Calf prices 2022

Huge risk in a dairy farm to bring home calves. They could have picked something up in the mart and bring it back into the farm.

As well unless you have milk you are not sending to be processed it's costing you 45c/L of milk fed. A kg of calf ration is probably 40c. It's probably costing you a tenner a week to hold them aside from time spend looking after them.

Was getting 70 to 120 for 2 to 3 week old Angus all along. 30 day old calf is costing me 100 euro. These were some of my best calves all year but I guess it's getting late to be buying calves now.

They is 50-60 calves more on the ground this year. Very few farmers are taking on extra stock because of extra costs involved.

The cost of rearing calves has accelerated. Calf ration is probably 100+/ton more expensive. Straw is hard got and probably 30/bale. Milk powder is 9/bag more expensive I taught I saw on a thread here.

Lads buying them coloured calves will make some twist on them if prices hold into next year.Coloured yearlings are making 2.5/kg.

In a way dairy expansion is killing the goose that laid the golden egg. We are seeing 50k to extra calves per year at present. The market is actually reaching saturation point. More calves than buyers.

The price dip will begin earlier next year and the year after. I was at a beef discussion walk before COVID and a lad asked why is a Hereford calf worth 250-300 euro.

The question now is why did lads pay 200-250 for these calves 4-6 weeks ago

Well we bought 2 8 week old and 2 6 week old angus bull calves to mart last Thursday and we were lucky to get €100. The mart was saturated with sh*t calves and we are the ones who suffer

You won't get paid for taking calves to 6 or 8 weeks. It's just a nice gift for someone. Their drinking 25 euro of milk a week. They can take them home and wean them.

At 51-70 euro they will make a margin. Carry to end of next year get to 500+kgs. Larry will give you 20c/kg on top of base and normal bonuses. Government will pay 100/head premia

It wasn't by choice we kept them that long

Was in Ballybay yesterday. Allot of poor small calves making very little money, lads can’t turn out poor stock and complain about prices

other than that prices running about 50% of other years.

I 100% see your point of view but the lad buying calves makes a very small twist off them anyhow. If fair enough really to present a well reared older calf and not to be worried about getting 50-100 euro extra for it. I know it’s money out of your pocket but it would be a sorry day if lads stopped buying calves too, really be up sh.t creek then.

There was a few proper quality hex bull and heifer calves in Carrigallen yesterday 25 to 35 days old sold from €230 to €290. Calf prices were better yesterday than last week with a lot sold online.

More like you would be giving the dairy farmer a fair price. I know the calf buyer can't get a fair price at the other side so what are they supposed to do. All these big dairy herds are not the answer I think.

Lots of people don't want to hear it, but the dairy suck calf has become a waste product of the dairy industry. It is too expensive & to much labour to feed them for the first year. You will buy the average run of the mill lads at less than what it cost to rear them most years. The influence of je on the suck calf has even increased the gamble & it has become a gamble less & less people are will to take.

80 - 100 is fair enough. 5 euro for Friesians is a fair sickener. 20 euro for 3 week old Angus and Hereford is worse. It's just a pity that the store man gets screwed by the finisher and the dairy man gets screwed by the calf buyer. It's farmers screwing each other trying to get a margin for themselves while the supermarkets, etc. are having a laugh. If I had an outside block of land I'd keep alot more cull cows and calves to finish. I mightn't make much out of them but I'd feel better. Most of my calves sold for this year anyway.

Ya, can only get worse with the price of nuts. A brave man's game.

That neither here nor there in regard to the price of calves ,what is included in costs .

They might buy cattle on monday and killed the following day ,there only having the poor mouth anyway coming out with that tripe.

All I know is the beef finisher is doing his best to screw the storeman and they are just passing this onto the calf rearer and yourself and Bass Reeves are no angels in this regard

+1

Also include the extensive use of short gestation easy calving AI bulls like KYA on dairy cows. IMO it doesn't matter if he was used on FR/x - JE/x they are runty kunts and don't kill out into any reasonable weights.

Agree totally with you on KYA bull, all for easy runt calving and the Angus breeders went mad to breed them, now they are loosing ground to aubrac and speckled parks, and what are they going to breed from the KYA females only more runts. As for calves selling from 5 to 20 euros they are only screws and that is rob for them, if the dairy man is not happy with this price he should rear them himself to slaughter and show lads how to do it properly. The big plus is the dam on the board which now dictates the trade.

The dairy calf doesn't have to be a by product

if.....IF ....its profitable for a person to buy them and rear them (and that's even if you skimp on the value of your own time / labour cost)

For a lot of them it's not....

Milk replacer if you have to buy it, straw bedding, a bit of decent straw to get the rumen going, a bit of crunch, squeeze and dehorn if necessary, remedies (homemade if possible), equipment (teat feeders, tube at lesst).....all the bits add up before you go feeding twice a day and less people have the time for that

It has to be made attractive if you want a healthy market, there used to be a lot of lads willing to rear a small group and they were the numbers/competition in the market buying.....lads starting off wanting to stock a place and build up numbers without having to put too much money down, farmers buying a couple for the kids as an interest, farmers that traditionally supplemented stock with a group of sucks etc......I'd bet there are less of them now as its getting harder and harder to balance the books or justify it due to the declining quality of the animal...

