casper74
Member
- Location
- North Yorkshire
Margins are tight for finishing cattle, there are times when you think why do I bother, and there are times when you think I wish I had double the amount to sell, I think nowadays you have to be really on top of your job and be as efficient as you can be when feeding them, you have to buy the right animal for where you end up selling them, I think that is becoming very important. It's a huge risk turning up to a live market with a load of dairy bred cattle every week, some weeks they sell really well and other weeks they look badly sold. And likewise going dead with U+ OR E Grade these cattle are worth so much more in a live ring. One of my neighbours who sells 100 / week says it's an addiction is buying and fattening cattle, He's not wrong!!! I'll carry on buying and fattening cattle it's the part of the job I really enjoy, and like most things in farming sometimes you win sometimes you lose.Do you think there's a lot of money in finishing them?
We would sell half as stores, finish other half and breed all our own replacements.
We don't make much/anything on one's we finish. Have tried buying stores to finish in the past and made very little money on them either.
It's not a easy/quick way to make money in my opinion. Hats off to the guys that do it.
A few finishers round here have put on herds of cows and haven't kept them more than a few years.
Sorry to be doom and gloom, but it's a race to the bottom in my opinion.