21 March 2025

Research update: National beef cattle performance

Paul Smith, Mark McGee, Bernadette Earley, Edward O’Riordan, Paul Crosson and David Kenny of Teagasc Grange, and Alan Kelly, UCD, report on national beef cattle performance in 2024.

In 2024, 1.26 million prime beef cattle – steers, heifers and young bulls – were finished with an average age and carcass weight of 26.5 months and 326kg, respectively. Compared to 2023, average finishing age of steers (27.3 vs 27.6 months), heifers (26.0 vs 26.4 months) and young bulls (19.1 vs 19.5 months) increased slightly.

Concurrently, average carcass weight of steers (344 vs 339kg) and heifers (305 vs 300kg), but not young bulls (~365kg), reduced.

Challenging weather conditions during 2023 and early 2024 likely had a negative impact on growth rate of steers and heifers especially. Despite this, since 2010, average finishing age of Irish beef cattle has reduced by 45 days, demonstrating significant progress.

Teagasc, in collaboration with the Irish Cattle Breeding Federation (ICBF) and UCD has recently commenced a large on-farm study as part of the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) funded Beef-Quest project, which is aimed at identifying the predominant animal nutrition, health and on-farm environmental factors that affect growth and subsequent finishing age of cattle on Irish commercial beef farms. Findings from this study will help develop practical and targeted measures for achieving beef cattle growth targets at a younger age.

The above first appeared in the Teagasc March Beef Advisory Newsletter. Access the full Beef Advisory Newsletter here, which includes tips on grassland management, herd health and calving.