The following article, courtesy of the Farmers Weekly, may not come as a surprise to Charolais breeders but at least it is official.

Charolais-sired beef bulls outperformed Angus-sired stock by £53 a head on gross margin in a recent finishing trial at ADAS Redesdale in Northumberland.

Results from the trial, which compared progeny from these two breeds, proved so conclusive the farm has changed its policy to improve profitability. The unit is now planning to use Charolais sires exclusively on its 100-cow autumn-calving suckler herd.

It also intends to finish all bull calves on a barley beef diet instead of sending them as steers to the ADAS Rosemaund unit in Herefordshire.

In the trial, autumn-born bull calves were weaned at eight months on to a barley beef diet over a five-week transition period. They were fed an ad-lib barley beef diet until slaughter at 12-13 months.

Bull calves by the Charolais sires outperformed those by Angus sires on several counts at Redesdale, a wet upland farm with land rising to 360m (1200ft) above sea level. Not only did they finish faster, have a greater food conversion efficiency and better daily liveweight gains, they also produced heavier carcasses which graded better at slaughter and achieved higher sale prices (see table).

As a result, gross margins for the finished Charolais-sired bulls were way ahead at £186 a head, compared with Angus bulls at £133.

But there are also other factors to take into consideration, says head of ADAS farming, Neil Pickard. "Traditionally, store cattle producers have found that the heaviest calves bring the best returns.

"The store price/kg for Charolais-sired and Aberdeen-Angus steer calves has been similar, despite Angus calves attracting a price premium as finished steers," says Mr Pickard. "That could be distorting the market because the message is coming back that Aberdeen-Angus meat is what the end user requires. To encourage suckler units to produce Angus cattle, store cattle buyers must pay more. Up to now, that has not always happened."

Best margin – Charolais
Shows upland finishing potential
Use high quality bulls.

Although there was no significant difference in daily feed intakes during the bull beef finishing trials, Angus bulls took 99 days to finish, compared with 86 days for Charolais bulls. They also ate 10% more food, consuming 1.2t of a cereal-based home mix, while Charolais cattle ate just 1.1t. This was largely due to the shorter finishing period.

Mr Pickard believes it is worth finishing cattle on upland farms, particularly when producers can make use of empty housing in summer. "But use sires with a high genetic potential so the system works well.

"Of the breeds we chose, the sire breed had twice as much effect on calf weaning weights as the cow breed. We also found that using high genetic merit sires allowed us to achieve daily gains of 2-2.6kg on a good quality diet in the finishing period."

                                                                 Charolais-sired            Angus-sired

Sale value a head (£)                                           627                                   541

Headage payments (£)                                 183                                  183

Total income (£)                                                 810                            724

Days to slaughter                                               86                                      99

DLWG (kg)                                                2.5                                     2.1

Food consumption (t)                                   1.1                                    1.2

FCR                                                              4.4                                5

Liveweight at slaughter (kg)                               633                                     573

Killing out %                                              56.3                                   54.8

P/kg dwt                                                     176                                     172

Gross margin a head (£)                              186                                133