Beef bonanza turns dreams into reality

The surge in beef prices over the last few months has certainly lifted the mood among farmers.

Men and women are currently getting money for weanlings and fat cattle that would have been in the realms of fantasy figures in the not-too-distant past.

It’s great for farmers – and for scribes like myself who get to hear some of the stories.

For example, The Dealer phoned a well-known ICMSA dairy farmer in Cavan last week to see how the spring was treating him.

“I’m living the dream,” he said in reply to a generic query about how things were going.

I immediately thought that it was either strong milk prices, the fine weather, or a random Cheltenham windfall that had the man in such high spirits.

But no, I was wrong on all three counts. It was beef prices.

His tale is one that is probably being repeated across the country. It has its roots in the spring of 2023, when a calf buyer offered this hard-working Cavan farmer €30/head for five Friesian calves.

To be fair to the calf buyer, the offer was broadly in line – albeit slightly on the low side – with what was being paid for Friesian bull calves that spring.

However, our Ulster farmer felt that the price on offer was not good enough and he opted to hold onto the calves. Fast-forward two years and you can appreciate the farmer’s contentment with his decision. His five calves at this stage were castrated and finished to beef. The first four ranged in price from €1,900 to €2,300, and averaged around €2,100.

The last of the bullocks was a big-framed, rangy animal that was slower than the others to finish. Despite this, the farmer was confident that he’d make in the order of €2,400 when killed out.

However, the farmer was very wrong on this one. The bullock killed out at 390kg and made north of €2,730, or €7/kg.

When contacted by The Dealer, the Cavan farmer was obviously delighted. He had just received more than €11,000 for five cattle that he was offered €150 for as calves in 2023. I say this knowing around €8,000 of this €11,000 is gone in costs.

All the same, he maintained he hadn’t made as much money from beef since the collapse in calf prices in the period after Ireland joined the then EEC in the early-1970s. Although just a garsún of eight or nine at the time, he bought two bull calves for £1/head each.

He gave one of the calves to his father as payment for rearing both animals. When they were sold 15 months later the two bullocks made £167 each. Not a bad return for the 1970s.

Let’s hope he hasn’t to wait another half century to make his next killing from beef.