, maybe a working wife, or those that appear not to have big spends on life such as kids, mortgages or cars. .

A old lad that I was talking to yesterday about sucklers and beef said that there's plenty of money in it. He pointed out the value of SFP and ANC payments. Right or wrong, he described that a huge portion of this money, which is supposed to be an income supplement, is "Laundered" by a huge proportion of farmers just for the sake of not having to pay tax on it.

Edit: Just to add to this. there's a quote on today's Indo from a beef farmer. I think he hits the nail on head about why the suckler sector is not profit driven:

"I'm 55 years old and when I go to the mart, I'm regarded as a young fellow".

The vast majority of people, when they go over 55, they don't drive forward. Certainly if I get that far, I'd hope to be taking it down a gear. There's no doubt that the figures for suckler farmers get worse and worse. Is it any wonder when a good portion of the young suckler farmers with hunger and drive have gone into dairy.

We get figures on profit fed to us by Teagasc and private planners. They are supposed to be average figures. But are they really averages? Teagasc and private planners only survey the people who engage with them. They only do profit monitors for the people who are in Suckler KT groups unless other people request them. You only go to a planner for help if you want to improve things. I know loads of lads who never joined REPS and who certainly didn't join Glas. One lad that I know is 74, actively farming 80 acres of land. When I asked him about his Glas measures, he told me that Glas is just an information collection service for the government like Reps was before it and he doesn't want anyone knowing his business. This attitude is rife among a huge proportion of our farmers.

There are ~ 70000 suckler farmers in this country. There's 50,000 farmers in Glas and that includes Dairy and Tillage farmers. So there might only be 25000 suckler farmers in Glas. If suckler farmers wanted to push forward, develop more profit and develop their farms, then surely they would be trying to make as much money from as many schemes as possible. The majority don't want that or don't need to.

There's talk of a €200 payment per suckler cow. While I could do with the money so badly, I'm not in favour of it. It will only mean that some farmers will sell their weanlings for less. It'll be of no benefit to the suckler farmer or the beef finisher and all of it + some more will end up in beef processors pockets! There has to be better ways to support suckler farmers.
 
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A lot of the problems I see with suckler farmers in the marts is the kind and type of cattle they breed. I don't know how many times I've either overheard or been drawn into a debate with an irate suckler man over the finisher as usual profiting off the suckler farmers back. The trouble is they aren't breeding the top quality stock they think they have and when John Joe gets 1400 for his store and then theirs only makes 1200 they think they've been robbed. The thing is JJ's bullock is a U and yer mans is a middling R or worse. Just because you have a yellow or a red bullock doesn't mean you've a good one. There's a reason the better quality animals commands the better money.
 
I don't know how anyone can expect to breed a U grade animal out of a half Fresian. It just won't happen. Those animals will be lighter at slaughter and have a lower kill out. You need consistency in your cows to have consistency in your calves and breed your own replacements. For us a three way mix of Blonde, Limo and Aubrac worked well as any heifer calf can be kept and put to the bull. Plenty of milk in those breeds and light boned so easy calving.
Put plenty of heifers and cows with the bulls for 10 weeks and whatever is not in calf fatten. Cull cows averaged €1450 with us last year.
That way you get 1 sale for every cow and no passengers. Calving at 36 months just doesn't work as they have gotten too fat and expensive if it doesn't work out.

Sorry to sound ruthless but there's no room for messing around with sucklers. Teagasc and the Journal can talk all they like about Herefords and Angus but they don't have to calve them, keep them or lodge the proceeds.
 
There's a lot of media attention on this subject this week. It will be interesting to see what happens.

The realist in me has pondered a lot on it in the last few days. Could this reduction in suckler cow numbers be an economic induced evolution? What I mean is, in order for to have some suckler bred beef cattle in this country going forward, do we seriously need to reduce the suckler cow numbers. Suckler cow numbers are already down 140,000 since April 2017 and there's going to be a massive sell off of cows again in the coming weeks once the marts pick up by farmers who will be budgeting for silage to do them until April or whenever they let cattle to grass. Do suckler cow numbers need to drop by another 140,000, meaning that we might only have 700,000 cows in the country in order to make suckler farming viable?


A €200 per suckler cow subsidy being mooted for after 2020. Some people say that this will be the nail on the coffin of sucklers because the money will only end up in the pockets of beef processors when they drop prices.

Should we let the whole thing find an economic balance where only the strong/young/innovative/large farmers are left? Let those who can't make money out of it grow trees? Should we do more to encourage forestry in the traditional suckler areas of the NW, W and SW?

It goes against everything that I believe in, but there is a small bit of merit to it.
 
Anybody that believes any suckler cow premium greater than 100 euro will come back again would want to visit Lourdes or Medgujorge or somewhere else and hope for a miracle in my view, it's just not fling to happen and anyone suggesting as much is kite flying....
 
nashmach said:
Anybody that believes any suckler cow premium greater than 100 euro will come back again would want to visit Lourdes or Medgujorge or somewhere else and hope for a miracle in my view, it's just not fling to happen and anyone suggesting as much is kite flying....
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What about France?They have a big suckler cow premium.
 
Mid cork said:
What about France?They have a big suckler cow premium.
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They do alright but what do they not have as a result.

My understanding is that this would have to come from Irish coffers and not European ones and very difficult to see that happening.
 
nashmach said:
They do alright but what do they not have as a result.

My understanding is that this would have to come from Irish coffers and not European ones and very difficult to see that happening.
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In the current round of the CAP yes but member states may be given the flexibility to introduce such schemes in the next round. €200 per cow seems ambitious all the same.
 
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