Chamber of Agriculture Benchmarks Suckler Farms 

Beef suckler herd surveys have found the Austrian national average for calving intervals is too high, according to the Chamber of Agriculture.

In a national suckler herd review, data collected from farms revealed that only 19 per cent of farms had cows with a calving interval of under 365 days.

The Chamber advises a yearly interval to ensure productivity. One calf per year also allows for simple benchmarking of cattle businesses.

However, a range of 309-596 days interval was observed across the country.

Of these calves, an average of 14 per cent died before maturity. Some holdings had calf mortality rates of 46 per cent.

The Chamber noted that management and hygiene standards were more important to calf success and well-being than the scale of the industry.

Colostrum supply and pen hygiene have been highlighted as key areas which separate good farms from bad.

The study also showed that feed was the primary cost (40 per cent). Animal health and cost of insemination were 6 and 2 per cent respectively.

But, while production dilemmas face Austrian farmers it is the processing and slaughtering sector that has been grabbing headlines in Denmark this week.

One of Europe’s largest meat processing companies, Danish Crown has fallen behind in their development of its new slaughtering plant at Holsted.

A long cold winter and spring has delayed building activity by a month but Lorenz Hansen, Director of Danish Crown beef is not put off by the set-back, due to the scale of the job.

“We are building the largest and most modern cattle slaughterhouse in Northern Europe, and I'm fairly confident that not that many of you will ever experience anything quite like it again. The last time a new cattle slaughterhouse was built in Denmark was in 1972 in Aalborg, which by the way is also one of ours.”

The undertaking involves moving 50,000 cubic metres of earth and the laying of 6 kilometres of sewers.

When fully running it will receive 4,500 animals for slaughter every week, this is around half the national weekly cattle slaughterings. Hourly throughput is expected to reach 100 animals which will see 500 tonnes of beef minced a week.

Meanwhile, slaughterings in America reached 648,000 head last week. Fed cattle prices were steady with the five area average for live steers at $124.45 per hundredweight.