Over the last few weeks we have profiled a number of dairy calf to beef systems and budgets. There is a lot of farmer interest in the possibility of rearing calves as a standalone enterprise or a bolt-on enterprise alongside sucklers on the farm. The message is clear – proceed with caution. Sit down and do the budget and be realistic on weight gains and costs. Write down everything. Beef price is a tricky one to predict, but put in today’s beef price to see if the system stacks up. Calf price and beef price will have a huge impact on profitability.

System details

The management for this system is very similar to the 24-month steer system outlined in last week’s paper up until the end of the second grazing period. Instead of being housed in October, the steers are held out until mid-November and housed at 519kg. They are then stored over the winter on ad-lib silage plus 2kg of meal for 100 days. The aim is to try to get back to grass as early as possible. With turnout in mid-March, the housing period is limited to 120 days. The average weight at turnout is 574kg. Details are outlined in Table 1.

Cattle are offered good-quality grass through the first half of the grazing season until mid-May. Forty days before slaughter meal is introduced at a rate of 2-3kg per day depending on condition and grass growth. Target slaughter weight by the end of June is 680-690kg liveweight or from 345-350kg carcase weight. The 30-month system is most dependant on achieving high levels of grassland management. With a high percentage of liveweight gain coming from grass as opposed to concentrates, production costs can be limited to €790. The big difference in the two systems is the level of meal input. The 24-month system uses 1.1t meal/head while the 30-month system uses around half that at 540kg.

As the steers aren’t pushed as hard, carcase weight only increases by 5-10kg. National data backs this up.

Costs are very similar though, with the 30-month animal incurring extra grazing costs and fixed costs because of the longer time spent on the farm. Earlier slaughtered animals also have a lower carbon footprint.

Table 2 takes into account total costs and then includes either €100, €150, €200 or €250 to cover land and labour. Beef base price ranges from €3.50-€4.00/kg. As Friesian steers will generally grade O-.P+, there will be a discount of €0.21/kg on the grid system for these animals. This has been factored into the table. At the current beef price to achieve a margin of €150/head, calves should be coming onto the farm at €3 or less.

Comment

Efficiency is key

Technical efficiency is extremely important in a dairy calf to beef system. The Teagasc Grange dairy calf to beef trial is a good example of high efficiency and hitting targets.

The farm achieved excellent performance levels, hitting all target weights and growing 14.4t of grass dry matter/ha. This is around 2.5 times what the average drystock farmer grows (5-6t).

The problem with applying this system to an average drystock farm is that either stocking rate will be lower or costs will be higher through the higher feeding of concentrates to compensate for the lower grass growth.

Going from 5t/ha to 15t/ha won’t happen overnight and could incur a lot of investment in drainage, reseeding, grazing infrastructure and increasing soil fertility levels.

The vast majority of drystock farmers are part-time and wouldn’t dream of running very high stocking rates at grass because time Is their limiting factor, not land.

We also need to be careful about pushing a 24-month system where technical efficiency may not be up to the level required. If it’s not at the level required and weight gains come from concentrates rather than grass, losses will be a lot higher. Looking at national data from 2018, the average dairy x dairy steer was slaughtered at 28.2 months at a carcase weight of 316.2kg grading a P+/O- and 3= on fat. At this age and weight, margins will be very questionable.

Efficiency levels need to increase before stocking rate for there to be any chance of profitability.

Read more

Friesian bull calves: what are they worth?