Beef / Lamb & Pig Price Tracker

Frank-the-Wool

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
East Sussex
Any business that sells a product by weight has to have its scales checked and calibrated at least annually. They are open to inspection by Trading Standards in what was weights and measures.
All market scales that are using weight for selling stock by the kilo should have a sticker on the scales or near to them with the date of the last test. Some of the older markets that sell by the "head" only use scales as a guide so are not required to calibrate annually.

However in some areas it was "tradition" to round down the weights. This is probably illegal if you are using calibrated scales.
Some older scales that do not automatically tare could also be set to a lower starting weight for zero. This was acceptable when you were weighing product inside a container. You used the weight of the container as the tare.

Most modern markets now use electronic scales with digital readouts so there should be no room for errors except where the booking clerk still uses a calculator to divide by the number of animals. I do understand there may be markets in the outer reaches of the country that may have a bent abacus.

On the issue of weighing livestock and losing or gaining weight, any lamb weighed in the afternoon I would subtract around 2kg from the expected morning liveweight and cattle could be up to 20kg on grass. Obviously animals on ad lib feed will be more.
 

Al R

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
West Wales
Any business that sells a product by weight has to have its scales checked and calibrated at least annually. They are open to inspection by Trading Standards in what was weights and measures.
All market scales that are using weight for selling stock by the kilo should have a sticker on the scales or near to them with the date of the last test. Some of the older markets that sell by the "head" only use scales as a guide so are not required to calibrate annually.

However in some areas it was "tradition" to round down the weights. This is probably illegal if you are using calibrated scales.
Some older scales that do not automatically tare could also be set to a lower starting weight for zero. This was acceptable when you were weighing product inside a container. You used the weight of the container as the tare.

Most modern markets now use electronic scales with digital readouts so there should be no room for errors except where the booking clerk still uses a calculator to divide by the number of animals. I do understand there may be markets in the outer reaches of the country that may have a bent abacus.

On the issue of weighing livestock and losing or gaining weight, any lamb weighed in the afternoon I would subtract around 2kg from the expected morning liveweight and cattle could be up to 20kg on grass. Obviously animals on ad lib feed will be more.

Frank you may well know this but many others on here may not. It’s as much as an offence to overweight as it is to underweigh!

When I used to buy a lot of fertiliser I would always buy per load and not per bag as I’ve seen plenty of 970kg bags and plenty of 1025kg bags. Lorries weighed before pickup and after, so don’t take things as gospel if your calibrating bags of fert/seed...
 

Henarar

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Somerset
Frome young stores today same old story that I had seen at sedge this winter if they had good size and shape for their age they were selling quite well anything else is heavily discounted
 

ISCO

Member
Location
North East
Frank you may well know this but many others on here may not. It’s as much as an offence to overweight as it is to underweigh!

When I used to buy a lot of fertiliser I would always buy per load and not per bag as I’ve seen plenty of 970kg bags and plenty of 1025kg bags. Lorries weighed before pickup and after, so don’t take things as gospel if your calibrating bags of fert/seed...
I've heard of a few people when starting to use fertilizer spreaders with weigh cells who thought their new fert spreader was wrong only to find out the bags were not all 600kg which was causing the problem.
 

hill farmer

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
breconshire
Never taken anything there, plenty of buyers there?
4-5 buyers there, used to be another one or two. Lot of good lambs.
We didn't have a bad trade for our type of lambs a yr or two back ( mainly hill tups and small ewe lambs) but this yr and last they have been better on the dead, lights still go live there though.
Son took some today 35.5kg chev/Welsh tups made £68, 39kg made only £70(better at f fresh),
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

  • 0 %

    Votes: 79 42.9%
  • Up to 25%

    Votes: 63 34.2%
  • 25-50%

    Votes: 30 16.3%
  • 50-75%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 75-100%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 100% I’ve had enough of farming!

    Votes: 6 3.3%

Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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  • 1
As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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