The beef crisis seems to rumble on as the beef farming activists of the country blockade the beef factories.

It's little wonder that farmers are angry, as the price this week in the UK moved to the same price in pence per kilo as our price is in cent a kilo. But that’s the reality. Is protesting going to change that? I fear not.

Last week, dairy farmers in England were protesting about the sudden and unprecedented drop in milk prices. How fortunes differ in close neighbouring farming areas. However, dairy farming over there is not unsimilar to beef finishing here. English dairy farming is a high input system that’s very reliant on bought in feed. This variable costs change at alarming rates which results in farms being very exposed to economic uncertainty.

Keeping costs down

As a farm, we moved away from finishing any cattle over the winter a number of years ago. The economics never stacked up. As we chose to take this route, we have no expensive sheds or diet feeders. Our fixed costs are very small and our variable costs are keep to a minimum.

A quick back of the envelope calculation showed we spent on average €48 per animal on concentrates for the finishing period. This would be the only concentrates they received since coming onto the farm last autumn.

I always followed organic farmers with interest as this is something they are excellent at. Growing high quality forage on reduced input systems and using whole-crop before reseeding. In some cases, I have seen whole crop undersown with red clover and high sugar grasses. A high energy, high protein diet suitable for any finishing animal.

Housing store cattle

At present, I still haven’t housed any store cattle. They are grazing good quality red clover ley which will keep them out of the shed for three weeks yet. I will weigh them before they go into the shed to monitor their performance since arriving.

Any stores arriving from now on will probably be housed. The store cattle diet will consist of red clover silage. If the performance is anything similar to last winter, I will be very pleased. Last winter they gained on average 0.68 kilos per day.