• If you are having problems logging in please use the Contact Us in the lower right hand corner of the forum page for assistance.

price of calves and ranching expenses

T

tlakota

Well-known member
Joined
Jan 7, 2007
Messages
209
Location
aberdeen,sd
I know these prices have rebounded and look pretty decent historically but how low can the price go for a 550 steer calf before you say enough is enough? I want everyones opinions. What it cost to pasture, winter, vet, misc, death loss, and everything per head. I averaged about $575 on my steers last year which seems like a lot but heifers arent averaged in there at all beings i kept my heifers. I made a little bit per head but i figured it cost me about 180 for my pasture, 120 winter feed including hay and crop residue grazing, 70 depreciation on cow per year, vet and medicine 20, mineral 20, trucking 10, death loss 30, repairs 20....thats not figuring any of the other little things. Once you add in all those other little things theres not a whole lot left over. It was sure much more fun ranching selling 800 steers and not having any winter feed stuck into the cow herd like a couple years ago. Ive got to be optimistic to be in this business and it helps looking at archive markets and thinking that it can only get better with the smaller national cowherd and this economy will turn around sometime i think. I know the cow calf sector is hurting a bit like everything else but its tough to think of the many headaches we all go through just to make a few thousand on a 100 head. Im not the type to worry about low prices and i tend to try and fix something so i can be making money. All in all 1.50 feeders this fall would be nice wouldnt it?
p.s. sorry for my rambling
 
I haven't been watching the prices lately, how much influence has the dairy industry had? Milk prices have crashed to my knowlege and this usually floods the beef market with culled dairy cattle?
 
I think if we can hang tight 2-3 years, things are going to get real interesting in the cattle biz. Beef cattle numbers are at lows not seen since the 50s.
 
I agree it will be interesting. Since the seventies, carcass weights have increased exponentially. You can't go by #s but by lbs of beef. And SH would likely know this but, who has the animals to fill the empty numbers and are our consumers eating as much high end protein especially when some are struggling with income? Sorry, long on questions, short on answers. :?
 
Following these prices on a daily bases. It just makes me sick to see what we get for a 550 lbs calf compare to what we got a year or so ago. Two years ago a middle and large frame 1 at 500 lbs was bring 1.20-1.30 per lb. Now they are in the the 90's when most of a ranchers expense has went up and stay there. Now these prices are from the south so northern prices will be higher than theses. I will see if I can dig up some old reports from the last 3 years and post them to show how much the prices has risen and falling.
 
Well i agree if you can hang in there for a couple years ,even if you have to down size a little to hold on to what you have,it'll pay off in the near future.Some folks i know sold off quite a few of thier cattle to get into hay a year or two ago,when hay was skyrocketing,coming down now.Anyway folks started selling thier Horses and Cattle,livestock in general and now thier just breakin' even on the hay deal.Lots of hay available this year.I have'nt been to the yard in a few months,but noticed that500-550pd steers were up from 98cent area to around $1.27 last week :) bit better :-) .It'll be important to scrutinize and re-evaluate your operation constantly for awhile cutting out any wastefullness more than usual,and find things that work,are easy to implement with the available man/and women power available,and bring PROFIT home to the Ranch.IMO :wink: For myself with a few cow/calf pairs,i keep thinking i should run a stocker operation,run some steers through the grass season,direct market them through the fall to folks,or if the market is up take em' to the yard,and get rid of the winter feeding deal,but i like seeing the new calves and lambs in the spring running around the place.What to do :? 8)
 
Think about being 65 years old or near to it along with all these other
things...be glad you are young...at least you have TIME on your side. :shock:

The best advice we were ever given was in 1975 when we were
buying our first little ranch to go on our own...and it was 500+ miles
away from 'home'. A Basque woman friend told us the way to make it
work was "when you make a little more you spend a little more, when you make a little less, you spend a little less."

Kinda simple, but it works.
 
Faster horses said:
Think about being 65 years old or near to it along with all these other
things...be glad you are young...at least you have TIME on your side. :shock:

The best advice we were ever given was in 1975 when we were
buying our first little ranch to go on our own...and it was 500+ miles
away from 'home'. A Basque woman friend told us the way to make it
work was "when you make a little more you spend a little more, when you make a little less, you spend a little less."

Kinda simple, but it works.
Click to expand...
Faster,i think the nice lady gave good advice,cept' these days if ya' make a little more better save it so when ya' make less,which is often you have a safety net of sorts :wink: .
 
