Saturday saw 30 new additions to the farm in the form of suck calves. They’ve made the long journey from Cork, Kerry and Limerick up here to north Longford.

We tend to buy them in batches from that part of the country as we can get good quality calves from a few different farms.

We have an agent who sources these calves and gathers them up for us. The other option is to spend time going to the various marts such as Carrigallen or Cavan, but there is a large time constraint on this option.

There are 21 bulls and nine heifers in the batch of calves and they are a mixture of Hereford, Aberdeen Angus, Limousin, Belgian Blue, and British Friesian. They range in age from three to 26 days old.

The aim will be to finish the Hereford, Angus and Friesian bull calves as young bulls at 20-22 months, incorporating the home bred Friesian bulls also.

The Limousin and Belgian Blue bull calves and the heifer calves will be sold at 18 months off the grass, as is the case with the autumn born suckler calves, although these will be somewhat older at 23-24 months.

It will be possible to achieve R= and R+ grading young bulls at carcass weight of 360-380 kg which, if taking today’s prices, will equate to a finished price of €1,400 - €1,500.

Prices are of course speculative, given the volatile nature of beef prices over the past number of years, particularly in the case of bull beef.

I feel that beef prices will remain fair as Ireland has excellent potential to supply high quality beef into lucrative markets such as Britain, continental Europe and USA.

Certain global issues, such as the Russia – Ukraine crisis, will hopefully be resolved in the next year and this, along with a strong live export market, should strengthen prices.

This spring has seen a nostalgic return to years gone by in both the dairy and beef sectors in the form of milk quota abolition and, as mentioned, the return to the USA market for Irish beef for the first time in 17 years.

I am very confident that both these large events for Irish agriculture will be positive.

With respect to the reintroduction of Irish beef into USA, it is heartening to envisage that beef from a steer or heifer produced on my farm may end up in a high end restaurant chain or supermarket shelf, in the vast metropolis of New York, San Francisco or anywhere in between.