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Herd expansion 2011?

What is your cattle inventory intention in 2011

  • Increase size of cow herd.

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Decrease size of cow herd.

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Keep cow herd roughly constant.

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Total voters
    0
We're still trying to rebuild back to pre-drought numbers... we'll see what happens next, a wild card usually likes to pop up when we think we've got a "plan" :wink: . :lol:
 
I'm with Justin but our area has alot of guys a few years from retirement.Summer grass should be available.
 
This year I will be lucky to maintain the numbers. We had WAAAY too many open when we preg checked yesterday. :shock: :(

Bull troubles two years running makes for a herd shrinkage.
 
First comes grass, usually trying to plan 2 -3 years out and considering drought. We are expanding, mostly from retained heifers, and just bought a few more. Had a major expansion planned in 2009 except it didn't rain and a large part of 2010 we were pretty gun shy. Cautious growth has been a pretty good long term strategy here.
 
Modest expansion in both PB & commercial herds....altho with higher prices will be trying to pare down debt. It is tempting to sell extra numbers and cash out ....too early to tell yet if the real opportunity will lie in retaining extra inventory or in exploiting the anticipated demand for breeding stock!
 
If I can find grass expand expand. Have to watch replacement cost I'm a field rep for a sale barn in west central Illionis and good short and solid cows are bringing 1100 dollars. we had a sale the day after thanksgiving sold 250 bred hfrs in 53 minutes for a avg price of 1460 a head they were reputation stuff though.
 
We'll be happy if we can manage to maintain our herd. Keeping the wolves away from the door so we can buy enough time to replace the old cows is step #1. After that, who knows what will happen.

It's still hard to believe things will get better. We've been told this before, and it hasn't worked yet.
 
Kato said:
We'll be happy if we can manage to maintain our herd. Keeping the wolves away from the door so we can buy enough time to replace the old cows is step #1. After that, who knows what will happen.

It's still hard to believe things will get better. We've been told this before, and it hasn't worked yet.
Click to expand...
that's pretty true, 99 there was a real spike in the calf market and it only seemed to last a couple of years.
 
Will increase herd if summer hay production is good. Herd is managed to fit hay production and heifer production. We reduced herd in fall of 09 due to bad hay year. It was a chance to cull for handability, production and other traits and calving date. We are running 75 percent heifers on this calf crop so increase in numbers likely.
 
we plan to maintain our herd size but sell more bred heifers to the (hopefully ) strong demand. We sold all of our breds very easily this year to repeat customers and could have sold way more if we would have had them. I have been waiting for a strong female market for a couple of years now. Time to bear the fruits of seven years post BS>>>>E
 
Pretty much everything is for sale except the kids 4H cows until a couple issues get resolved. Were going to buy the same group of heifers as always and breed them for resale so will have 150 or so breds for sale. Got a decent carryover of grass and this winters feed bought so not in a panic to sell but don't want to leave too much on the plate if Dr. news not great. I think were just going to run horses on our west side for now.
 
I'm planting more grass every year so I'm looking for more cows constantly. Don't yet know what my max can be for my current place, but I'm definitely not there yet.
 
Somewhat unclear at this point. I am doing an overhaul at ranch. We are increasing grazing intensity,going to try and reduce the haying and grain fed. I think cow numbers will stay the same, but keep all calves over winter for grass following year and will start to graze some sheep as test.
 

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