# Two official cattle prices, two months apart: which can you use?

*Published 2026-08-02 by FarmAI Ireland*

Use Bord Bia's weekly cattle page for a price you act on this week. It runs about seven days behind and states its basis. The CSO series is a monthly liveweight benchmark about two months behind, useful for trend and no use for Thursday. The two numbers measure different things and should never be compared with each other.

**This piece was tested on 2 August 2026.** The full log — every source checked, what came back, and what we got wrong — is recorded alongside it.

## The problem in one line

On the same Sunday morning, the two official Irish cattle figures read €443.62 and €6.69.

The first is the CSO's May 2026 figure for **store bullocks weighing 200 to 249kg, priced liveweight at the mart**. The second is Bord Bia's average for a **finished R3 steer, priced deadweight at the factory**, in the week ending 26 July. Neither is wrong. Put them side by side without knowing what each one is and you would conclude the beef trade had fallen through the floor. It has not.

## What we checked, and what came back

Six official sources, all on 2 August 2026.

**Bord Bia — Cattle Trade & Prices.** Data for the week ending 26 July, so seven days old on the day we looked. R3 steers averaged **€6.69/kg**, down €0.03/kg on the week but up €0.12/kg across four weeks. Base quotes were around €6.50/kg for steers and from €6.60/kg for heifers. R grade cows were quoted at €6.40/kg, well-fleshed O grade at €6.00/kg. The page states plainly that prices exclude VAT and include all bonus payments, and that the underlying figures come from DAFM.

**CSO, dataset AJM01.** The newest month available was **May 2026**, released on 15 July. On 2 August that is the most recent figure in existence. May ended on the 31st, so the data describes a period that closed nine weeks earlier — and eight weeks before the Bord Bia week it sits beside. The series itself is excellent: 605 months of it, back to January 1976. It is simply not built for this week.

That gap is not a fault. It is what a national statistics office does — verify, then publish. The trouble is that nothing on either page tells you the two are not the same measurement.

## Why the two numbers cannot be compared

This is the part worth keeping.

There are **three** differences stacked on top of each other, not one. That is why the gap is so wide.

**One: live animal versus carcase.** The CSO figure prices the animal on its feet. Bord Bia prices the carcase after slaughter and dressing. A beef carcase is roughly half to a little over half of liveweight, so the deadweight price per kilo is always the higher number.

**Two: a different animal entirely.** The CSO series is split into weight bands, and €443.62 is the lightest of them — store bullocks of 200 to 249kg. That is a weanling heading for another farm, not a finished steer heading for a factory.

Price per kilo falls steadily as store cattle get heavier, which is why quoting a single "cattle price" is close to meaningless. May 2026:

| Liveweight band | € per 100kg | Change on the month |
|---|---|---|
| Bullocks 200–249kg | 443.62 | −0.35% |
| Bullocks 300–349kg | 411.12 | −0.10% |
| Bullocks 400–449kg | 375.68 | −3.10% |
| Bullocks 500–549kg | 341.41 | −4.64% |

The heavier bands fell hardest that month. A farmer holding heavy stores had a materially different May from one selling weanlings, and a single headline figure hides that completely. All four bands are now on our [data page](/data) for that reason.

**Three: a different date.** May against late July.

So dividing €443.62 by 100 to get €4.44/kg and setting it against €6.69/kg compares a light store bullock in a mart ring in May to a finished carcase on a hook in July. Our own [cross-border deadweight price explainer](/read/deadweight-prices-cross-border-ai) covers why the deadweight number is the one that follows you across a border.

Neither page carries a warning about this. That is the single most useful thing that came out of the morning.

## What else the same page tells you

The price is the headline, but the throughput figures underneath it are the part that shapes an autumn plan.

Cattle throughput was 29,688 head in the week ending 26 July. Year to date, 893,878 head — down 77,688 head, or 8%, on the same 30-week period in 2025. Cow throughput is running 11% behind. Some of that is offset by heavier average carcase weights.

Live exports tell a similar story: 263,329 head year to date, 10% behind 2025, though still ahead of 2023 and 2024.

Against that, the UK R3 steer equivalent was €7.14/kg, a €0.45/kg premium over the Irish price, and the EU average R3 young bull was €6.32/kg, €0.37/kg behind it.

## Where it went wrong

Three things, recorded because this pillar is worth nothing without them.

**Our first Bord Bia link was a guess and it 404'd.** The path we tried does not exist; the working one sits under a different section. That is our error, not theirs, but it is a fair warning that the price pages are not where you would guess.

**Two sites block automated requests.** Both bordbia.ie and gov.ie returned a 403 to a script while loading perfectly normally in a browser. That is bot protection, not an outage, and we are noting it precisely so it does not get written up as one somewhere else.

**PastureBase keeps its grass data behind a login.** The public page loads, but it is overwhelmingly a sign-in page. If you do not already record covers, you cannot use it to see what growth is doing nationally.

## What to actually do

**For a selling decision this week:** Bord Bia's weekly page, plus a phone call. Quotes move between the published figure and what you are offered, and the page itself is describing the trade, not your animals.

**For a trend over a year:** the CSO series, and only for that.

**For anything an AI assistant hands you:** make it show its working before you believe it. Both numbers are online, both are labelled "cattle price", and an assistant that has picked up the wrong one will state it with complete confidence. Our piece on [where AI gets Irish farming facts wrong](/read/ai-wrong-information-fact-check) covers the wider pattern.

This is the check we now run on any price an assistant gives us. Paste it after the answer:

> For the cattle price you just gave me, answer four things separately. One: is that figure deadweight or liveweight? Two: what exact week or month does it cover, and what date was it published? Three: which organisation published it, and does it include bonuses and exclude VAT? Four: give me the direct link. If you cannot answer any of the four from a source, say so plainly instead of estimating.

Four questions, and they are the four that separate a usable price from a number. An assistant that cannot answer them has not looked anything up — it has produced something that reads like a price. That is the failure to watch for, and it is why the unit and the date matter more than the figure.

## Frequently asked questions

**What is the current price for cattle in Ireland?**

In the week ending 26 July 2026, R3 steers averaged €6.69/kg deadweight, according to Bord Bia. Base quotes that week were around €6.50/kg for steers and from €6.60/kg for heifers. Prices move weekly, so check the source rather than this figure, and ring your factory or mart for what is actually on offer for your stock.

**Why is the CSO cattle price so much lower than the Bord Bia one?**

Because it is not the same measurement. The CSO publishes liveweight prices per 100kg or per head from marts. Bord Bia publishes deadweight price per kilo of carcase at the factory, including bonuses. They are not interchangeable and should never be compared directly.

**How old is the CSO price data?**

About two months. Checked on 2 August 2026, the newest month available was May 2026, released on 15 July. That is the CSO's normal publication schedule for these series, not a fault or an outage.

## The bottom line

Two official figures, two months and one whole unit of measurement apart, and nothing on either page warning you.

Use Bord Bia for this week. Use the CSO for the year. Never put the two numbers in the same sentence.

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## Sources

- [Bord Bia — Cattle Trade & Prices](https://www.bordbia.ie/farmers-growers/prices-markets/cattle-trade-prices/) — Weekly Irish cattle throughput, base quotes and R3 steer prices, sourced from DAFM
- [CSO — AJM01 agricultural price statistics](https://data.cso.ie/table/AJM01) — Monthly CSO cattle price series, liveweight, running from 1976
- [Teagasc](https://www.teagasc.ie) — Irish agriculture and food development authority

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*Source: [FarmAI Ireland](https://farmai.ie/read/current-cattle-price-sources-tested)*