Steer prices

[Jac]

You are quite right Rob R, there are realists and dreamers.

For me, retired with a separate income, the meat route gives my Dexters a worth because they are expensive to keep properly. It is only by taking them from start to finish that losses can be kept under control. The few that I do, sell well but I only charge the same as the premium quality supermarket beef but some of my customers voluntarily pay me more than I ask for, telling me I am too cheap for the quality supplied. I am not intending to increase production even though the demand is there because 1) the margins are just not there 2) I produce beef as a by-product of a pedigree breeding programme and not the other way round 3) I haven't got the physical strength to work long hours on my feet in the butchery.

[Mark S]

Littleacre comments thar he was offered a 7 month old steer for £400, this may seem a bit high but was this short legged/non short ?. Have you any idea of the weight and if so what is the cost K/g live weight. This would then tell us if the vendor was asking an unrealistic price. Re cows and calves for sale at £400, these prices are totally unrealistic, do not cover costs of production and makes the job difficult for the serious breeder who wants to sell good examples of the breed at prices in line with current commercial cattle prices.

Mark S

Brereton Herd

[Broomcroft]

I've got a table of average weights at various ages, and if it was an average to good non-short steer, then at £1.80 a kilo LW, that should come to around £300-£325, that sort of region. I'm not up to date with LW prices but wouldn't think £1.80 is over the top, is it? Maybe the kilo LW price should be higher, in which case £400 gets nearer.

But at £1.80 £400 should be when it reached 10-11 months.

[Jac]

Littleacre comments thar he was offered a 7 month old steer for £400, this may seem a bit high but was this short legged/non short ?. Have you any idea of the weight and if so what is the cost K/g live weight. This would then tell us if the vendor was asking an unrealistic price. Re cows and calves for sale at £400, these prices are totally unrealistic, do not cover costs of production and makes the job difficult for the serious breeder who wants to sell good examples of the breed at prices in line with current commercial cattle prices.

Mark S

Brereton Herd

Let's say it was a short. I have just done one at 17 months and achieved a return of £968 less slaughter £65 + butchery overheads. So the cost of 10 months keep?

[ann]

This is a very interesting thread. I sell so many of mine by the box scheme and I did have an outlet for my surplus up until the spring of this year which paid me a fair price. However that ceased so I have had to find an alternative home for my surplus animals and approached one of my local butchers in the spring and we agreed a price of £3 per kg DW i deliver them to be killed locally and he pays the killing costs. All the other cattle he buys goes to a much larger abattoir where he gets a much cheaper rate killing rate, but for me to take them there would be around trip of over £100 miles and so far I have not found a haulier who goes apart from market days and I don't think my local mart would appreciate me taking cattle down to load. If the prices stay so high I will probably see if I can up the price in the new year, but as he is a reliable outlet and is very pleased with my beef I am not complaining.

[Rob R]

Re cows and calves for sale at £400, these prices are totally unrealistic, do not cover costs of production and makes the job difficult for the serious breeder who wants to sell good examples of the breed at prices in line with current commercial cattle prices.

Mark S

Brereton Herd

Beware comparisons with commercial cattle prices - at the end of the day cattle are only worth what people are willing to pay for them. If the alternative for (I am assuming £400 cow calf pairs are not outstanding examples of the breed) cull cattle is to send them to the fatstock market and get half the per kg going rate just because they're small and black then you have to take that reality into account when selling on. If I buy a cow I am looking at it's value over and above it's cull value and a relatively low purchase price and good grass to meat conversion is one of the advantages of the Dexter. If you need to start paying more for stock and/or need to start feeding more then you're erroding the competitive advantage of the Dexter over larger breeds. The result is not disimilar to the Traditional Hereford breed - you have to be pretty rich to start with them and hope you can find similar folks to sell to, as a consequence the breed remains small and exclusive.

[Jac]

If you take a car to an auction and put 'no reserve', everybody knows that it is a foregone conclusion that you get less than half price because you are desperate to drop it.

