I am not sure when we last struggled to have a promise of a dry day to finish our crop spraying. This year, the east of the country seems to have had an endless series of days with showers. We need to get this final spray on the oats and seed wheat which is an early variety. Theoretically, the commercial wheat is in line for two sprays but we are rapidly being overtaken by weather events.

I had hoped that the lift in beef prices would have plenty of scope left but already there is talk of it having reached the peak – if you can call it that – for this year

I am also looking at the price trends in both the cattle and tillage side with some concern. I had hoped that the lift in beef prices would have plenty of scope left but already there is talk of it having reached the peak – if you can call it that – for this year.

I don’t think I ever had as much grass and we are attempting to deal with the surplus by a mixture of zero-grazing and closing up some extra ground for hay. We are moving the cattle into covers that are really too much for grazing. The grass is also too strong to force the young bulls to graze close to the ground and I would rather sacrifice grass utilisation than cattle performance so I am becoming resigned to topping after grazing to keep quality up for the next round of grazing.

I expected the recent upward movement in September prices to continue

Meanwhile, on the crop side, with all the talk about the difficulty of getting crops planted in the United States because of the incessant rain there, I expected the recent upward movement in September prices to continue. I was wrong, at least for the moment, with forward wheat and barley prices down by €5/t, according to the regular text I receive from my main customer.

I had pre-sold some of the winter barley at a September price of €152/t. This now looks as if it will be an above market price but there is quite a while to go yet. One bright spot has been the kill-out rate of the finished cattle. While we must sell the bulls before 22 months, the recent batches have been reaching 410-420kg at around 17 to 18 months and killing out at 58-60% on average, so we will probably start buying in earlier than usual.

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Beef price update: grass-finished cattle boosting throughput