Dairy to beef/suckler advice wanted please

[driverone]

Hi we are currently milking around 60 cows. We rear around a dozen replacements each year for the milk heard and the rest get put to either blonde,blue or limmy and finished on farm. We also buy in around 80 stores per year to Finnish as well.
We grow around 80-100 acres of corn and store it ourselves. We mill and mix everything on farm too. That leaves us with about 150 acres of good quality grass land.
I was just wanting to hear what people think if we would run 60/70 sucklers either blonde/limmy/blue crosses and buy more stores per year to Finnish. Any advice and help would be appreciated.
Thanks

 

[salers]

Milk more cows?

 

[sticky]

As above.

 

[case44]

I was in a similar position to you,went from dairy to suckler herd several years ago.I wanted to spend more time with family and not invest to milk more cows.
You are already running a beef and arable enterprise so halfway there.I have no regrets about changing.

 

[Formatted]

I don't really understand why people with a dairy run suckler cows, if you've got space for more stock surely its better to specialise and milk your assets (i.e your parlour) and specialist labour (herdsmen,milkers etc), than taking up a livestock space with an animal that produces a different product?

If you want to get into beef get more dairy cows and put more of them to beef semen and fatten them up.

 

[Old Spot]

I spent the best part of my life milking cows
i now have suckers and arable, small farm well diversified
i really enjoy the cows, a neighbour that I borrowed a mag drill off said when he milked he bought loads of kit now he’s afraid to buy a bag of nails.
finacial control is vitally important, don’t try to do it with any debt
look at Stabilisers they do me very well

 

[Bossfarmer]

I was in a similar position to you,went from dairy to suckler herd several years ago.I wanted to spend more time with family and not invest to milk more cows.
You are already running a beef and arable enterprise so halfway there.I have no regrets about changing.

are you making as much money from sucklers?

 

[Werzle]

Hi we are currently milking around 60 cows. We rear around a dozen replacements each year for the milk heard and the rest get put to either blonde,blue or limmy and finished on farm. We also buy in around 80 stores per year to Finnish as well.
We grow around 80-100 acres of corn and store it ourselves. We mill and mix everything on farm too. That leaves us with about 150 acres of good quality grass land.
I was just wanting to hear what people think if we would run 60/70 sucklers either blonde/limmy/blue crosses and buy more stores per year to Finnish. Any advice and help would be appreciated.
Thanks

If you are making money with the milkers and not needing to spend big on the parlour/housing or slurry storage i would stick with what your doing. I dont think sucklers are going to be that good longterm tbh. If you are going to pack up milking i would keep buying in stores and also invest in a flock of ewes

 

[case44]

Difficult to compare directly as made other changes,made staff redundant,expanded arable and diversified but works well now.
The decision for @driverone depend on age ,family,succession and personal circumstances.
The only things I regret is not buying a trailed straw chopper and decent weighing system earlier!

 

[Whitepeak]

We went from milking approx 90cows to a suckler herd about 15yrs ago. At the time the parlour needed upgrading, we had staff issues and I had just started uni. We initially started by rearing calves and stores, alongside a handful of pedigree sucklers we had. Hardest thing to get used to was not having a monthly income (milk cheque)!

 

[Bossfarmer]

People talk about the monthly milk cheque but what about the substantial monthly outgoings....? If ur on a non aligned contract this will eat up the whole milk cheque?

 

[Tarw Coch]

People talk about the monthly milk cheque but what about the substantial monthly outgoings....? If ur on a non aligned contract this will eat up the whole milk cheque?

If that were true, everyone on a non aligned contract would be losing money

 

[Werzle]

Milk job and monthly cheque was great when milk was 25ppl + but i remember many more years on 15-19ppl and f#cking high cell counts/bacto scans price reductions. The milk inspector was 100 times worse than current farm assurance too. I dont miss stopping hay/silaging or straw hauling to do the afternoon milking either .

 

[glensman]

are you making as much money from sucklers?

Are you?

 

[Bossfarmer]

Are you?

a bit yes, not huge amounts though, it helps the grain yield too thats why i prefer them over sheep, although the same will be true of dairy