As we sped north along the M9 on Monday night I couldn’t help but feel thankful. Five of us, three beef-research students and two farmers, had attended the winter finishing seminar in Kilkenny mart.

What a fabulous facility they have down there. Laid out like a lecture theatre, its tiered layout and flip-down seats brought back unpleasant memories of confusing afternoons in Belfield. But my gratefulness stemmed not from the fact that my lecture-days were done; nor was it aimed at the driver who eventually, agreed to pull in for a relief-stop.

I was thankful that our home enterprise was a calf-to-beef, closed herd system and not one that relied on buying and finishing stores.

We had all been slightly reluctant to attend. Though primarily a knowledge-transfer event, there’s no denying that the presence of the IFA at any of these gatherings usually pulls dialogue away from the points being discussed. I know it’s a slightly ignorant way to look at the dire situation that currently exists but I’d like to think that our efficiencies and good practices at home help us to weather the storm that surrounds the price slump.

No doubt we’d be chomping at the bit to take in these events and speak our minds too if our farm’s viability depended on finishing animals all year round. With a group of heifers due to meet their maker at 20 months of age in December coming, I really hope my stance remains the same post-kill.

Grass

The amount of grass in our diet and an emphasis on making excellent quality silage means that there is very little concentrate in our heifer system. The cow may see a scoop or two in the days after calving but that’s it for her.

The heifer will consume 1.5 kilos a day of a store ration in her first winter, most likely soya hulls this year. Those for finishing will average just under 4 kilos over a max of 50 days. The ration will be around 13% protein. Last year this system gave us an average deadweight of 345kg, an average conformation of U- and a fat score of 3=.

I like many others was left with a lump in my throat when Karen Dukelow produced a figure of €4.36 as a necessary base this Spring for winter finishers. The example used in Kilkenny was a 550kg Friesian-cross Belgian Blue steer, purchased for €2.10 and finished over 140 days on silage and 5kg of meal. I thought the kill out of 55% assigned was quite generous.

Obviously kill out is very breed dependent and you have two extremes present here, but as you can see the animal was no world beater. We also agreed that the meal price of €230 a tonne was slightly high taking into account the price of barley. A friend of mine, Kevin McMenamin from Donegal, who is also carrying out beef research in Grange couldn’t help himself the following day and redesigned Karen’s model in the office. We then inputted our own figures of 535 g/kg for the beast’s kill out and a meal price of €195.

Efficiency

Unfortunately it only served to shrink the required base price by 10 cent and this is without factoring in interest. It’s bleak reading for anyone heading to a mart in the near future with a view to fleshing an animal by springtime. All one can do is tighten things up. Efficiency is a buzzword used time and time again, and for good reason.

Prior to Karen Dukelow’s talk, Dr Mark McGee, who also acts as supervisor to Kevin and myself, highlighted the importance of an efficient system. For instance, he showed how suckler-origin animals will gain 25% more live weight per unit of energy intake versus their dairy counterparts and how a one unit drop in silage digestibility left a farmer needing to feed an extra 0.4kg of concentrates daily to maintain levels of gain.

It’s the little things.