The Irish Farmers Journal hosted a dairy-beef webinar looking at drafting cattle for slaughter off grass on Thursday, 9th September.

You can watch the webinar back here:

Many dairy-beef farmers will be starting to draft cattle for slaughter over the coming weeks and the aim of the night was to provide an insight as to what farmers need to be looking for when selecting cattle, the specifications they need to work to and how to maximise the return from finished cattle.

The night had a special live-to-dead feature that followed cattle from being selected on farm through to the factory floor, where carcase weight, conformation and fat score were discussed.

Demo farm

The Irish Farmers Journal Thrive demonstration farm, located outside Cashel, Co Tipperary, is currently starting to slaughter the 140 year-and-a-half-old cattle.

The aim on the farm is to draft as many cattle from grass at the end of the second grazing season as possible to reduce production costs.

For heifers, this means a target carcase weight of 280kg, while for the bullocks this stretches to 320kg at 19 months of age.

The panel also discussed the targets that need to be hit at every stage along the production system in order for cattle to be fit for slaughter at such a young age.