CALF_News_June_July_2021

33 CALF News • June | July 2021 • www.calfnews.net country, where the calves are weaned, grown and then sold across to the grain- growing east side to be finished for har- vest. The average breeding herd is around 47 cows; however, 200- to 300-cow herds are becoming more the standard. These herds are generally spring calving, the calves being weaned late October when the cattle are housed in barns for the winter, to be once again turned out late April ready for the bulling season. Finishing yards are nearly all confine- ment, with most cattle being 80 to 150 days at these units prior to harvest. Our biggest finishers would be handling 10,000 head per year, but the most common size of finishing units would have around 1,500 cattle. With the arrival of sexed semen in dairy herds, more beef-sired calves have become available, making up for the dropping cow numbers in the suckler herd. A ban on euthanizing male dairy calves and a growing campaign to stop export- ing for the veal trade has increased the availability of this supply. In the last few years, several integrated supply agreements have been set up, linking genetics, calf rearers, finishers, nutritional suppliers, meat packers and retailers, all coming together with a cost-of- production model. More cattle will be reared and traded this way, and I will be expanding on this approach in a later article. David MacKenzie lives in Scotland, in the United Kingdom’s far northeast and is currently the director responsible for the beef and sheep division of Harbro Ltd., a nutritional supply company. Harbro, a pri- vately owned company, is one of the largest UK direct-to-farm mineral supplement suppliers. After spending an early career working with seedstock breeders, he joined Harbro in 1999 as sales specialist and has progressed with his team to influence the UK’s beef and sheep industry. With his wife, Sonia, and their three daughters, they keep fattening cattle along- side a flock of breeding sheep. David has also continued in his father’s footsteps and runs his own herd of registered Charolais cattle. 