Beef trade: Data backs up expanding influence of the dairy sector on the beef industry

While putting this week’s report together different factory agents used different analogies to describe how they now see trade.

One told me that in relation to bullock and heifer prices, €3.55-3.60/kg, it was “steady as she goes”.

Another commented that the recent rise in factory prices “May have lifted all boats but it sunk the one going to Algeria” while a third noting that beef farmers are ever the optimists said he viewed them a bit like goldfish swimming around in circles “When they stop they think they’re parked in a different place”.

The reality appears to be that after the recent surge in prices this week sees us more or less “parked” in the same spot as last week.

Leaving the humour aside the factory trade is fairly steady as mentioned for bullocks and heifers at €3.55-360/kg with possibly a shade more in the offing for heifers.

Bulls are also largely unchanged with U grades floating around the €3.60/kg mark with R’s on €3.50/kg and O grades varying between €3.30-3.40/kg.

Prices for cull cows, however, have come under pressure over the last week. From a position where mixed loads of O and P grades had been trading at a flat €3/kg in the run-up to last week my information is that as last week progressed quotes were slipped by 10-20c/kg meaning O’s are currently being quoted at €2.90-2.80/kg with your better P on €2.70-2.80/kg. R grades are also easier at €3.00-3.10/kg.

As is often said it’s all about the numbers, and the numbers tell a very simple tale.

Go to the week ending the 26th of April and you see the overall kill that week was 25,529 of which 4,062 were cull cows.

Jumping forward four weeks to the 17th of this month and you find that the overall kill has risen 1,308 to 26,837 of which cull cows accounted for 5,755 of that total.

While the overall rise in those four weeks is just 1,308 all of it is accounted for by additional cull cows as their numbers are up 1,693 over the same time frame. Hence the current pressure on their price.

Figures released by the Department of Agriculture show that to the end of April 99,000 cattle were slaughtered from controlled finishing units, i.e. factory owned or contracted finishing units, plus department restricted feedlots. In the first four months of 2019 that figure stood at 110,000

Breaking down overall factory slaughtering’s by breed of the sire i.e. beef or dairy, those same Department figures show that to the end of April the total number of cattle killed was 1,005,209 with 594,720 having been sired by a dairy bull with the remaining 410,489 having a beef breed sire.

Of the 1,737,515 calves registered to the end of April 2020 1,347,515 were registered to a beef sire with just 703,457 registered to a dairy sire.

These figures help show the expanding influence of the dairy sector on the beef industry, as does data from ICBF.

Their calculations give the number of suckler cows at the end of 2019 to be in the region of 934,000 with the total number of dairy cows in the country to the end of July 2019 being almost 1,521,000.

Yet, from the start of January this year to the end of April, the number of calves born to beef bulls stood at 1,034,058 with the number claiming a dairy sire standing at just 703,457. Or put another way the number of calves born this year to the end of April claiming a beef sire is 100,058 greater than the total number of suckler cows registered in the country.