Beef cost of production: Stores

We present costing and performance insights for beef stores, using Farmbench data.

Beef stores results are reported by full economic net margin per head of output. Farms are ranked into three benchmark groups: the top 25%, middle 50% and bottom 25% performers.

Key findings

Cost of production (£/head/day) for the top 25% performers is £5.16, compared with £9.23 for the bottom 25%
Total income for 2025 is significantly higher than the three-year average
The top 25% and middle 50% have a positive net margin

What does the 2024/25 season tell us?

For the 2024/25 season, the top 25% show a stronger net margin for beef stores in comparisons to the previous two years on Farmbench. This is driven by higher prices giving a total higher income and a reduction in overheads costs.

The top 25% performers for beef stores cost of production increased significantly due to the increase in input costs. Labour and machinery costs are the areas that have increased from 2024 to 2025.

Beef stores ranked by total economic margin, per head of output

Table 1. The 2025 beef stores and three-year average cost of production and net margin

Beef stores – cost of production		2025 beef stores benchmark			3-year average (2023, 2024, 2025)
Beef stores – cost of production		Top 25%	Middle 50%	Bottom 25%	Top 25%	Middle 50%	Bottom 25%
Key performance indicators	Cost of production (£/head/day)	5.16	6.46	9.23	4.12	6.43	8.51
	Daily liveweight gain (kg/day)	0.74	0.74	0.86	0.74	0.72	0.60
	Mortality (%)	0.29	0.50	0.66	0.40	0.34	0.22
Enterprise details	Number sold/transferred/retained at closing	69	110	40	130.60	76.63	30.30
	Total forage area allocated to enterprise (ha)	34.06	26.97	19.43	28.09	21.48	17.10
	Number of weeks housed (weeks)	24	20	20	22.90	19.86	18.76
Technical performance	Age of opening and incoming cattle (days)	260	268	320	230.23	254.12	294.63
	Liveweight of opening and incoming cattle (kg/hd)	307.47	299.23	288.44	282.67	285.49	308.11
	Liveweight of sold/transferred/retained at closing (kg/hd)	512.38	447.31	432.87	479.01	424.22	419.12
	Weight produced per forage hectare (kg/ha)	414	599	295	955.44	483.97	193.85
	Non-forage feed fed DM (kg/hd)	274.46	180.18	224.85	178.56	236.41	209.76
	Harvested forage fed DM (kg/hd)	1,012.15	436.06	602.76	597.16	526.84	822.51
Income	Total income	1,928.43	1,457.90	1,231.49	1,388.84	1,198.96	1,082.22
Variable costs	Vet and medicine	12.58	9.71	9.90	8.21	12.88	14.92
	Bedding	39.12	25.89	28.73	24.66	29.68	27.22
	Total variable costs	1,015.95	998.16	979.80	803.41	847.80	867.37
	Purchased feed including minerals	57.77	41.63	72.12	38.27	51.77	73.65
	Purchased forage	1.17	2.33	4.31	1.63	6.42	2.62
	Homegrown forage variable costs	36.73	22.86	43.39	26.02	30.15	35.82
	Total feed and forage costs	111.36	78.46	124.17	76.11	108.34	117.18
Overheads	Total labour	99.71	69.10	141.05	68.86	94.74	210.30
	Total machinery and equipment	83.08	54.99	91.46	52.69	79.42	128.69
	Total property and energy costs	23.43	15.67	40.06	17.58	24.80	51.42
	Total administration costs	25.51	17.74	39.06	17.66	23.07	51.61
Cost of production & margins	Full economic cost of production	1,419.49	1,283.85	1,521.68	1,091.81	1,225.35	1,554.08
Cost of production & margins	Full economic net margin	508.94	174.04	-290.19	297.03	-26.39	-471.87

Source: Farmbench

Understanding the data

Farmbench is an online benchmarking tool that allows you to compare your farm to similar businesses. The latest production year insights have been pulled from the tool and displayed below.

A ‘production year’ means a 12-month period which covers all financial and physical activity relating to the production of the annual crop (plant or animal) from an enterprise. For example, the 2024/25 production year is associated with 2025 lambing and calving for autumn 2024 and spring 2025.

All the data has been averaged into three benchmark groups and ranked by full economic net profit margin: top 25%, middle 50% and bottom 25% performers.

The Farmbench service will be closing on 30 September 2026. The Farmbench website will remain available to users until then to complete activity relating to the 2024/25 production year and to download reports and data.

Explore our FAQs on the closure of the Farmbench service

Beef: Cost of production and performance