The Commercial Beef Value Series is a collaboration between the Irish Cattle Breeding Federation (ICBF) and Agriland Media Group.
James O’Sullivan is a dairy calf to beef farmer in West Cork farming near the villages of Leap and Unionhall.
His system involves buying-in approximately 90 Angus calves at two-to-three-weeks of age with the aim of finishing as many of these off grass before the second winter at 18-20-months-of-age.
The farms’ Teagasc advisor is Anna Sexton who is based in the Teagasc Skibbereen office and is also involved in the DairyBeef500 discussion group for the West Cork region.
She said: “My main focus is disseminating knowledge to the dairy-beef farmers in the region through the discussion group and with the assistance of the Teagasc DairyBeef500 team.”
The target carcass weights for the heifers on James’ farm is 260kg for the heifers and over 300 kilos for the bullocks.
James generally uses an average of 250-300kg of concentrate feed/head during the finishing stage.
James purchases all of his calves from four different dairy farmers. He said: “The calves are bred off a mid-sized Friesian cow, they’re nearly all artificially inseminated (AI)-bred calves.”
Better beef genetics for calf to beef system
The West Cork beef farmer says that every year, ahead of the breeding season, he works closely with the dairy farmers producing his calves to encourage the use of “better bulls, within their calving range, with a focus on carcass weight”.
“The Commercial Beef Value (CBV) is a good guide for using the better bulls to try and get better weights into the cattle and finish them a bit earlier.”
The Teagasc advisor added: “Farmers need to know what they’re buying when they’re buying in cattle. In terms of suckler production, we have our indexes, similar to what’s in the dairy side of things.
“For non-breeding cattle, we need to know where the traits are coming from and I suppose we need to be weighted towards our carcass conformation and carcass weight.
“It’s very important for the farmers going into the mart and farmers buying the calves privately to have this information when you’re going to buy your calves, because they will have a genetically more superior animal.
“What we want to try and do in those situations is reduce age to slaughter and to try and meet the market specification when it comes to slaughtering those animals at a later stage.
“It’s very difficult looking at a calf two to four weeks old with a high CBV and a calf with the low CBV and you’re looking at something similar, you need to know what the genetic potential of that animal will be in the long run to deliver on the farm.”
The dairy beef index (DBI) is an index similar to the Eurostar index being used to breed beef cattle from the from the dairy herd.
It focuses on three sub-indexes:
- The calving sub-index;
- The beef sub-index;
- The carbon sub-index.
Anna said: “Historically, dairy farmers would be looking at having a shorter gestation length and an easy-calving bull.
“What we’ve been trying to encourage them to also look at, is a market for their beef calves. So, the beef sub-index is very important in that it’s focusing on the carcass traits, on the confirmation and the carcass weight.
“We would be also encouraging them to look at a beef sub-index of plus €100 and the carcass of plus 10kg in order to supply a good animal to the dairy-beef farmer who will be buying those calves.”
Explaining his system, James said: “I buy in most calves between two to three weeks old, trying to keep an eye on the breeding of the calves as much as we can to get to better calves.”
He added that he encourages the dairy farms that produce his calves “to try and breed better quality” with a major focus on carcass weight traits.
He works closely with with the farmers producing the calves “to pick the bulls we want to use and what bulls that I’ll be anxious to buy calves off.
“For anyone buying calves through the mart, the genotyping is a great help. The CBV comes up on the board and you’ll have a better idea what the calf will do afterwards.”
Anna reminded calf to beef farmers buying calves that “it is important to know the actual monetary value of the CBV”.
“In terms of the monetary figures, anything over €79 CBV is a four star and anything over €124 CBV is five stars.
“Those are the calves that we’d be focusing on in order to get better carcass weights and better carcass confirmation.”