Sustainable and Profitable Beef – The Key Drivers

By John Galvin, B&T Drystock Adviser, Teagasc, Galway/Clare

The Teagasc National Beef Conference 2022 took place at the shearwater hotel Ballinasloe amidst freezing conditions experienced earlier in mid-December 2022. “Profitable Pathways to Sustainable Beef Farming” was the theme of the conference set against the increasing challenges posed by increasing input prices and pressure to reduce agricultural emissions by 25% before 2030.

Beef production in Ireland is predominantly from spring-calving suckler beef and dairy herds, with the primary aim to align the calving date with the commencement of the grazing season and take advantage of the relatively low production cost of grazed grass as compared with grass silage and concentrate feeding that are 2.5 and 4 times more expensive respectively. The two main drivers of profit and efficiency are age at first calving for suckler calf to weanling systems and optimising live weight performance (Average Daily Gain/ADG) for suckler weanling-to-beef systems.

Live Weight Performance:

Live weight performance or ADG is influenced by a number of factors such as feed availability and quality, animal health and genetics. Grazed grass supplies the main dietary component, so therefore providing long grazing seasons of high quality pasture is key in delivering the maximum ADG most efficiently. ADG targets for the first winter feeding period are based on optimising compensatory growth during the following grazing season. Research at Teagasc grange has shown that a live weight gain target of 0.5 to 0.6 kg/day for spring born beef cattle over the first winter is the economic optimum. Ad-lib silage of 70-72 dry matter digestibility (DMD) along with 1-1.5kg of concentrates will deliver this. A proportion of early maturing breeds such as angus/Hereford will be suitable for slaughter at the end of the second grazing season. The larger continental breeds are generally finished indoors towards the end of the second winter following a diet of high quality grass silage (≥72DMD) and up to 5kg of concentrate feed. Alternatively they can be stored similar to the first winter and finished during the third grazing season.

The roles of animal health and genetics are also showing great improvements in animal performance. With increased use of genetics and improved breeding there has been continual progress in live weight performance of the national beef herd over the past 10 years that has resulted in achieving increased carcass weights and reduced age at slaughter (see graph 1).

Graph 1. (Source: Paul Crosson Teagasc Grange, Teagasc Beef Conference 2022)

Age at First-Calving for Suckler Beef Cows:

Nationally, only 24% of beef heifers calve for the first time between 23 and 26 months of age (ICBF 2022), whilst the top 10% of commercial suckler enterprises consistently and effectively calve within this time frame. Indeed the average calving age remains static at 31 months over the past 10 years. This means that over 75% of the national suckler herd are unproductive for a year longer than they should be; consuming 65% more grass, 96% more silage and 33% more concentrates. The main reasons that some farmers give for not calving at 2 years are that the heifer will not reach mature weight, will be difficult to get back in-calf, will have greater calving difficulty and will not last in the herd. These are all valid concerns but can be discounted quite substantially from the data collated by ICBF as illustrated in table 1.

Table 1. Age at first-calving and lifetime suckler cow performance ¹

¹ Replacement heifers born in 2011 (131,077) Source: ICBF

The key to calving at 2 years of age is strongly interlinked with the previous paragraph, achieving good live-weight performance or good growth rates; pre-weaning (≥1.2kg/day) and post-weaning/first winter (0.5-0.6kg/day). Heifers need to weigh 380-420kg at breeding and 550-600kg at calving depending on breed type and should be bred from the top cows in the herd. They need to be mated with an easy calving sire of less than 8% calving difficulty with 80% reliability and be given preferential treatment and penned separately from mature cows. The main effect of reducing age at first-calving for suckler herds is to reduce the costs associated with rearing replacements, particularly feed costs. Analysis was carried out based on a 40 hectare spring calving suckler calf to weanling system to assess the economic and environmental benefit between 24 month and 36 month calving. The results yielded a net margin of €152/cow if calving at 24 months v’s €38/cow if calving at 36 months, a 75% difference and 11.2kg CO2eq/kg versus 12.7kg CO2eq/kg live-weight respectively.

In summary the objective of Irish beef systems is to maximise live weight performance at the least cost. There has been excellent progress in both increasing live-weight gain and reducing age at slaughter over the past 10 years. However with progress being less evident in reducing the age at first calving over the same period there is substantial scope to make gains on this and both from an economic and environmental perspective it is crucial that suckler farmers make this a priority focus.