Ballina beef farmer Tommy Holmes has an eye for good cattle. And he has his own reasons for that. “Very few people will make money off bad cattle,” he says. “If you can’t make money on a good one, you won’t make it on a bad one.”

Tommy is a familiar face for many beef and suckler farmers in Ireland. Anyone who had been following his progress in the Teagasc/Irish Farmers Journal BETTER farm beef challenge will know that over the last number of years Tommy has been building up his beef finishing enterprise while at the same time decreasing his suckler cow numbers.

The suckler cow was the real breadwinner back then but that’s changed and you have to move with that

In fact, he sold off the last of his suckler cows in 2019 and is looking forward to focusing solely on a store-to-beef operation in 2020.

So what was his reason for switching from sucklers to store cattle?

“I suppose if you go back to 1990 when I started, it was a very different landscape,” he says. “The suckler cow was the real breadwinner back then but that’s changed and you have to move with that.”

Tommy points out that while a high proportion of the land in Mayo is pretty marginal, some of the land in the county is as good as anywhere else in the country. And he admits he is extremely lucky to be farming on the latter.

This is finishing land so it was costing too much to grow grass to feed suckler cows

“I felt that with the land base I have here, I was better off finishing cattle,” he says.

“For a start, I have 46 or 47 acres but it’s split up into three different blocks. That’s not easy with suckler cows. As well as that, this is finishing land so it was costing too much to grow grass to feed suckler cows.”

History

Interestingly, Tommy’s move from suckler cows back into store cattle essentially brings the farm full circle: “I’d be the third or fourth generation farming here on the family block,” he says.

“I wasn’t even born at the time but my father told me that my grandfather would have had store cattle and a bit of tillage. Sure that would have been back in the 1950s.

“There were obviously no marts at the time so he would have bought light stores at fairs, fed them for two or three months and then sent them off on the train up to Dublin and the land in Meath. That was the way it worked back then.”

From there, Tommy’s father would have slightly expanded the tillage operation before Tommy himself worked his way in suckler cows in the 90s before an eventual switch back into the system of his predecessors.

The suckler cow definitely needs to be kept in the system

Despite Tommy’s departure from the suckler game, he still recognises the critical importance of the suckler cow in Ireland, particularly in the west: “The suckler cow definitely needs to be kept in the system. The quality of cattle in this country is failing fast and I don’t think that’s the right way to be going.”

He goes on to say that the prospect of finishing dairy stock – in an event where suckled, continental cattle disappeared – is not one he would welcome: “They hold no value. They won’t carry weight and they won’t grade.

“The inputs and the cost of feed are far too dear to be giving to an animal that won’t perform. You’re better off feeding a good one than a bad one.”

And while he recognises the importance of the suckler cow, I asked Tommy does he see her hanging on?

“The person that is doing it right has still been making a living off it,” he says. “Those with the good-quality continental cows and using good bulls are still getting almost €1,000 for weanlings in the ring and those people do stand a chance.”

There’s no young people taking farms over in this part of the country

But he did acknowledge there is still big pressure on suckling, perhaps along with all type of farming in the west of Ireland: “There’s no young people taking farms over in this part of the country. I even see dairy farmers getting out because their sons or daughters don’t want to do it.

“At the end of the day, it comes down to the fact that people need to get a fair price for the work they’re doing and what they’re producing.”

Then again, every cloud has a silver lining and Tommy adds that “maybe this virus could change farming in the west again. When it’s all over, there is risk that some people might not have jobs to go back to. They might be glad to have a farm then. It would be better than nothing.”

Outlook

Tommy plans to buy over 80 cattle throughout the course of the year – bulls and bullocks. At this time of the year he is looking for bullocks between 450kg and 470kg and bulls at around 420kg.

The bullocks will be killed off the grass in the back end, whereas in August the bulls will go into the shed for a 100-day finish. To date he has 20 bullocks and 20 bulls bought and they’re coming in at roughly €2.20/kg.

“The store trade was very dear in February,” he says. “With beef prices at €3.50/kg you couldn’t be giving nearly €2.50/kg for store cattle.”

It’s very hard to go to a farm and buy cattle

He says prices did begin to ease back in March, and have continued to do so with the coronavirus affecting trading in the marts.

But that has its own problems: “It’s very hard to go to a farm and buy cattle. A lot of people don’t know the value of their cattle. So there’s no scarcity of cattle out there but getting them is the problem.”

Looking ahead to beef prices, he admits “this year could be a write-off for beef. It’s a world problem. Even when people go back to work, they won’t have the money to be eating out. And then think of all the events all over the world that have been cancelled. The amount of food consumed at these is enormous.”