Northern Ireland (NI) buyers are lighting up the cattle trade, especially in the northern half of the country, with increased activity from factory agents, farmer feeders and wholesale buyers over the last two weeks. A shortage of finished cattle north of the border and a huge €1/kg gap in beef prices between here and NI has pushed them south of the border in the last few weeks looking for cattle.
Northern Ireland (NI) buyers are lighting up the cattle trade, especially in the northern half of the country, with increased activity from factory agents, farmer feeders and wholesale buyers over the last two weeks.
A shortage of finished cattle north of the border and a huge €1/kg gap in beef prices between here and NI has pushed them south of the border in the last few weeks looking for cattle.
The sterling exchange rate is also on the northern customers’ side, with sterling strengthening to 83p/€1. The exchange rate was 87p/€1 up until a few weeks ago.
This, coupled with no VAT on Irish purchases, makes Irish cattle very attractive to NI customers at the moment.
Southern Irish-bred cattle still don’t qualify for the Red Tractor label when slaughtered north of the border and one can only dream what the cattle trade would be like at the moment were this rule ever changed.
Mart managers are also reporting a strengthening in the cull cow trade over the last two weeks, with factories very active for good-quality suckler cows.
The majority of cows that are heading to factory lairages at the moment are P grading cows, which don’t come in high on meat yield, so they need to balance with more beefy stock.
Elphin Mart had a big entry of suckler cull cows on Monday night, with some exceptional prices being paid for heavy well-fleshed suckler cows.
A 2018-born Charolais cow weighing 1,015kg hit €2,770. Add in fees, haulage and killing costs and she needs to be getting over €5.50/kg to break even, which shows the lengths that factories are going to secure cull cows at the moment.
Good-quality dry cows sold from €2.60/kg to €2.90/kg in Monday night’s sale. Lighter cows lacking flesh were back at €2.40/kg to €2.60/kg.
The good trade for suckler culls continues to add life to the replacement in-calf heifer trade.
The high prices are in marked contrast to that for parlour cows, with little demand at the moment for light dairy cows.
Some marts have seen parlour cows in the 400kg to 500kg weight bracket struggle into €1/kg this week, with little appetite around the ring for under-fleshed cows.
Taking a look at this week’s Martbids analysis table, we see that there hasn’t been a lot of change across the board.
Plainer heifers are back a little on last week, while top-quality heavy heifers saw significant price rises over the last seven days.
Top-quality heifers in the 500kg to 600kg weight bracket came in at €3.40/kg this week, while average heifers were up to €2.94/kg.
Bullocks were also back a little, with average-quality bullocks in the 500kg to 600kg weight bracket coming in at €2.69/kg this week, a drop of 10c/kg on the previous week.
The weanling trade continues to march on, with top-quality bull weanlings in the 300kg to 400kg weight bracket up 7c/kg to €3.86/kg this week.
Heifer weanlings in the same weight bracket came in at €3.66/kg, up 3c/kg on the previous week.
This is a subscriber-only article
SHARING OPTIONS: