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Ranching for profit

Your thinking of Dick Diven BMR-he didn't even know that cows could get rumen impaction from eating straw. Actually Soapweed by A'I'ing our breeding costs are lower than natural service. Nobody has to be anybodies disciple-but everybody should ranch with an open mind. A'I' season is our family time-never considered working cows on horseback with my kids to be work-sitting on a tractor is WORK lol.
 
Your right NR it was Dick Diven. I knew i wasn't right but couldn't think of his name.
This is a great disscussion. It is proving that not one way works for everyone. You AI and Soapweed buys new bulls every year. It seems to work for both of you. I don't do either i raise most of my own bulls to get the kind I like. Three differnent ways of doing the same thing and we all seem happy with the out come. Isn't ranching GREAT. :cowboy:
 
Big Muddy rancher said:
Soapweed I hate to burst your Bubble but from what you have posted on here I would say that you are a "HOLISTIC" operator. I haven't seen where you spend alot of money with out figuring out your returns. You make good use of your resources at hand and your pastures are in great condition. Heck you could go on the road as a "GURU" :cowboy:
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If I have done anything right in my life, it was being born into a fine honest hard-working ranch family. Then the Good Lord gave me the very best wife and working partner that a man could ask for. Mrs. Soapweed is absolutely the most competent cattle person I've ever had the privilege to work with. She can out-think any old cow, and she firmly understands the principle that "the only way to drive cattle fast, is to drive them slow."

She hit a milestone today, and finished mowing hay for the 2005 season. She has done all the mowing this summer, and put down a lot of hay with a 4020 JD open topped tractor and two nine-foot bars. Maybe with any luck, we'll be caught up baling by this time tomorrow, and can officially say we are done haying. That will be a grand feeling. :-)
 
Northern Rancher said:
Your thinking of Dick Diven BMR-he didn't even know that cows could get rumen impaction from eating straw. Actually Soapweed by A'I'ing our breeding costs are lower than natural service. Nobody has to be anybodies disciple-but everybody should ranch with an open mind. A'I' season is our family time-never considered working cows on horseback with my kids to be work-sitting on a tractor is WORK lol.
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NR, I agree with the A.I'ing lowering costs. I can breed a heck of a lot more cows than one bull can. I can't count my labor anyway. I would have been broke long ago if I paid myself by the hour.

By A.I'ing I get a tighter calving season also.
 
Mike said:
Northern Rancher said:
Your thinking of Dick Diven BMR-he didn't even know that cows could get rumen impaction from eating straw. Actually Soapweed by A'I'ing our breeding costs are lower than natural service. Nobody has to be anybodies disciple-but everybody should ranch with an open mind. A'I' season is our family time-never considered working cows on horseback with my kids to be work-sitting on a tractor is WORK lol.
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NR, I agree with the A.I'ing lowering costs. I can breed a heck of a lot more cows than one bull can. I can't count my labor anyway. I would have been broke long ago if I paid myself by the hour.

By A.I'ing I get a tighter calving season also.
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Hey Mike now your Bragging ""I can breed a heck of alot more cows then one bull can."
 
My dad pioneered AIing back in the late 'fifties and early 'sixties, on Hereford cattle. I should say he hired technicians that were pioneers in the field. The reason we quit doing it back then, was that it didn't make a "tighter" calving season. In fact, the opposite was quite true. The calving season got strung out too much, so he went back to using bulls on his registered Herefords.
 
Big Muddy rancher said:
Mike said:
Northern Rancher said:
Your thinking of Dick Diven BMR-he didn't even know that cows could get rumen impaction from eating straw. Actually Soapweed by A'I'ing our breeding costs are lower than natural service. Nobody has to be anybodies disciple-but everybody should ranch with an open mind. A'I' season is our family time-never considered working cows on horseback with my kids to be work-sitting on a tractor is WORK lol.
Click to expand...

NR, I agree with the A.I'ing lowering costs. I can breed a heck of a lot more cows than one bull can. I can't count my labor anyway. I would have been broke long ago if I paid myself by the hour.

