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Beef registrations marginally up in 2020
Thursday, 25 February 2021
By Charlie Reeve
In 2020, 1.906 million beef calves were registered in Great Britain, according to data from the British Cattle Movement Service. This is a year-on-year increase of 1% (27,000 head) compared to 2019.
Despite this increase in the number of beef calves being registered, the number of cattle available for “prime” beef production (dairy males, beef males and around three quarters of beef females) was slightly lower year-on-year at 1.911 million head, down 0.6% (-11,800 head).
The continued trend of declining dairy male registrations is a result of increased use of both sexed dairy semen, and beef semen, in the dairy herd. Even five years ago more than 20% of all registrations of animals destined for “prime” production were dairy males; in 2020 this was below 13%. Many of these registrations have been replaced by beef crosses from dairy dams.
The top six breeds by number of registrations in 2020 were all beef crosses and cumulatively accounted for 74% of all beef calf registrations.
Limousin crosses were the largest beef breed with 380,200 head of new registrations, despite a year on year reduction of 2%. Aberdeen Angus crosses saw the largest year-on-year increase of the most common breeds with an increase of 10% to total 374,400 head, narrowing the gap between the top two breeds.
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