The Kildalton suckler herd recorded a gross margin of €1,127/ha last year. Considering the turbulent conditions that drystock farms experienced in 2018, breaking the €1,100 mark is impressive.

The strong performance was underpinned by a high stocking rate of 2.7LU/ha and strong young bull beef price received in the summer.

John O’Connor, farm manager, speaking at the walk.

Suckler system

The herd is comprised of 50 mainly continental suckler cows.

Progeny are dealt with in four ways. The best two-thirds of male calves are pushed hard in their first winter and are slaughtered under 16 months.

The remaining male progeny are castrated, go to grass for a second summer and are slaughtered at 24 months.

Through a combination of €uro-Star indices, weight and visual appearance, half of the female progeny are maintained as replacements.

These are bred at just over one year of age for calving at 24 months. Surplus females are slaughtered at 20 months of age.

Slaughter performance

As already highlighted, the farm is entirely suckler-to-beef and Table 1 gives a breakdown of slaughter performance in 2018.

Carcase weight for young bulls and steers were good at 402kg and 408kg, respectively. The sale value for both groups of stock was also high.

Young bulls totalled €4.42/kg. Being sold on the QPS grid, these would have received a €0.12/kg quality assurance bonus and a €0.06 to €0.18 bonus for grading.

This brings base price back to around €4.20/kg, which was in line with prices received last May and June.

Steers totalled €4.22/kg and using the same calculations as above, obtained a base price in-or-around €4.00/kg.

Heifer carcase weight in 2018 was 301kg, down 22kg on 2017.

It was explained that these were not priority stock during difficult times of the year and weight gain subsequently suffered from a later turnout in spring and a grass deficit in the summer.

One advantage of continental breeding in a suckler herd is the cull-cow value.

A high average carcase weight of 343kg was recorded, with a strong average value of €1,135/head.

Financial summary

Table 2 gives a breakdown of the suckler herd’s overall physical and financial performance.

Output/LU is good at 325kg/LU, but possibly reflects the steer beef in the system.

An all-bull system could potentially push output above 380kg/LU. However, running a strong stocking rate of 2.7, the farm has a good output per hectare of over 850kg.

Typically, variable costs on suckler to beef farms run at around 50% of gross output.

For that reason, a suckler farm needs to be targeting a gross output of over €2,000/ha in order to break the €1,000/ha mark.

In Kildalton, variable costs in 2018 were €1,251/ha, or 53% of gross margin.

In a generally high-cost year, this was surprisingly low.

Meal and forage accounted for 54% of variable costs, fertiliser accounted for 21% and AI and vet accounted for 8%.

For more information on Thursday’s event and for a full breakdown of breeding in the Kildalton suckler herd, keep an eye out for the upcoming breeding focus in the Irish Farmers Journal.