Brian Reidy: What does the future hold for Irish livestock producers?
Producers need to know before breeding which heifers are eligible for the suckler scheme and which bulls to use on them.
I have had a lot of discussions with farmers lately about Suckler Stars and EBI. At this point, it seems that a lot of dairy and suckler producers are extremely disillusioned with the indices being used and the type of animal they feel is being pushed upon them.
In dairy herds there are a lot of farmers very unhappy with the high EBI heifers as they enter the herd, they comment that they are too small, can’t eat enough and have far too little milk for their system. Many farmers are offloading these heifers in their first lactation and more are selling them before they have a calf or even go in calf as they can see that they will not be able to do the job on their farm.
Too much emphasis has been placed on low maintenance figures and the fertility sub-index resulting in smaller stock with no milk. This all means that herds need more cows to fill the bulk tank.
As I have written many times before that requires more land, more labour, more silage, more slurry storage, more fertiliser and more headaches. Farmers are being stretched to breaking point physically and advising them to have lots of low-yielding cows and feeding them the bare minimum is not going to be the future of Irish dairy production.
Environmental constraints and common sense around workload will not allow it going forward. The co-ops are starting to see this penny drop as they are actively trying to help farmers to push up milk solids, this won’t be done without a cow with volume as 4% of nothing will always be nothing.
The 500kg cow, eating 500kg of meal and producing 500kg of solids is a pipe dream, when most co-op averages are just over 400kg of solids and on average cows are fed just under a tonne of concentrates. Much of the concentrate is fed at the wrong time of the year and there is an over-dependence on grazing.
In suckler herds, producers are considering their options regarding entering future schemes as the star system has driven them towards smaller cows, resulting in lower carcass weights, lighter weanlings and certainly lower-quality stock with less muscle.
In the autumn of 2023, the suckler star indices were in a flux where a new run was withheld for a few weeks due to dramatic changes which made Dexters on paper better than most Continental breeds. Now I have nothing against Dexters, but who were they trying to fool with this?
Fast forward to the present day and as I write we haven’t seen new indices released since last November. Why is this? Producers need to know before breeding which heifers are eligible for the suckler scheme and which bulls to use on them.
For those buying replacements, they are currently in the dark. Most suckler producers are now part time and any that I know take great pride in their stock. They don’t want to be going home after a day’s work to look at cows that are a by-product of the dairy herd and a calf that was very easy calved but will never have the size or weight on sale day.
It's high time the producers were asked what they wanted in their herd, rather than being pushed down the wrong road. Too many AI companies have fallen into the trap too. Some dairy catalogues hardly have a pedigree black and white in them.
Too much emphasis is being placed on the replacement characteristics in the beef sires on offer. Genomics, while perhaps the way forward, is flawed right now. Genomic sires are a risk many herds are no longer willing to take.
Don’t get me started on the government organisation trying to replace farmers with their plan to breed Angus bulls.
We are currently experiencing historically high prices for all types of stock in marts and at the factories. I really hope that this will continue long term as we all need the very welcome boost.
Buyers of high-price calves need the market to remain buoyant well into 2027 to achieve a margin, while the stores and weanlings bought need to be gaining weight consistently over the coming months to achieve a return on investment.
When are we likely to see an increase in the beef price in the supermarkets? Relative to the farmgate price, it has hardly budged.
Food for thought indeed.
