At current prices for finished beef cattle, it would take an excellent batch of bullocks to average £1,700 per head at slaughter, so basic maths would suggest that if you are paying over £1,000 for a weanling, any margin already looks pretty tight.

At the end of September we estimated it will probably take close to £800 per head in feed and other variable costs to take a 330kg weanling through to slaughter as a young bull next June.

While it should be possible to take out some of this cost by running the animal on as a bullock, it is a much longer finish time, and the costs might not be that much different in the end.

However, it is important also to recognise that a farmer selling weanlings needs every penny they get – not all calves will make top prices, and it is the average that ultimately matters.

Misleading

The market for top-end weanlings is also pretty misleading. There are customers who just want to have U-grading types on their farm, and the pleasure they get from that is more important than the economics involved.

They have no problem paying well over £3/kg. It is a legitimate activity, which ultimately puts money into the pockets of primary producers.

It is similar for some top-conformation heifers, with plenty of demand among buyers looking to run them on, put them in calf and sell as springers perhaps two years later. It might be a trade that defies all commercial logic, but there are people willing to pay top dollar for heavy U-grading suckler cows.

At the same time, it is important to point out that none of this is fully reflective of the beef industry in NI. There are still plenty of weanlings sold much closer to the £2.50/kg mark, that, in the right hands, have the potential to kill into R-grades. Anyone selling calves at those prices is struggling to cover the costs of retaining a suckler cow.

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