There's just too much labour involved for the small operator, a lot if these are operating out of pokey sheds and its just too labour intensive with an uncertain or poor outcome and finding stock worth buying off a dairy farm is getting more difficult....they can use their time more profitably.

For a guy thats set up for it the investment is considerable...auto feeders, or a large heater mixer and delivery tubing, crunch/ration by the tonne, sheds, straw vet on speed dial in case a big problem happens with large numbers caching it which means blanket preventative measures etc....the sums don't add up here imo either unless you can offload them early or you can export in large numbers quickly particularly if you cant keep a lid on the cost of inputs

If you take a two year bet on some of these animals after all the time and investment above you might be looking at a sale price of 800/900 if you aren't thinking of finishing.....and if you are it might seem like throwing a lot of good money after bad.

The way I see it there aren't many options

1) dairy farmer accepts the short gestation easy calving progeny as yet another cost of doing business and goes full new Zealand....although without leaving them at the head of the road and prays the boats keep going.....this seems to be the current most popular choice although it may have less than optimal long term consequences for the dairy industry.

2) less palatable, start calving something with beef merit and accept longer gestation and maybe harder calving with associated loss of earning from less liquid milk production and labour/time hassle....tbh I don't think I would do this.....but it might be a more "sustainable" option as a market isn't killed off/a crisis is averted and another drum for the anti farmer nuts to beat isn't as likely to be created.....maybe the silver lining for the early adopters is the calf is worth a lot more if you can prove the merit.

3) powers that be see more and more of it going towards option 1 and start turning the screw on time the calf (or a portion of calves) has to spend on farm of origin as a way of limiting dairy numbers and possibly forcing better quality animals........

4) A short gestation easy calving bull that produces a decent quality calf worth rearing that wont have health problems of some kind.....won't hold my breath as I think its hard to cheat nature and besides if they are all good and they are over produced the price goes down across the board.

5) the industry starts paying a good price for short gestation, narrow runts brought to finish as they have nothing but that to buy......unlikely in the extreme......and the more of the poor quality ones there are the less they will pay for them and the more volume they will get cheap and keep the slaves producing them on life support.....

6) there may be other options but I cant see them being much better ... at least in the short term.

let's face it though the price of everything will be going down if the market is flooded with the poor quality ones and that's not good for dairy or beef.

I think you have a good sized cow going of your milk yield and ai bulls your using, but the drive wholesale for high maintenance figures by lads using ebi has lead to small cows wholesale that breed s**t calves be it beef our dairy....

Calf buyer here, had a group of 20 holstein bullocks that he bought for 20 euro a piece in 2020 they averaged 1550 in the factory last month, he had a batch of he/aa calves that averaged 200 as 3 week old calves that averaged 1350, all animals where on same diet from day one to finish, the drive to breed small "efficent" cows has screwed the beef man, their was also 2 Belgian blue calves of mine in that group and they hung up came to 1700....

You need a good solid 600kgs plus hols/fr cow to produce a beef cross animal that's worth rearing

Just looking at calf prices in Carnaross there, any AAx / Hex sub 50kgs is making €100 or less, any of the over 60kgs are making €150 - €200. Anything at around 80kgs is making up to €300. So if a dairy farmer wants a good price for their beef bred calves they need to be aiming for a 80kg calf at a month old.

The problem with that is when everyone starts doing it ...they won't keep getting a good price.....it'll have a lifetime too.....

There needs to be a balance struck in everything

Will the 28 day rules affect the lads that slaughter them young? Will they legally be able to transport them to the plant?

The other thing I've been surprised with is the amount of frx in the country. Lots of people stung by aax and hex off these in the last few years I'd say

There is a cohort of larger dairy farmers who see calf slaughter as an answer to.tjis issue. My understanding is that 28 day's will be the minimum age at which a calf can be transported anywhere.

Calf slaughter however is becoming a no-no with indications that processors will be reluctant to take milk from such farms. It's already happening in the UK.

The real pressure on calf prices will start when calf export comes under pressure.

Beef price will always be variable as to milk price. Grading and DW is the comparison to Solids% and litres. If you are going out to buy incalf heifers I bet you wouldn't buy the ones @4000l and 3.2%p and 3.5%BF.

A better grading animal will carry more DW and will be more efficient to put on ADG. Ex dairy here, now Suckler and calf to Beef. Dairy farmers need to wake up urgently to the issue of calf quality. Otherwise the home market will not be there, we can see it dwindling.

Not having a go at you KG, don't expect a heap of U and R grade cattle, O's that would carry weight is where the common ground is. This weight issue is down to the cow being bred and the quality of mop up bulls running cows, each of these contribute, but both together multiply the issue