so what age will they finish, and what value would they be at the end? r u getting the meat back urself? thanx, i love being nosey!
We rarely finish any cattle here, on our farm it works best to sell all our youngsters as stirks. We keep a few of the best on and sell them ready to finish, the rest get sold at between 9 and 18 months. This year we've tried selling bulling heifers and that hasn't gone well (no-one's been buying bulling heifers), so we brought the best ones back home and now will look to sell them either as calving heifers or heifers with calf at foot. (We think they're too good to slaughter, but it's a bit of a gamble - we could have got more dosh for them in the store than as breeders at this point.)
On this year's prices I would expect my little Hereford chappie to fetch £600+ if I keep him to 18 months-ish. I'm not sure what my BBx heifer would fetch but BH likes her and wants to keep her on as a suckler cow, so I won't have to worry about how and when to sell her. The Jersey heifer calf was always going to stay to become No 2 house cow / multiple suckler. If she'd been a bull calf we'd have reared him to eat ourselves - but I don't yet know how old / what weight it would make sense to take a Jersey bullock to.
We did finish one 3/4 Angus bullock for our local butcher (we're his preferred local supplier of lamb) but we don't know if he'll buy any more - we had already told him we wouldn't have any more of that type ready for another 12 months. He wanted him at 350kg deadweight and had he gone in early November, at 22 months old as planned that would've been about right - but the snow and then Christmas intervened and he was 386kg by mid-January, which was a bit bigger than the butcher had wanted, really.
Not sure if any of that was of any help at all, or even interest!