wellingtonfarmer
Member
- Location
- Herefordshire
Bulls ablib cereals. Heifers tmr grass silage and 3kgs barley, heifers will go on to tmr of wholecrop potatoes barley protein blend April time and then ab lib cereals may/June time
Beef cattle fattening&finishing
- Thread starter Kevtherev
- Start date
Bulls ablib cereals. Heifers tmr grass silage and 3kgs barley, heifers will go on to tmr of wholecrop potatoes barley protein blend April time and then ab lib cereals may/June time
Get on grub
- Location
- pembrokeshire
YEP THATS WHAT WE PAY FOR STEERS
M-J-G
Member
A finished steer in NZ is how many kg and what price?Driest year since records began for Invercargill (1901) even drier than '21.
And record high temperatures down here too, mid 30s last couple of days.
Hence all the topping, to keep cover on the soil and help trap the dew.
About our animal spec:
For GUTH and Bossfarmer to ponder - NZ processing companies and marketing is owned mostly by NZ farmer shareholders, just like Fonterra is for the dairy folk; that's why it is fit for purpose.
SFF had a recent merger with the Chinese but otherwise the infrastructure is all cooperative owned, as @stewart has pointed out the same goes for kiwifruit and much other produce.
It goes a long way to not being screwed at point of sale; the rest of the world has high costs due to subs and stuff, it benefits us as much if not more.
I have budgeted on about $500 net on all my cattle and hope for at least $45 on the store lambs, could be closer to doubling my money if the lamb schedule sticks.
Just drilling my forage cereals, will be back in a bit
The only far
We get a lot of weather
What breeds do you use Kp (Cattle & sheep) . There must be surplus dairy calves out there are they fairly cheap or is there a good market for them.No, many are leased out as service bulls and then culled once they stop being all dick and ribs.
Was originally intending to breed Jersey bulls for that purpose, quite lucrative, destructive little barstewards though.
Will stick to steers and heifers
And lambs...
Yeah we get alot of weather too
- Location
- Owaka, New Zealand
Really just what you decide is "finished" - my friesian steers are 550kg now and it depends on the weather how I feed them.
Currently putting on 1.7 per day eating some pretty average tucker to be brutally honest
Angus and Angus X HFD are beating them on similar feed. They're around the 500kg average as were a bit more expensive coming in but lighter than the 6 friesians.
Beef seems to be sitting around the $5.20 cwt or $2.60 lwt mark still - the key here is to get in before the dairymen dump all their culls and empty cows which tends to clog up the chain at the processors and they tend to back the price off a little.
Bit of a premium for hfd and aa though
Long story short they should average $1650 across the lot of them, roughly.
If so it means $525 for us after costs, in ten months
Across the lot they averaged $955 to buy, $18 cartage $61 to winter + a $500 vet bill.
I have a good lid on costs
ollie989898
Member
Really just what you decide is "finished" - my friesian steers are 550kg now and it depends on the weather how I feed them.
Currently putting on 1.7 per day eating some pretty average tucker to be brutally honest
Angus and Angus X HFD are beating them on similar feed. They're around the 500kg average as were a bit more expensive coming in but lighter than the 6 friesians.
Beef seems to be sitting around the $5.20 cwt or $2.60 lwt mark still - the key here is to get in before the dairymen dump all their culls and empty cows which tends to clog up the chain at the processors and they tend to back the price off a little.
Bit of a premium for hfd and aa though
Long story short they should average $1650 across the lot of them, roughly.
If so it means $525 for us after costs, in ten months
Across the lot they averaged $955 to buy, $18 cartage $61 to winter + a $500 vet bill.
I have a good lid on costs
This is mostly from grass and silage Pete?
- Location
- Northern Ireland
Not trying to be rude but if you realise your grassland management is poor why don't you do something about it? One of most cost effective changes a farm can make I think
- Location
- Owaka, New Zealand
I'm not fussy Treg when it comes to livestock - they are simply pawns in my gameWhat breeds do you use Kp (Cattle & sheep) . There must be surplus dairy calves out there are they fairly cheap or is there a good market for them.
Yeah we get alot of weather too
Dairy calves are cheap as can be if you get onto the right people - this year's calves we agreed on $50 each discount on an invoice so they owe us $200 after powder.
Some Limo x fri and shorthorn x fri plus a couple of free Hfd hfrs
So that went well.