By A.I'ing I get a tighter calving season also.
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Hey Mike now your Bragging ""I can breed a heck of alot more cows then one bull can."
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If I could just curl my lip up I would hard to deal with.
 
Soapweed said:
My dad pioneered AIing back in the late 'fifties and early 'sixties, on Hereford cattle. I should say he hired technicians that were pioneers in the field. The reason we quit doing it back then, was that it didn't make a "tighter" calving season. In fact, the opposite was quite true. The calving season got strung out too much, so he went back to using bulls on his registered Herefords.
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I can understand that too. When I started A.I'ing in 1969, it was almost unheard of to get a 50% conception rate.

Now with advanced technology in freezing, processing, and thawing semen, there's no doubt more viable live sperm that gets deposited in the cow. I have heard of and gotten (sometimes!) around a 75% conception rate. Sometimes higher. (with one service)

Heat detection is the key though. Without good detection..........you better bring in the bulls. I ain't got the smelling abilities.......yet.

And then again we never know how many times a bull breeds a cow before she concieves either.
 
Big Muddy rancher said:
Your right NR it was Dick Diven. I knew i wasn't right but couldn't think of his name.
This is a great disscussion. It is proving that not one way works for everyone. You AI and Soapweed buys new bulls every year. It seems to work for both of you. I don't do either i raise most of my own bulls to get the kind I like. Three differnent ways of doing the same thing and we all seem happy with the out come. Isn't ranching GREAT. :cowboy:
Click to expand...

I started AI'ing to get the bulls I want from cows I really know.my own.Semen tech fees cydrs and all the drugs for my program figured out to 36.00 a head. the calves I got from last year are 50 to 100 lbs. heavier than the other calves and they are on 1st calf heifers so I say it pays.
 
All's I gotta say on some of the low input deals, Follow thier advice and you can have 450 pound yearlings to,

PPRM
 
All I can say is some people need to get out and see some more of the world-I don't like the insinuations thatr low input operations aren't as honourable as others-nobodies outfit is perfect but everyone can learn something if you aren't afraid too. Alot of people complain that there is no future in ranching because your working to hard for too little-maybe some changes wouldn't hurt all our operations. PPRM as for 450 lb yearlings -the yearling sale was last week here-over a thousand head of april-june calved yearlings off 'low input' ranches. They ranged in weight from 750-1000 pounds. Now I gotta run -300 big healthy june calves to brand today-off nice sleek black cows that are going to graze out a couple months longer than most up here. If ranchers can cut wintering costs up here -900 miles north of billings-imagine what you can do down there.
 
Soapweed wrote:
If I have done anything right in my life, it was being born into a fine honest hard-working ranch family. Then the Good Lord gave me the very best wife and working partner that a man could ask for. Mrs. Soapweed is absolutely the most competent cattle person I've ever had the privilege to work with. She can out-think any old cow, and she firmly understands the principle that "the only way to drive cattle fast, is to drive them slow."

She hit a milestone today, and finished mowing hay for the 2005 season. She has done all the mowing this summer, and put down a lot of hay with a 4020 JD open topped tractor and two nine-foot bars. Maybe with any luck, we'll be caught up baling by this time tomorrow, and can officially say we are done haying. That will be a grand feeling.
Click to expand...

I am not telling you anything new Soapweed, but have you ever thought about changing your operation to maybe May or June calving, whittling your cowherd down some to where you could cake and grass your cows through the winter, and doing away with most of your haying operation?

This is an extreme example, but that is what I think low input operations should be rather than sloppy ranching like you might have been confusing it with. We all have seen or heard of ranchers that should have been out taking care of their cattle, but instead were in the bar or the roping arena.

Some of the most profitable ranches around here are the least labor intensive, and some of the ones in trouble are the workingest ones around that never miss a chance to spend money.

I think moderation is the key. You save in one area, and other ranchers save in other areas. Imagine how profitable one could be if efficiency was maximized in all areas. This is one of my favorite topics to be sure.

