Factory demands for lighter carcase need to be matched by a price lift for farmers

Like many farms around the country, anything that can be painted has been painted and an awful lot of stuff has been tidied up. We have a storeroom which my wife Ann decided to tackle. For my own part, I’d have been happy enough to change the door to open out rather than in; I’d reckon it would have been good to hold another 10 years’ accumulations, but she will not be deterred when she gets something into her head.

One thing that caught my eye in the heaps of papers that were being consigned to recycling were some meat factory sales dockets from 2008.

I noticed that we got €3.55/kg for bulls that year with no weight restriction. That January, we got €3.28/kg for heifers.

By July they were up to €3.60/kg, which is roughly the same as today, all of 12 years later.

Over that same time period, our Single Farm Payment has been continuously eroded.

A very crude calculation dividing the difference in our SFP between then and now by the amount of beef we produce (which has remained fairly constant) – shows that the level of EU support has dropped by almost 40c/kg.

Meanwhile, out of doors, all the bull calves have been weaned.

In general, we would be very happy with the performance of the calves this year.

I suppose it’s a reflection on the excellent spring grazing conditions.

So, as our cows and calves part company, their management will also obviously diverge.

The calves were treated for hoose and worms, and will now get the best grass available on the farm and will be allowed to cherry-pick that grass. We will not ask them to graze out any paddocks.

The next couple of months are the cheapest weight that we are going to put on those calves so it is important that we optimise their performance.

Preliminary discussions with our meat processor suggest that the desirable carcase weight this year will be around 370kg, whereas our usual target would be for 400kg.

If we do have to go with the lighter carcase, then we will have to house these bulls at the beginning of August rather than September, i.e. bring forward the start of their finishing period.

The huge disadvantage to all this, apart from the lighter weights, is that none of our own cereals will be ready to feed until early September.

We will have to do a bit more research on this to see how we can make it work. Lighter weights without a substantial price lift is not good news.

The plan with the weaned cows would be to restrict their intake at pasture, with the intentions of slimming them down a little to get them into a nice fit condition for calving, which is over two months away now.

Also, as we are sorting through the cows, any of them that need their feet attended to will be grouped in a separate field; and when all the cows are weaned, we will get John the hoofman in.

All going well, we plan to cut our silage this week.

There is an abundance of grass on the farm at the moment, although we look to be teetering on the edge of a drought, with the ground being extremely dry and hard.

Because of the autumn calving system, our demand for grass tapers off sharply from weaning time onwards and, in anticipation of this, we have identified several surplus paddocks in recent weeks.

We generally top up those surplus paddocks with a little bit of Nitrogen and take them out with the first cut silage rather than putting them into bales. This suits our system better when it comes to using them.

Obviously these paddocks won’t have as much bulk on them as the first cut but what we usually do is mow them down ourselves and ted them out along with the first cut.

Wild bird cover

Running our single row swarther before the contractor’s double row swarther results in a windrow of almost 60ft, which is a decent swarth of grass in front of the harvester.

We have our wild bird cover sowed. As this is the last year of that particular scheme, let’s hope there is another one in the pipeline.

I can’t make up on my mind on the winter cereals. Sometimes I think they are struggling, at others I think they are OK.

I’m most concerned about the winter wheat and the winter oats, with some of the fertiliser that was spread in April still visible on the ground.

The winter barley is almost fully headed out now and will get its final spray soon. Some of it looks excellent, more of it looks average.

Looking at factory dockets from 2008 I noticed that we got €3.55/kg for bulls that year with no weight restrictions. By July, they were up to €3.60/kg which is roughly the same as today, all of 12 years later

Robin Talbot farms in Ballacolla, Co Laois in partnership with his mother Pam and wife, Ann.