Farming Eye

Steady do for the lims by the look of it only selling 75% and getting a good average but selling so few, them few stock bulls put a lot on the average!!!! Looks like the Charolais dominance of the beef sector is getting bigger and bigger!!!!

The fact is the commercial trade was not there today, if you take the bulls off that were going pure what do you have left that’s right a 4k average!!!!!!!

Good sale lims still have the edge as far as easy calving, growth, calves that get up and go and they go back in calf easy that’s commercial reality. You have to make money and they make it easy!!

To Charolais breeder I agree that DLWG might be better…..lI’ve nothing against Charolais, breed ….. but limousins take less to feed and the killout rates on a limousinX carcase are unbeaten by anyother breed…less bone….. and that’s why they make more profit at the end of the day ….. and that;s why its not all about DLWG.

id have to disagree with limoo, the best breed of cattle to kill out is the parthenaise

You lim breeders must be really proud of that bcms stat getting to bull all those dairy cows, like I said that’s their place !!

Exactly, lims to go on dairy cows to breed cows for us to put the profit makers on !!

There are plenty of horror stories with Lim bulls our vet was just telling me the other day how a lot of herds using lim bulls will be running a rolling 10% mortality so it can happen with any breed if you get unlucky or don’t research your breeding as there are hard and easy calving strains in all breeds !! We have had one out the side in the last 10 years and it was backwards and that’s out of 130 cows every year so do some research and you can have the breed that has a 10% premium on stores !!

I don’t hate lims I just think they are overrated by a lot of people in terms of commercial beef production, ppk should be ignored as that’s irrelevant if your trying to make money from beef cattle you need to focus on £s per week the calf is making including taking off the feed costs and then you would see the difference a naturally growy calf can make you without the hoppers to force them. Try it and see if I’m not right you can feed your calves like proper stores not fat cattle and have them grow into money and profit !! Your right they are too big for most farms to have as suckler cows but it’s like all the breeds there is plenty of milk if you know where to look. Not sure where your correctness comes from and it’s true they are the highest used beef breed because as I said earlier they do a good job on the dairy cow !!

They carnt be overrated if people keep coming back for more in the store ring, prime ring, breeding ring and bull ring. If they wher not producing the goods they wouldnt be so highly ratted by so many. Limousins are very feed efficent and can flesh up in no time or grow on very wel. Some chars may put on more weight per day than other cattle but ther intake will also be more so when your saying £s a week can you realy be sure they deliver dont fancy putting money into big bone. We do grow are calves on quite nicly thanks and not everyone uses hoppers and they are likly happy with ther results aswel. They do abetter job on beefer cows and hefiers

At what price do you call a bull going to pedigree breeding or crossing? I know of bulls that are over 10,000 gns and have gone for cross breeding. Do they? Ther not in the same demand for a cow tho as they carnt milk i know that for a fact. Extra months of feed, so everyone that has limys sells them older than any charolai? Yes i agrre it can stamp its bone and big calves quite wel. Its dam has to milk like a dairy cow because it needs so much milk wher as a limy can take a litti of a better beefy cowl and do very well off it because its so efficent!

There may have been an odd bull at good money going commercial but when you look at who was buying it was people with pures that were parting with the cash !! I wasn’t talking about pure Charolais for sucklers I was talking about the bulls as terminal sires. The bone your talking about isn’t the modern Charolais hence the easy calving trait that comes with that and your right about them needing milk to reach their potential but that potential is astounding where not such a lot of milk will keep your lim full with such limited growth potential !!!!

Pure lim cows is the worst case my vet was telling me about putting them to the lim and blue bulls and that was nearly 20% mortality and a 10k vet bill for good measure and we have a good few pure lims that have calve no problem. We feed our calves very little and sell them store in store condition having grown frame naturally for the finisher to hang the meat on. The thought that your lim tastes better is bizarre when we scan for muscle there is plenty of intramuscular fat so I’m sure the meat is very nice!!!! Oh and limshabilus there has been a few Charolais bulls hitting the dizzy heights of the 20k mark over the years even hitting 25k I’m led to believe, I’ve thought of a new name for you rarebreedlimious!!!!!!

Well said GM I think a few more need to do some costings and they would be agreeing with me a bit more !!!

The Charolais society print that fact in the national press so I presume they wouldn’t print it unless they had sourced it correctly. I think a lot of people that use Charolais bulls finish their own cattle taking advantage of the substantial Charolais advantage in weight gain and carcass grading rather than the show pony store Market !!!!!

The show pony store market, carnt realy say that char as you also sell stores so you have shoot yourself in the foot ther abit. Not every one can finish ther cattle now can they, hill farms that are wet and carnt grow the crops of lowland farmers carnt do it as the cost of buying in the feed is far to high to do it in these places. Never mind the poaching a char can do in the summer and backend if its wet land make a mess of a field in no time with its great solid bone. Rather have grass not a mud bath. Pure lims back to the lim has the highest mortality rate according to you, this sounds intresting since you dont get the hybrid vigour agenst cross breeding which is far more likly to course the problems. Such limited growth potentiol duno wher you get this from didnt know limys are the size of dexters now are they? Thers plenty limousins pushing 2kg and over a day which to me sounds pritty good.

I am one of those hill farms Chris and all I was saying was a lot of people who have charolais bulls are finishing their calves rather than selling them in the store. Charolais calves are heavy Chris but not so heavy that they poach the ground, ha ha ha!!!!! As for what my vet told me it was just a fact I’ve no idea why it happened to the poor people but it did!!!! I’m not sure any lims do 2kg a day I thought if they did 1.3dlwg they were considered decent!!! Youngbreeder I’m sorry your not enjoying our debate but don’t take it to heart it’s good to share experiences and discuss the pluses and minuses of the various breeds!!!!

Francis for the third time that’s not what we are talking about we are talking about using a Charolais or lim as a terminal sire!!!!!! Also it is a debate not an argument.

• Jonathan Long

  Reply
  May 7, 2012 at 2:10 pm

  I think this is all getting a bit unnecessary now guys. The truth of the matter, as several people have said, is that no one breed will fit every farm or set-up. All breeds have their place, if they didn’t they wouldn’t survive, it’s as simple as that. Let’s all just be grateful that the beef trade is on a high resulting in decent bull prices for all breeds.