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replacement heifers vs. older cows

T

tlakota

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Jan 7, 2007
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209
Location
aberdeen,sd
I sold all of my steer calves last week and was very satisfied with what i got for them. I kept about 50 heifers back and are all very high quality. That short term market around here is looking pretty cheap. Recently i have had very good luck with those older cows that come from west river. My heifers should average about 600 a piece if i sold them. I could pick up some short term cows for 550 to 650. I am very picky on what cows i would buy. What would any of you suggest. I could invest that money from my heifer calves into short term cows and have a calf born next spring. Its a tough decision for me because im trying to build my herd at the same time, but financial sense tells me to dump the heifer calves.
 
I would keep the heifers. If they are worth 600 dollars now and you keep tham a year and breed them next year at this time they should be worth 1200. If you buy the cows and calve them out and sell the calves for 600 dollars next year and then sell the cow for 600 the pairs are still worth the same as the heifers that you kept. The pairs are also going to eat alot more feed than those heifers. Plus you know your heifers and you still have the option of keeping them for the long haul and it sounds like that is what you want to do anyway.
 
I'm with Andy. With your replacement heifers, you know what you have and that's the way to go since you are trying to build numbers. Besides, your own cows get old fast enough without adding a bunch of old gummers to the herd. Old cows are okay for a short term plan, your own replacements are the way for your long term goals.
 
It just depens on your situation, personally I would dump the heifers buy older heavy bred cows and save the time. Even if you bought broke mouth cows at weighing price and in 6-8 months you have a calf to sell and maybe a bred cow if not you have her at weighing price and you get your money back on the cow plus the money from the calf. Then after a yr or two of this you can just go buy replacements or raise your own. Always seems to me there is just too much time that heifers are not making you any money that it doesn't seem to be eco to keep them. JMO
 
Everyone has a different opinion. Here's mine. With bred cows you will get a calf in the next few months. Not having to pump in near the pasture and feed and will have a calf to sell in the fall. With heifers you'll have to wait until the next fall to ever start to see a profit. For about 4 years due to higher calf prices in this area we sold everything and just bought cows. If you look around enough and are truely honest most places you can find just as good of cattle as a person can raise. I know I know it's hard to admit because we all think we raise the best cattle.
 
Seems to me, all my life it has been said that it is better to buy old cows and sell the heifer calves. But I notice the good herds have been built on selecting your own replacement heifers.

Soapweed brought up a good point a couple of years ago...he sold cows and kept heifers as he could use Capital Gains against the cows and the heifers would be ordinary income. There is a tax advantage to doing that; but I don't think that works buying cows one year and selling them the next. I think you have to keep those cows for 2 years in order to do that.

If you are careful when buying old cows you should be able to get more than one year out of them. I know the old cows we have sold, those that bought them got 3 or 4 years out of them.

So, it is really up to you and if you want to take a chance on having some problem cows or wait and calve heifers. There will be some problems with those old cows, most likely. Bags, disposition, etc.

Good luck!!
 
Some times even though an old broken-mouthed cow looks hale and hearty when you buy them in the fall, they stand a chance of going down when the weather gets tough. One of the most satisfying parts of ranching is watching the little heifer calves that you "planned," get weaned, become replacement heifers, and then turn into home-raised one-brand cows to go on and have "children" of their own.
 
Why not select half of the hiefers and keep those for replacements or to build the herd. Sell the other half and buy bred cows. That way you are balancing out long term goals and still improving short term cash flow.
 
Shorthornguy said:
Why not select half of the hiefers and keep those for replacements or to build the herd. Sell the other half and buy bred cows. That way you are balancing out long term goals and still improving short term cash flow.
Click to expand...

That sounds like good advice. Don't put all the eggs in the same basket. :wink:
 
I'm a bit bewildered as to the 'extra' costs involved in developing a heifer-the only difference between the spays we run on grass and the breds are the breeding costs. Our bred heifers brought close to $400 more than the grass heifers this year (most years in fact). Short term cows are a crap shoot especially if the market bites you.
 
Boy a lot of you brought up good points and mine is in there somewhere with a lot of you.
First keep your heifers...........you know what they are.
Be on the lookout for extrem quality cows that are solid mouth, if you can pick these up and then either decide to sell a few or keep the cows and the heifers if you got the feed.
Then next year you could make the decision of what to sell
It would be hard to part with the top of the tops of the heifers, so I think I would guard those.

Buy Low, Sell High
 
With the quality of hay you raise I would bet the only other input's you would need is salt and mineral.

Here's what you would get if you bought my older/cull cow's.

1.Raises a small calf

2.Bad temperment

3.Bad Bag

4.Bad feet

5.Fence Crawler

6.Old

Basically you would get the 10 or 20 worst cows I own knowone sell's a very productive cow unless she's about washed up.

Why not run the heifers thru on hay,turn a bull with them for 21 day's preg them sell the open's which will be a hot ticket and keep the best early matureing heifers for cow's.

We have TB in The state of Mn now so buying cows would scare the heck out of me also alot of cows have Johnes Disease something else you don't want if you can avoid it.

I got to thinking the most productive cow/calf herd's here are all derived from home raised heifers.The guy's who buy salebarn junk have just that.If I were to buy cows they would be 2nd or 3rd calvers in one big draft all from the same ranch preferablie a dispersion

Also buying say 30 short term cows imagine how uneven the calf crop will be I would bet they would calve from Feb till june and every color under the rainbow.
 
i am curious....what do u guys figure for developing heifers on straight grass hay. Thats all ive done for last couple years and seems like they surn burn through it. 1400 lb bale for 47 of them 550 pounders last a day. Get into the winter farther they will be eating just as much as the cows. I just feed in a big homemade bale feeder, is they any suggestions to limit waste?
 
I AI my registered cattle and a good majority of my commercial cows, so those heifers get pretty valuable to me when they turn out nice. In my mind some of those cattle are pretty hard to replace when you know the cow is good and is bred by a better bull than I could afford to buy. Like Soapweed said, you get some satisfaction in seeing what those cattle turn out like after all the work you put into them.

I have also bought sale barn cows the last few years to try and build my numbers, but I don't have soft spot for them. They are criticized harshly when it comes to cull. But I have also picked up some real good cows, that it is hard to fault.

I think the idea of selling off the bottome end of the heifers and replacing them with bred cows is a pretty good idea. THat way you can up your numbers a little more this year, and not get too much time tied up in all those heifers
 
We sold our Limo cross heifers for about $700 this year. We kept about 45 heifers last year and bought 21 more last week. The ones we bought weighed 1030#, were all BWF with black around the eyes, bred to Angus to calf in February and March. They cost $1,000 apiece.

There are some folks that sell pretty good heifers. We do not keep any heifer out of a Limo bull. Horses aren't fast enough.
 
As I read the posts it seems the majority aren't for buying short term cows. I guess it makes me ponder how do you keep a heifer you would get around 750 dollars for and feed her for two years and think that makes money?

I think part of the key of buying short term cows is knowing where they came from. We lucked out and a very reputable breeder was selling his cows and let us go and pick out what we wanted before he went to the salebarn. I suppose the clarification is in the fact we didn't buy crap short term cows. We bought a good deal and maintained our cow herd while watching our cash flow flow with the selling of the heifers. Bought the cows in January they calved in March. Weened off nice calves in October and instant gains.

On years when heifers are low I'm all for keeping our own.

Just my opinion.
 

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