More Northern Ireland cattle are hitting a target weight of 280-380kgs. This is the second year in a row of improvement.
Figures published by the LMC in their bulletin this week show that farmers are getting more prime cattle than ever into the ideal weight specification. Factories adopted a penal discounting policy at the start of last year on cattle that didn’t hit the specification spot on Quality Assurance, weight, number of farm residencies and, in many cases, age of either 30 or 36 months. For speciality breeds, the specifications were even tighter.
Quality Assurance is now universally accepted, if not completely loved, in the north, with over 99% of prime cattle slaughtered covered by the scheme. Weights of cattle have been tending to creep upwards and it has become something of a problem in Scotland where average carcase weights increased to over 360kg in 2014. In NI, the most up to date average figures show that steers came in at 353kg and heifers at 318kg during year to date 2015 (May) compared with 351kg and 313kg respectively a year earlier.
More importantly, almost 70% of cattle are now hitting the ideal weight specification, considered to be 280-380kgs. This is up from 68% last year, which in turn was an increase from 65% hitting the spec in 2013. This significant year on year improvement may have been driven by harsh penalties, but there is no denying that NI prices relative to the other UK regions have improved substantially over recent times.
More cattle in Great Britain (GB) meeting top markets specification was regularly offered by factories as an explanation for the large price differential between NI and GB. Even with prices falling in recent times, NI prices have been close or even ahead of the rest of the UK
(Source – Irish Farmers Journal – Phelim O Neill – 06/06/2015)