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How many head per acre?

S

steerguy1

Member
Joined
Mar 7, 2016
Messages
8
Location
Texas
So my family has 82 acres in north texas. We have not yet purchased any cattle but are considering angus.

2 acres are set aside for our home and storage, and will be grazing the remaining 80 acres for a small commercial cattle operation. Without having to lease additional land, although we may well have to eventually...what number of cattle can we realistically turn a modest profit with these 2 scenarios:

1) steers only, buying/replacing steers

2) cow/calf

I have heard typical is 1 head per 2 acres?
This of course doesn't account for if we grass farm some of the acreage, and all other overhead costs, including supplemental bale feeding.

thanks!
 
I live in very productive country, where hay meadows cut 3 ton an acre of native grass. I can't run 1 pair on 2 acres, 3 acres a pair is what I can do. 5 miles away it may take 12 to 15 acres a pair. Only someone very familiar with your location can give stocking rate advise. From the little of Bit of Oklahoma and Texas I have seen I would have guessed 15 to 20 acres a pair. But I am not familiar with your location.
 
Yeah, up in the rocks and brush is way different than bottom grass. Are we talking Paris or perryton?

Also, if you're grazing steers, look into mig. Your grass is going to dictate your grazing program. For example the fantastic grass in the flint hills is shallow to rock. Once the rains slow down, the grass gets hard - solution: stock up to utilize the grass in the rainy 90 days (April, May, June) then let it recover the rest of the year.

Depending on your location, over time you could learn to use your grass to buy odd lot calves, and put together even pens. Upgrade cattle. That might be a ways off for you.
 
I'm at 6 acres per cow per year but that's raiseing hay and a 100 acres of corn silage which we all know is free to raise according to the COWBOYS in my area. They should plant a 100 acres and tell me how FREE it is. We do it as it works very well with lowground meadow hay.
 
Thanks yall. One more question...
if we were NEVER to grow our own grass, but rather, feed cattle with only bought feed bales year-round, could we still successfully profit by running a steer or cow/calf operation, or is that an unrealistic unprofitable business plan?
 
I've heard of hay costing over $200 / ton in Texas in the past. I know I couldn't put $1,200 worth of feed into a cow and expect to stay in business.
 
Silver said:
I've heard of hay costing over $200 / ton in Texas in the past. I know I couldn't put $1,200 worth of feed into a cow and expect to stay in business.
Click to expand...

Here on the panhanle standard size large hay bales of many different types of quality grasses are selling locally as low as $45 per bale including free delivery.
 
steerguy1 said:
Silver said:
I've heard of hay costing over $200 / ton in Texas in the past. I know I couldn't put $1,200 worth of feed into a cow and expect to stay in business.
Click to expand...

Here on the panhanle standard size large hay bales of many different types of quality grasses are selling locally as low as $45 per bale including free delivery.
Click to expand...

So now you are looking at $450 minimum to feed a cow, just for the hay. I'm sure the price of hay can fluctuate there like it does everywhere else. The cattle market has a tendency to fluctuate as well, as I'm sure many fine folks on here could attest to :wink: I guess you need to decide if you think there is enough money in it for you to make it viable.
 
Here we run 10 acres/pair through the grazing season, but we head to corn stalks over the winter and spring. Continuous grazing would require decreasing our stocking density significantly.
 
6 meters of water a year . That is roughly 3ft 3inches by 6, or 19 foot 6 inches of rain a year fairly evenly distributed over the year and I run 1 adult cow per 2 acres all year round .No more or the grass suffers and the weeds come through.
 

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