Are you breeding those yourself
@6600 ? If so, is it more profitable to keep these instead of extra dairy cows? If you didn't breed them yourself, then how much did it cost to buy and rear them?
From what I see, good dairy bull calves are still in great demand such as CH, AA, HE, BB LM or AU would cost €300 to €400+ in marts across the country these last 2 months.
I can't see how lads that are buying these calves make it add up. They have a whole lot of extra work on themselves having to put a lot of time into milk feeding calves. When that's done, you spend the whole summer feeding meal to them. When its all done and you add up your time and the money that you paid out to buy and feed the calf, your costs are comparative to keeping a suckler cow, yet if you keep the right cow and manage her and her calf correctly, you can achieve higher kill out weights and better grading. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that the suckler bred animal is leaving way more money - I'm saying that there's not a lot between them?
This last few years, we have done a serious drive to try to reduce our cost per suckler cow. Fodder shortages like the winter before last can't be helped and good summers like last are not common, but on average, we have gotten our costs down a good bit. We have brought a lot shorthorn breeding in. We find that these cows are smaller, eat less, are easier on ground and better mothers with more milk. They produce just as good of calf as a big cow. We are pushing to finish more of our own bullocks of mainly a grass based diet. We are keeping a lot of heifers to 18 months where we will be trying to have them 550kg to 600kg which when sold in the back end should come into over €2/kg (and it looks like we have a private buyer for them) with never having seen a dust of meal.
I think that if any of us are doing things right, there's a bit to be made. The problem is the unforeseen stuff. Brexit. Weather events. Disease. We seem to be hit with just one after the other. You could survive one good year and one bad, but the way that things have gone there seems to be just one good quarter or at most half a year and the rest bad.
On the other hand, when you see what type of cow or heifer that a lot of suckler lads are putting the bull on, it's no wonder sucklers are making a loss. BDGP and the fact that a huge proportion of farmers interpreted BDGP wrong, have a good bit to do with it. You can't just throw mud at something and hope that if you throw enough, some will stick. You have to in the top 25% for everything - quality, efficiency, costs etc. A huge proportion of suckler farmers are not on their game in the way that dairy farmers are. This is reflected, not by profit, but by loss!