Here is the paradox, the professional farming industry (including auctioneers) see them as 'hobby' cattle. The Society is trying to move the breed forwards, offices at Stoneleigh with full -time professional staff, linear scoring, health scheme etc.

What we have now is a few people trying to make a living out of Dexters who know the cost of production. The competitive advantage is to buy up Dexters cheap - because you can't produce Dexter beef at a mass market price and make a profit.

There are too many people keeping Dexters who have no practical use for them. If this was not the case, there would be very few cheap Dexters for sale.

[SteveM]

A mate of mine works on a large arable farming concern covering approx 3000 acres, last winter the cattle buildings on one of their farms were hardly used, as store prices were higher than he was prepared to pay, couple of weeks before christmas a british blue cross steer calf made close to £400 at the store sale at beverley, with several over £300.

[Rob R]

couple of weeks before christmas a british blue cross steer calf made close to £400 at the store sale at beverley, with several over £300.

That puts the £400 Dexter steer into perspective...

What we have now is a few people trying to make a living out of Dexters who know the cost of production. The competitive advantage is to buy up Dexters cheap - because you can't produce Dexter beef at a mass market price and make a profit.

I would certainly say it is possible to make a profit and not be selling at an exclusive price. Generally what can be bought up 'cheap' is worth it's money - there are a lot of people out there with cows & no real use for them but I think it is the overall quality that drags the price down, rather than numbers. If you can turn a profit of £200/head on finished animals that's only 60 (Dexter-sized) cattle finished a year, with cows and youngstock something like 180 head at any one time to achieve a £12k minimum wage equivalent. With some of the performance figures given in this thread that should be easily possible.

[littleacre]

this really is an interesting subject. the post about keeping 60 cows etc and turning a proffit of 12k per year. that is £230 per week. has the gentleman taken into account the acerage either to buy or rent input costs ie food car or whatlike for the person getting the wage fert costs and all the other costs involved looking after 60 head. vets costs etc. ????? £230 per week for a 365 day year ????. i personally think that to make a living proffit is very very hard out of dexters . yes i am one of those hobby farmers who started with just a steer to fatten and then went onto a cow with calf and now have 32 head and a bull. yes i agree people keep cattle who shouldnt if im honest people buy theese cattle with a love story attitude that they will look lovely in the paddock of my house and 2 or 3 acres. they however do not take into account that they are cows and need caring for. frozen drinkers a big pile of muck in the shed handleing them etc etc. we do not own much land but have been steadily offered more and more grazing over the last 12 months and am now upto 80 acres. some of this is very very cheap grazing and some i will hay so i pay a little more for it. you can pick up cheap animals if you look hard enough i find that people who buy 1 or 2 cows with high hopes and rose coloured glasses are a good source to buy from they have normally bought the cattle from a good breeder and as soon as winter sets in realise that they cant cope and sell the cows at a very high loss. another scenerio is they cant get a bull into cover the girls so end up selling them. and then you have the person who has bought some land and is trying to get a house built on the land so buys some animals to make out they are farmers they get knocked back by the planners and then of course the cows must go. i recently had an email from the dexter sec of our region a gentleman had four cows and a calf that must all go togeather and must go ASAP. i contacted this man who seemed very nice but did not have a clue about the cattle. i offered him £1000. he said he had to get rid of them by next week and he wanted more money i stuck to my offer and he very reluctantly said yes. i told him to catch them up and ill come over and get them. it took him nearly 2 weeks to catch theese cattle ( he went 1 wek over his deadline) then i got a call ive got them come quickly befor they all jump out. great i thought ive just bought 5 wild dexters , off i went with my son and when we got to the field the man was there a small shed with a few road works barriers contained the cattle he was dressed very smart designer clothes posh car etc and stood well back. be carefull he said. i approached them pushed them into the shed and put a barrier to keep them there . they loaded as good as gold and actually are very well bred cows from very good breedes and very nice quite good looking animals. . my point is i paid nothing really for theese cows so yes i will make money from them . they are all now in calf and will stay in my herd and the offspring will be meat. this is how i find we can make money from our dexters things like that but if they were commercial cattle they would have been snapped up i have found the dexter trade slow down here in essex to sell any has been very slow even though cattle prices are high. i just think that to push dexters as a really viable proffitable money making breed will not be good . the qaulity of the beef and the overall cow will suffer i think. i personally think dexters have a place where they are kept for love and enjoyment, showing , and smallhoders hobby farmers and the beef is a by product and is sold one one or another to help cover the costs of keeping them. . if they really are viable as a proffit making breed for beef A why do we look at crossing them to get a bigger carcass B why do markets and butchers consider them as hobby farm animals . there is money to be made from them but not sure if it would pay all the bills maybe im wrong