Hopefully can source some more Angus or Hereford calves going into winter, works well to unload them and put them straight inside and feed them up
This year they've got wholecrop pea bales and silage.
Store lambs are a mixed bunch, $65 and a good range of weights but moving fast, perendale texel cross.
Our own 2ths are snowline with a dorper ram last time, lambs 110% as hoggets, they'll get our pet texel/perendale rams this time around with the idea of keeping some replacements. Don't want heaps of capital stock but if I'm going to lamb 30 I may as well have 80.
@ollie989898 yep just nice silage last winter for 10 weeks then turned them out and they had the run of the place, sort of a normal rotational grazing system until we get a surplus - and then more a regenerative grazing system - and now a holding pattern until we get rain.
I will possibly crack open the silage soon and dribble some out- hastily closed the clamp in September so there may be some spoiled stuff, so will be a good idea to get rid of it onto the pasture as opposed to sorting it out come winter
Weight gains on the silage weren't fantastic with freshly weaned calves so I sowed a paddock in peas and baled it, will hopefully get more protein into the system early on
we now know ryegrass is really maintenance food as opposed to legumes
Best weight gains I measured in a fortnight was 2.26kg DLWG on pasture only, has averaged about 1.8 across the season I think.
Been a challenge with no rain, but hey ho..
Give me a good year and we'll see what we can do!
wellingtonfarmer
Member
- Location
- Herefordshire
I'm trying too but time is a big issue. The cattle are down the list on priorities unfortunately, all grazing is permanent pasture and I try to run more sucklers which I wouldn't be able to do if followers grazed outside!
They also kill out hell of a lot better being feed intensively indoors than being grazed
- Location
- Northern Ireland
Fair enough, What sort of stocking rate are you running at in CE/Ha?
Out of interest, is permanent pasture in England land that just hasn't been reseeded or land that can't be reseeded due to various environmental schemes? Can new grass be direct drilled in with P and K added as needed?
everything here is PP and the cattle seem to grow fine on it, we have looked at reseeding and even do some when we have to [some of the land moves here] but apart from that I can't see the point in it, looking around plenty of land around here has been ruined with the plough IMHO
wellingtonfarmer
Member
- Location
- Herefordshire
I'm not saying they don't do that well on it, just average.
The few smaller ones that I do run around outside I have only sent this week despite housing mid October.
They killed out Shite and weighed lighter compared to intensively reared heifers
I think its classed as PP after so many years
- Location
- pembrokeshire
we buy weened single suckled calves seven/ eight months old average price £800 will finish the next winter £1400 average they graiz all summer brought in in the winter fed on silage and meal made up of barley wheat oats and beans to finish the calves are fed on barley oats and beans and silage if we dont grow it we dont feed it
- Location
- Owaka, New Zealand
Do any of you grow wholecrop for them or mostly combined?
I'm giving it a bash, so I thought I'd enquire.
Beans would grow well I think, had good result with peas, and sowed a mix tonight
Hopefully we have the type of winter that means I can shut it up in the spring and bale it up, be lamb food between now and then.
@Kevtherev
I'm giving it a bash, so I thought I'd enquire.
Beans would grow well I think, had good result with peas, and sowed a mix tonight
Hopefully we have the type of winter that means I can shut it up in the spring and bale it up, be lamb food between now and then.
@Kevtherev
Do you have rats over there?
- Location
- Owaka, New Zealand
Yes they were sure to bring them on the ships
Not too many and we can bait them all we like, have re-wrapped hundreds of barley bales, big training farm up the way had a team going around fulltime tacking new baits onto posts....
Is that the main issue with it?
Have got cats here which hunt
wellingtonfarmer
Member
- Location
- Herefordshire
I grow whole crop oats vetch and peas. Good feed not as fashionable as maize though
- Location
- pembrokeshire
or problem is we cant get the contractors on time they are not interested in small outfits doing eighty acres at a time we have two good concrete pits 100 x 40 this year was possibly the last time we make clamp silage when they came they were late then the harvester would not blow the grass up the spout because the blower was worn out the chap on the clamp spent mor time sunbathing than rolling the silage so quality is sh!t we are looking to buy a baler wrapper of our own but trying to make the economics stack up is difficult .yes we combine our grain crops
- Tags
- calf dairy deadweight grassland maize