“We decided to keep some of the male calves entire last year because the price had been poor 12 months earlier,” said Andrew Biffen.

“We also wanted to see a lift in output and finish more cattle on the farm.”

Last year, they left 20 bulls entire out of their Simmental cows which were put to Limousin, Simmental and Stabiliser bulls. Andrew is particularly pleased with the performance of the bulls sired by the Stabliser bull. In the future, he plans to keep all the Stabliser male offspring entire while producing steers from his Limousin cross and Simmental calves. The Stabliser will go to a batch of 30 to 35 cows each year so he hopes to get between 15 and 20 bulls to sell each year.

Stabiliser success

“The Stabiliser looks to be outperforming on daily liveweight gain,” believes Andrew. “I think they will be the future of the beef industry.”

Weaning on the farm happens around October and November with creep feed introduced a month to six weeks before.

Finishing diet

Once housed, Andrew fed the bulls on a mainly silage diet over winter before switching to an ad-lib barley blend for the last 100 days. They have been kept in the same batch over winter, with the feed being fed in a hopper.

“If the price falls then a longer barley diet doesn’t add up,” believes Andrew. “When the bulls were on the silage, they were getting 3kg to 4kg of barley. They also got a soya/rapemeal blend for protein along with sugar beet to add fibre.”

Andrew is keen to make use of silage as much as possible in the bulls’ diet to reduce the overall cost to finish the cattle. He feels that the Stabiliser genetics do well off the silage before finishing on the barley diet.

Handling the bulls wasn’t too much of challenge either, thought Andrew. “You can never fully trust a bull,” he said. “but our cattle are quite quiet in the first place so it worked fine.”

The bulls will head to the abattoir when they are between 650-700kg liveweight.

Price

Long before the bulls were ready to sell, Andrew spoke to potential abattoir buyers. “There are more buyers for bulls than you would think,” said Andrew. “It is a good idea to contact a range of buyers early.”

On price, Andrew thinks they need “at least £3.50/kg to make it worth while doing bulls.

“When the price was at £3.10/kg we were as well cutting the calves and selling store.” He plans to have all the bulls away by the time they are 14 months and thinks they will leave in four batches. They are weighed regularly and Andrew plans to sell them when they get to between 650kg and 700kg liveweight.

Arnage have planted fodder beat again to feed cattle in winter.

Attacking the cost of winter

Andrew also has the mantra of attacking the cost of winter. To that end, he has sown out 16 acres of fodder beet to carry the cows again this winter. Looking towards winter, with weather conditions as they currently are it is worth starting to plan now.

Across the country some silage crops have been quite good but a large number have been relatively light so far. Couple this with the current cereal yield potential and straw could also be short. Planning now to source something to bulk out silage crops would be a good idea.

Andrew is also planning to direct-drill stubble turnips in to a winter barley field post-harvest again this year. This will give more dry matter to carry stock through the winter and keep pressure off feed resources.