Dairy Calves 2024

I know one dealer from round here buys out of the southern marts, very dodgy paperwork wise. Alot around here won't deal with him anymore.

Have bought calves off Seamus a few times and found him OK to deal with. He is a cattle dealer out to make money. But he does know his business and he does know what's going on in the export market. When you see some of the calves that are coming out of the dairy sector at the minute it very easy that no market will want them. I think some dairy farmers are afraid to face the fact that various advisors & experts have lead them down a very dangerous path where they are now at the mercy of the milk factories & nitrates with a herd of animals that have a very small value in beef terms if milk wobbles.

Spot on. That's what happens when farmers make breeding decisions predominantly from looking at figures on a screen. When a farm is full of the wrong type of stock, lads don't realize how poor they actually are.

It's not diction Bass. The man is not nice and its not business, yet you were projecting your experience of a different individual onto him.

I know dealers are necessary in the trade, but his level of ignorance, arrogance and downright bully tactics aren't necessary and anyone who attended the beef protests at Clohamon wil agree with me. I've wasted enough time talking about him now, I really couldn't care enough about him to keep arguing.

There's also a potential other side. Seamus could also say "you can't buy my calves if you don't buy my powder for them".

Most recognise what he's trying to do is create his own monopoly on the market.

If the powder is good quality. And good value. Farmers will buy it. If not then. The monopoly still hasn't been created and closed yet.

A little tune for a Sunday.

It's very simple what beef farmers want and what dairy farmers want, and there is quite a bit of gap between them.

Beef farmers want

1. Healthy calf, well fed with colostrum

2.in the 3-4 week age bracket

3. Good genetic potential in terms of CW and grading.

Dairy farmers want

1 Easy calving

2. Moved at 10-20 days

Regulation is going to move to sort the age at which calves can move.

Demand will always sort price. Just look at fr bulls and where they land at the moment I'm personally sick of rearing and finishing AAs. Have been at it for over 10 years. The past 3 years has lead to less and less of them being purchased. I'm moving more and more towards stock that has been bred with a straw. You might as why? CW and grading has been sliding on a downward spiral. Some of the stock bulls out there would want to be seriously examined.

Why is this happening with calves. It's very simple. Dairy farmers have taken the eye off the ball on the quality of beef sires used. Low carcase weight and confirmation. Couple this with the reduction of LW of the cow and we have a double whammy of hit on CW.

Every dairy farmer here reading this has to remember that approx 70-80% of you calves are going towards beef be that in Ireland or on the continent.

I pose these two self reflection questions to dairy farmers here.

How much time and consideration do you give in the sire selection of dairy traits etc in your future replacements?

Now the crux one. How much time do you give to sire selection of beef straws and stock bulls in terms of beef traits, namely CW and confirmation?

The answer is simple. Less and less to beef sires the only focus now is calving ease and gestation. Taking your eye off beef traits for the past number of years has landed us in this hole. The only way out is bred a better calf, and for your farm it could be simple as bull choice, but a worrying situation is it could require both change to cow and bull.

Remember I was a dairy farmer until 15 years ago

That's a broad stroke Mr.stonewall. The CBV of my calves this year run from the lowest at €128 up to €220 at the highest all bar one Friesian bull at €6.

Stockbulls can be got with low calving difficulty and yet give a good calf. I have two of those and a few ai beef calves then. Remember, I was a beef farmer until 5 years ago.

It's a broad stroke and as always there are exceptions. Just look at the evidence and it shows the facts.

1 Since the abolishment of quota, many herds dropped their beef enterprise to up cow numbers. This has taken there focus primarily to cows

2. Teagasc blueprint for stock the farm heavily 1st and worry about the building and calves later. Just remember the Pat Dillion comment - oh we forgot about the calves

3. The number of calf to beef operations. Only 40% last after 5 years. The big question is why.

4. The kiwi model here. They have the outlet of bobbying. We have limited capacity

I have to applaud CBV figures like yours. This is where we need to be going, and clearly shows that you have put time into beef sire selection unlike many others. Looking at the marts online during the week Fr bulls were regularly coming at -€30 to -€50 and any Aax were sub €100.

@Grueller you have said you still have some sucklers. It's not that long ago since you were dealing with export quality weanling. That is some apprenticeship to have done on the fundamentals of beef breeding.

If your sick of rearing the AA calves what are you thinking to rear instead?

Aww very good sorry I misread that. Have you seen a Hugh difference when there hanging up?

Unless export is stopped can’t see the calf type on a lot of farms being changed dramatically, there is a lot still happy to take 10-20€ for calves as long as their gone out of the yard, I know plenty making fortunes from collecting and slaughtering calves every year also that needs to be stopped also as it’s not a good look at all. A lot of dairy farmers don’t have any interest in rearing for 8-10 weeks the surplus to requirement calves and that’s the trade off for numbers and nitrates is compounding this.

Will cbv be on board in mart?

I think your mixing up cbv and the DBI. The CBV looks only at the commerical beef value.

Lad that buys calves off us and would rear to finish over 100 calves said it's very accurate. If the lads rearing calves us it will make dairy lads use better bulls. Should make it a lot easier for calf to beef farms to avoid the rubbish