Game of two halves after early week price wobble

Steers Heifers Cull Cows Young Bulls LAST weekend saw a plethora of inter-county hurling matches played around the country. What a lot of them had in common was that the media experts correctly called the result in advance.

However, in relation to the Cork and Tipperary match, RTÉ’s pundits gave Tipp really no chance of recovering from their nine-point half-time deficit.

By Tuesday morning of last week, I was also dealing with similar negative analysis as a share of beef pundits contacted me claiming that the game was up as far as further factory price increases were concerned.

The reason being that for the first few days of last week, bigger numbers of cattle were presented for sale than expected.

As we all now know Tipp fought back splendidly against the Rebels and earned a draw on Sunday in Thurles.

Likewise, on the beef front, it was a week of two halves. After an initial early wobble, numbers steadied and in some places showed signs of again running short as last weekend approached.

Strong prices

In short, factory prices were yesterday trending stronger than a week ago with the range of base prices for bullocks expanded to between €4.154.25/kg.

On the heifer side, my quotes for yesterday ranged from €4.25-4.30/kg. There is more to be had, I’m told, with at least one deal done for a big number of bullocks seeing the strong side of €4.30/kg paid, while on the heifer front, Angus Woods of the IFA told me €4.35/kg was now possible.

Among bull prices, there is also movement reported, with an additional 5c/kg above last week’s prices now generally accepted.

For those with under-16 month stock, the R grade base is running from €4.15-4.20/ kg, while prices among under 24-month bulls see Us on €4.30/kg, while a mixture of Us and Rs should get you €4.25/kg.

Cow prices remain steady with the all-important O grade animal maintaining at €3.603.70/kg, while your better P3 cow is on €3.50/kg.

Following my critiquing of the effect of the expanding dairy herd on the conformation of steers in my main mart report last week, I was contacted by a grass finisher.

He wondered if we farmers are being conditioned to accept the idea that our cattle are not of the same conformation quality as they might have been five or even 10 years ago.

He also pondered whether part of the issue was that there is poorer quality in some areas, but also the possibility that the grading machines are no longer up to the job of classifying carcases accurately because of the rapid evolution of the national herd in recent years.

He argued this evolution has made the original classification template used by the machines redundant.

He reminded me that Paul Nolan of Dawn Meats is on record as saying that the grading machines need to be improved.

This man also claimed that his daughter’s iPhone camera is now a far higher definition photo recording device than those machines that now classify up to 20pc of the bullocks in the country as Ps.