The mart is a tricky place at the moment for those of us trying to buy stores. With only 20 store bullocks left to buy, you would imagine it would be relatively simple.

Purchase 20 continental bullocks that have the potential to kill R grade or better, weighing 490-530kgs - straightforward so far.

However, I am only willing to go to €1,150 or €2.30 a kilo. This is where the problem arises. Our man on the ground who buys 99% of our cattle informs me that these “types” were bid into €1,300 in the past two weeks in three of the marts in the BMW region-Ballybay, Clones and Cootehill.

Increase in store prices

The rapid increase in store prices seems to be a double edged sword, with some finishers benefiting from the recent increase in factory prices and also the ample forage supplies in yards around the country that is preventing any big numbers of stores coming out of sheds.

But I feel that €1,150 a head should be the top end of my budget (this allows a reasonable gross margin per head) because I’m not in a hurry to forget that the beef price last autumn was substantially lower than that received by farmers now.

I can understand the angle Billy Glasheen in the Better Farm Programme was coming from in the Irish Farmers Journal last week when he said that the store price remained the same but the beef price was a €150 less. I am in a similar position with cattle performing well last summer but the store prices are €100 higher than they should be before Christmas and they are now €200 a head more than what is needed to leave a reasonable margin.

Shortage of store cattle

But I am more worried about another aspect of this system at present and that is the shortage of store cattle within this bracket. It seems to be a bigger issue every year.

I once blamed the volume of cattle exported to the European markets of Spain and Italy, but that isn’t as popular as it once was. So where have these cattle gone? There has been a national decline in suckler cow numbers and also the volume of animals fed as bulls that are only ever traded once as weanlings has been on the increase.

In the past 12 months it has fallen out of favour, but I see in the last number of weeks, bull beef prices are on a par with that of steers and heifers again, so the total number of male animals reaching 18 months is on a steady decline.

Time for a rethink

I am very positive about the future of beef but if supplies of stores continue to decrease is it time for a rethink of when we are buying, the size we’re buying at and the time of year were finishing at?

I am a firm believer that grass fed beef, finished with a small amount of concentrates will leave the most margin but there is no point giving this margin away to someone else.