What this page is
IrelandCattlePrice.com publishes farm-gate cattle prices reported by the farmers who received them. This page sets out exactly what we collect, how we calculate what we publish, and what the figures can and cannot be used for. It is here so that any farmer, journalist, researcher or official body can judge the data for themselves.
Where the data comes from
Every price on this site is submitted by a farmer through the report form. There is no scraping, no estimating, and no modelling. Nothing is generated by AI. If a figure appears here, a farmer entered it.
Each report records:
- Animal type
- Grade (conformation)
- Number of animals in the batch
- Total carcass weight in kilograms
- Total price received in euro
- Factory
- County
- Kill date
Cent per kilogram is calculated automatically from total price divided by total carcass weight. Reporters do not enter a c/kg figure themselves, which removes one of the commonest sources of error.
Prices are reported excluding VAT, on the same basis as the official Department average price paid.
Kill date is the field that makes this dataset usable for research. Every report is anchored to the week the animal was killed, not the week it was reported, so reports can be back-dated without distorting the week they belong to.
All-in prices only
The figure reported is the all-in price on the docket: base price plus any breed bonus, in-spec, weight, age or grade bonuses actually paid. It is not the base quote.
This matters. A factory's advertised base quote and the money a farmer is paid are two different numbers, and the difference is mostly bonuses. Comparing a farmer's all-in price to a base quote measures the specification of that animal, not the factory's generosity. We never make that comparison and we would ask others not to make it with our data either.
Where we compare our figures to the official DAFM average price paid, we are comparing all-in to all-in — the same basis on both sides.
What we publish
We publish aggregates. Individual reports are never published, shown or shared.
The current published outputs are:
- The range of reported prices for the week — highest, lowest, and the gap between them
- The number of reports received and the number of counties represented
County-level averages will be published only when the number of reports in a county is high enough that no individual report can be identified from them, and high enough to mean anything. We would rather publish nothing than publish a county average built on two reports.
Prices move every week
Cattle prices change week to week. Any figure on this site belongs to the week it was reported and should be read that way. There is no such thing as a meaningful season-long or multi-week average price, and we do not publish one.
What does hold up over time are relative measures, and these are what we track:
- The gap between the base quote on the board and what farmers report being paid
- The gap between farmer-reported prices and the official DAFM average, once it is published
The two-week lag
The official average price paid for cattle killed in a given week is not published until roughly two weeks later. That is not a criticism of anyone — it is how the reporting cycle works. But it means the confirmed figure arrives after the farmer has sold, and after the week it describes has ended.
Farmer reports on this site are same-week. That is the entire reason the site exists.
Limitations — read this before using the data
- Reports are self-reported and are not individually verified against factory dockets. We cannot audit them, and we do not claim to.
- Reports are a self-selected sample of farmers who choose to submit. They are not a random or statistically representative sample of Irish cattle sales.
- Report numbers are still building. Weeks with few reports produce a wide, noisy range. We publish the report count alongside every figure so the reader can weigh it.
- Bonus schedules are not standardised between factories, so two farmers with identical animals can be paid differently for reasons that are legitimate and not visible in the data.
- Carcass classification in Ireland is carried out by mechanical grading machines under Department supervision. We make no claim that grading is manipulated. The point we do make is that the farmer is not present when it happens.
Obvious errors
Reports that are arithmetically impossible — a carcass weight or a total price that cannot correspond to the number of animals entered — are excluded. Exclusions are made on that basis only. We do not remove a report because the price looks high or low; an unusual price is often the most useful report we get.
Anonymity
No name, herd number, address or contact detail is attached to a price report. Reports cannot be traced back to the farmer who submitted them, and we will not publish anything at a level of detail that would allow a farmer to be identified.
Use by researchers and educators
The data is available free of charge to universities, colleges and researchers working on beef price. Contact us and say what you need.
Corrections
If you spot an error on this site, tell us and we will fix it and say that we did.
Last updated 25 July 2026.