The advice follows relative performance analyses, which shows that steers currently gaining less than around 1.1 kg/day on an average finishing system could be failing to cover the daily cost of keeping them, dragging down profitability.

What is more, where gains fall below around 0.7 kg/day poorer feed conversion efficiency means the animals may not even be covering their direct feeding costs.

Eblex beef scientist Dr Mary Vicker said: "Clearly, the level of performance at which stock cease to make a positive contribution to daily margins varies with their market value and system costs.

"However, on any system it will almost certainly pay to get rid of any poor doers from batches of finishing stock as soon as they are marketable rather than holding on to them and throwing good money after bad.

"Equally, profitability will be boosted by taking the best performing animals which are making the highest daily margins to the top of the market weight range - provided they do not become overfat.

Source: icteesside.icnetwork.co.uk