I know you can't go strictly by head numbers anymore because carcass weights have increased so much since the 50s but what was the population in 1959? What is it today?
 
im getting sick of it...i go through this every spring...have couple cows go down for no apparent reason...had 130 bred cows....1 went down recently which i got twins out of her she was an old cow....annother old cow went down recently, and 2 young good cows have died in the past 2 months from lieing on a little slope and then not being able to get back up...extremely frustrating on those young ones cause unless i wouldnt been right there i couldnt do anything...those 2 older ones i should have sold last fall...like faster horses says im young and i cant even imagine doing it at 65...the cows will be long gone before then....i have got to say i do love my cows and i love them enough that i hate to see some of these die on me and be almost easier for someone else to go through it...FH helped last year helped get me set up on a mineral program and i sure love getting problems fixed....i know i can fix this problem by selling these older cows in the fall before they go down hill and im excited about doing a better job there...i like cows a lot more then most people around here that have cows and i cant believe many of them want to keep doing this....thats why im optimistic.
 
It's kinda like wet saddle blankets on a young horse, tlakota, it's something you have to go through to get through it, if you know what I mean. We all have to learn, we weren't born knowing how to manage or
do everything right. Just hang in there, it's the journey, not the destination!!

Oh, and one last thing that an old cowboy told me a long time ago:
"don't love something that can't love you back". :wink: :P :lol: :lol: :lol:
 
tlakota - I know what you're going thru. I'm a young guy, trying to get started, realizing it isn't all roses. I know the sick feeling when you lose a cow or calf that you couldn't do much about (or maybe could - thats worse). Today I had time to grill some steaks in the garage for dinner, and while we were eating I told my wife I'll be thinking about that delicious steak when I'm pulling slimy baby calves out of the blizzard to throw in the barn in a few hours. The thing I've come to realize is that we pay a price to do a job that we enjoy, one where we are the boss and, on average, find satisfaction in what we do. I don't plan on being rich, just happy. Not too many people eating t-bones off the grill for dinner in this economy, but that's one of the perks of this business. Got to keep those perks in mind.

As far as prices go, I'm not an expert by any means but I know its been worse (80's) with high interest rates to boot. I'm always looking at increasing efficiency, but also trying to add some value to what I'm selling, reducing price risk, and marketing different classes of livestock at different times of the year. I heard a marketing instructor say once that you seldom hear of a farmer going broke because he doesn't know how to grow corn. Marketing the product effectively plays a big role in overall profitability.

I'm pullin' for you, we're all in this together.
 
Why is it that my cows decided to quit eating when it warmed up. Im feeding them the exact way i have all winter only with better feed and my cows are going down left and right. They are getting grass and alfalfa, mostly alfalfa. Ive starting trying to feed my best hay and they still would rather not eat. I mean they are up there eating but they arent cleaning it up like they should. I dont even want to look at a cow right now this is making me sick. And of course im in slop and were gonna be flooding here even worse this week.
 
Well I did find a link that you can look up market reports from the past and see what we was getting. Boy it just makes me sick. :(

Here is a report I did back Sept. 12, 2006.

http://search.ams.usda.gov/mndms/2006/09/am_ls14420060913.txt

Here is a report from two weeks ago. Their scale display was down last week.

http://search.ams.usda.gov/mndms/2009/03/AM_LS14420090311.TXT

Here is a link that you can find a sale barn in your state that is market by the USDA.

http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/ams.fetchTemplateData.do?template=TemplateS&navID=MarketNewsAndTransportationData&leftNav=MarketNewsAndTransportationData&page=LSMarketNewsPageFeederCattleAuctions
 
tlakota, is your hay good and green? Did you start feeding them soon enough? Are they thin? Have they been thin since last fall?

I'm wondering if you should get your hay tested to find out
what the protein/energy content of it is. I hate that you are having
this problem and something sure isn't right. We have old cows that
we kept in and now we have put them out with the bunch. They are
fine.

I' think I'd switch hay and not feed so much alfalfa. Do you have some good grass hay? It contains more energy and stays with the cow longer.
Good luck!!
 
test are very good....i sell a lot of my hay and a lot of this is 20 plus protein and 150 feed value....i feel that i make pretty good hay...vet was out when we took that calf from a cow last week and said they were looking thin...right when the weather warmed up they quit eating as good and quit eating mineral...everyone of them have been older cows....they looked good 2-3 weeks ago...i had a fluke with a younger cow laying on a hill....but it amazes me how their diet intake changed when the weather changed...they were looking REAL good about 2 weeks ago
 

Latest posts

Back
Top