I would never want to go back to March calving on old cows ever again. If the weather cooperates, we could go to town and forget we owned cows during calving season, other than caking them when they needed it. We are having good weaning weights to be able to sell a calf off the cow in the fall with later calving. I would like to go a little later in the spring with our calving date, but we will see how well we have them bred up after shortening our calving period. I think April 15 or later with a 45 day calving period would be ideal here. We do not feed hay to cows other than young cows during the winter when we can get away with it. I know your grass does not hold the nutritional value ours does in the dormant season Soapweed.

Thanks for the good visit, and have a good one. :D
 
We changed our winter and calving systems 2 years ago. We used to have grass for 6 months and feed for the other 6. Then we would calve in Feb. March, and April. Now we breed for 45 days, and calve in May and June. Calves are lighter in the fall but a heck of alot more uniform, then we run the register calves over a year and sell 18 month old bulls that have been grown out on grass instead of expensive processed feed. We figure we have more $ into the yearling bulls than we do the 18 month old boys. By calving this time of the year we have way more live calves to wean too. Our Winter bill went from around $1.00 a day to $10 a month for grass lease. We don't feed any extra protein unless they look like they are needing something. Last winter it was a nice winter but we didn't feed 1 mouth full of hay to the cows. That is a heck of alot cheaper than putting it in a bale, haulling the hay, feeding it and the sometimes hauling out the manure. The cows seem to be happier than before and are always just out doing what mother nature intended them to do. Sometime we may have to feed them, ig the weather gets bad, or to much snow. But it really has cut the expenses down.
 
Faster horses said:
I think where we see the problem with the "low-input" deal being put to use is that some immediately think "low-input" means "NO INPUT". Those are the ones that give the industry a black-eye.

You just can't starve a profit out of a cow.
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FH you are a low input producer when you use Forage Pro to extend your grazing season rather then hauling hay out. Low input also means as Jake pointed out maybe running fewer cows and grazing longer. Chances are most low cost producers work at it harder then alot of High cost producers.

Don't confuse low cost producer as no management. I told Rodger that mineral fed to cows is an investment. Mineral stacked in the shed is a expense.
 
Low input ranching is putting your cows reproductive cycle in sync with your ranch's forage cycle...or 'doing it Nature's way'! It always cost dollars to manipulate Nature.

Hey, Mike...I bet if you were smelling what that bull was smelling, you could get your lip to curl up!
 
Now were getting on my page-those June calves were husky buggers today-we headed and single footed most of them with two horses to save the wrestlers and the calves. You might find this hard to believe but it's hard to pick up a single heel on purpose lol. One neat thing after we gathered we sorted the calves on horseback and nobody said a word the whole time we did it. Guess we've worked together long enough no need to kaiyai-finally had to bring up hockey to break the sound barrier.
 
Good point, BMR!!!

I don't disagree with you, guys! I hear what you are saying. We sold some of our pairs this year so we can run fewer and graze longer. We will just have to see how our cows handle it.

When the grass is dried up, there isn't much feed value in it; I can tell you for sure, because we have run forage analysis on it. 3-4% protein on average. When it is as dry as it is now in our area, we need to be thinking of feeding some supplement with it. Getting the calves off the cows will be a big help. If it should rain and start the green grass, that is perfect. The green is high in protein, the dry grass contains dry matter; that is when the calves really put on the pounds. It is better than grain, or it seems so to me.

Without the rain making some green feed, the dry grass needs something to go with it because it is pretty undigestible. So now is when we would feed some forage pro. In fact, the cows are looking for it...guess we have some welfare cows!
 
Whoa NR,

I didn't make my point very clearly, I think we are more similar than different.

I actually graze about 8-9 moths a year, some on fall stubble. I believe in watching inputs and costs closely. I also feel it costs more to underfeed a cow than to keep her up. My comment was more directed to the guys that are self proclaimed guru's of this almost no input method.

My point refered to a comment I had read on one of these Guru's. As I recall, he said the ideal size for yearlings was something like 500 pounds. It was a way to justify his methods. I say you have to have enough weight to cover fixed costs along with the variable inputs.

As far as getting out, I have been to places in California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Montana and Alaska. I have seen many different ways that work. No one is the exclusive right way, but evertything in an operation has an effect on another part,

PPRM
 

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