Last week the Irish Farmers Journal launched its online bull calculator to allow bull sellers and purchasers get a feel for what they should be charging and paying for bulls this spring.

The calculator compiles all the data of the 2019 spring sales for the five main breeds and generates an average of what different quality bulls made.

From the first week of searches at the time of going to press, the data shows that nearly 53% of all users of the calculator are looking for a price for bulls in the top third based on quality.

This was followed by 33% looking at what the average-quality bull should make, with only 14% looking at the price generated for the bottom third.

Angus popular

If we look at what breed was most searched, the Angus breed emerged on top, accounting for over 42% of all searches.

This was followed by the Charolais breed, which was searched 23.5% of the time and the Hereford breed at 16.7%

The starting question in the calculator is how many cows the bull is expected to serve, to which the answer in over 93% of the searches was 20 cows or fewer.

The most frequent number arising here was 20, which made up 14.2% of the searches.