[Broomcroft]

I may have already said this but to me, small cattle ARE profitable at just normal beef prices. In a costing project carried out by our vet, our figures are through the roof compared to "normal" farmers in the same project. Our output per beast is lower obviously, but our inputs are much lower leaving a larger bottom line per animal. But it wouldn't work without crossing because the output would be too small to meet carcass size requirements. Also it's not just the size, use the right bull/breed and you should get a better grade and more of the expensive cuts.

We still can't compete financially with someone who is raising big beasts for slaughter at 14-16 months and so misses out a complete winter, but I'd say we're right up there. Hope to prove it one day but I've made so many changes to the way we farm over the past few years, all the figures are a bit all over the place.

Anyhow, that's why we cross. It's obvious really, a small cow (although mine aren't small in Dexter terms) that is very cheap to keep, can suckle a big calf no problem for 9-10 months, is as hard as nails and eats zero or almost zero feed, and which can produce an animal for slaughter that should mostly hit the lower end of the minimum carcass weights at say 24 months.

A Continental slaughter animal uses is it 1.7 tonnes of grain during it's lifetime.

Stabilisers have been bred to use a lot less and I believe this is down to 0.9 tonnes I was told by Eblex.

A Dexter cross can still achieve 260+ deadweight and decent grades, grain/feed used, usually around zero.

[Jac]

There is a lot to be said about an individual's private personal circumstances. It is very easy to choose farming as a lifestyle choice when
1) You own your own farm outright - no mortgage, no rent to pay.
2) You have capital in the bank to buy equipment/buildings/fences/machinery or these were in place when you purchased the farm or you were subsidised.

No criticism intended (since it applies to me also) when the money runs out and your joints give up - you sell up and move out. If the meantime, if your asset i.e. the farm goes up in value then that's great, if it doesn't then you have lost out because you are never going to recoup the outlay.

[Broomcroft]

The project only goes into unit costs and sales figures Jac. No account is taken of personal circumstances, whether you have a mortgage or whatever. And no account was taken of the volumes you are producing. So it's simply looking at the costs of breeding, feeding, fertility and output values. The object being just to see who has the largest "gross margin" to play with. Whether that turns into a profit or loss for the farm would depend on a lot more as you say, what overhead you were carrying and if you had 3 tractors but only needed one, etc etc.

[domsmith]

I am a regular at our local market, and BB calves have been at or above £300 for some time now. These beefy calves are not bought by the weight but for their potential growth and future income. I dont how tthese dealers sell them on and everyone make a profit, but 80% of the calves sold through Ayr market are sold to dealers.
A good Angus suckling calf will be worth 2-250 easily.

also some one said dexter cull cows dont get the price either. but they do. dealers want beef and they mind the breed. i bought a cull dexter cow off a dealer last year and it cost me over £450

I am also on the lookout to snap up bargains, but that doesnt help people looking for good money for their stock.

[Jac]

I am a regular at our local market, and BB calves have been at or above £300 for some time now. These beefy calves are not bought by the weight but for their potential growth and future income. I dont how tthese dealers sell them on and everyone make a profit, but 80% of the calves sold through Ayr market are sold to dealers.
A good Angus suckling calf will be worth 2-250 easily.

also some one said dexter cull cows dont get the price either. but they do. dealers want beef and they mind the breed. i bought a cull dexter cow off a dealer last year and it cost me over £450

I am also on the lookout to snap up bargains, but that doesnt help people looking for good money for their stock.

What have they cost to produce?