Iain Green keeps busy buying and selling

What a difference a month of good weather makes. As I write this at the end of October, all the cattle are still outside.

Although we have noticed that the grass growth has slowed down recently and have started supplementary feeding the cows with draff and straw, having the cattle outside for longer will help to reduce our winter costs.

At the recent Perth Bull Sales held at Stirling, the Simmental bulls had a tremendous show and sale with the breed successfully selling more bulls than any other breed in the week. Our own bulls sold to a top of £6,510 and averaged £4,520, and our in-calf heifers sold to £3,675 and averaged £3,114.

Unfortunately almost all my income was spent on purchasing a new stock bull. Although he was expensive I did like him from when I first saw him; he has tremendous growth, length, character and excellent EBV figures.

I recently sold last year’s autumn-born male calves as stores at our local auction market; they averaged £874, despite being sold three weeks earlier. This is still an increase of £148 on the year, although only an increase of £21 on two years ago. The store cattle trade is reflecting the current buoyant market within the finished cattle sector, but all the returns are needed to cover the ever increasing costs of keeping suckler cows.

Lambs have been growing well during the fine spell of weather and a recent batch sold through our local auction market averaged £79.60, which doesn’t make the purchase of our gold-plated replacement gimmers at £175 a head look so expensive.

Farmer Focus: Iain Green