The store trade continues to power on with prices up €1,000/head and over compared to this time last year. The store price in marts has generally followed the beef price over the last few months with beef cattle also tracking around €1,000 ahead.
The Teagasc budgets outline a number of systems and what the breakeven price is required. That means the price required to cover your costs.
Some farmers don’t agree with presenting a breakeven price as it’s lower than the price required to make a margin.
Teagasc crunched the figures for autumn-to-autumn winter bullock finishing system, forward store to beef bullock (spring 2024-born), dairy runner system (spring 2025-born), continental weanling beef (bullocks and heifers), forward store to beef heifer (spring 2024-born) and a bull beef system with continental weanlings finished under 16 months. A number of the budgets are outlined in Table 3.
Teagasc assume a number of items as part of the budgets. Very good levels of efficiency and high average daily gains are all taken as a given. Concentrates are costed into the budgets at €340/tonne.
Teagasc stress that silage quality is critical to high performance and all silage in the budgets is taken as 72% DMD, 25% dry matter and costed in at €45/tonne. Transport and marketing is included at €40/head while health costs are also included.
Half of the interest cost on feed and cost of animals is included at 7% interest. No mortality is assumed in any of the systems.
Beef price required
The highest price to breakeven comes in at €8.76/kg for continental bull weanlings at 420kg and finishing them on a high level of concentrates over six months.
The purchase price of €2,667/head (€6.35/kg) and high concentrates within this system means costs are high.
If you needed a €150/head margin that would add 37 cent/kg to the breakeven price so a beef price of €9.13/kg is needed.
Filling a shed with 100 bulls and finishing them is going to cost over €350,000 so the risk levels have risen in 12 months. The lowest beef price required is for 23-month bullocks (dairy cross x AA/HE).
These are purchased in 220kg and finished in spring 2027 at 23 months. They require a breakeven price of €6.82/kg. If you needed a margin of €150/head that would add 47 cent/kg to break even.