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Sale receipts, December 2008

S

Soapweed

Well-known member
Joined
Feb 11, 2005
Messages
16,264
Location
northern Nebraska Sandhills
Took two crippled cows, a crippled bull, and a not-very-elaborate heifer calf to a recent sale. The proceeds were as follows:

1 Bwf Cow 1070# $30.00 cwt $321.00
1 Blk Cow 1105# $31.75 cwt $350.84
1 Blk Bull 950# $30.00 cwt $285.00
1 Blk Hfr 380# $71.00 cwt $269.80
Total $1226.64
Selling expense $56.20
Net proceeds for four head $1170.44
Didn't get very rich out of the deal, but at least now they are someone else's problem. :wink:
 
That price just grips my ash. I have a few that need to take a ride to town but not at that price.
Well I better not get started.
 
Derry Brownfield radio talk show host said he has a friend that is in the meat retailing business. Last summer when cows were 60 cents he was paying $1.65 for ground beef wholesale. Now he is paying $1.85 a pound. How in the world do you explain that.

But then the grocery chains were blaming ethenol for the price of groceries being so high too but now that the price of ethenol has dropped over 100% the price of food has continued to rise and they are making record profits.

What a crock!
 
For comparison's sake, last July I loaded up some very similar "lame and lazy" type cows to get rid of before the price dropped. They all had good calves at side, so we kept the calves and bought a little creep feed to keep them going. Here are the results from two different sale barns:

July 23, 2008

9 cows averaged 1280 pounds @ $55.10 cwt totaling $705.26 per head

July 29, 2008

4 cows averaged 1165 pounds @ $56.01 cwt totaling $652.46 per head

3 yearling bulls (used for part of the season but were injured in one way or another) averaged 1010 pounds @ $87.46 cwt, or $883.38 per head.

What a difference five months makes.

And then the EPA in their infinite wisdom thinks we can afford to pay $87.50 "belching tax" per cow and still stay in business. Oh wait, they really don't want us to stay in business. And then people wonder why I hate Liberals. :x :x :mad:
 
Well I just won't take any to the stockyard while prices are this bad unless I just have to. All others should do the same and when the supply gets short the price should go up.
I try to fall calve and then I can sell cull cows in June at weaning. Cull cows seem to do better in June when people are cooking out more and the demand for hamburger is up. But then we have much milder winters in Alabama.
 
Your theory is good in theory Alabama, but doesn't work here right now. There are so many folks selling out whole herds, every market in the country is busy.

Soapweed, the last cull cows I sold were depressing also. Anything over 1200lbs brought 30-40cents. Under 1200lbs were down to 22cents. Buyers try justifying it with the claim about small carcasses costing the same but yielding less and blah,blah,blah My retort is that they could pay 40cents and still make money.
 
Crippled cows get a bullet on my place because they are not worth hauling to town and I am to darn stubborn to give it to the packer to make money on. One thing I have learned from BSE in this country is we have to cut back the supply wherever we can.
 
We have always figured cull cows around 30 cents and if we got lucky 40
This summer cull cow and bull prices were pretty good. Good high yeild bulls toped at 90cents durning breeding season. Was great time to trade bulls

We have been talking about the same spread here also some of these thin cows are at 18 cents. A trucker told us that hauls them said they need the truck filled with the weight to make the trip a whole lot of thin cows still take space and still take the same processing fees without much weight. It boils down to fuel again even though it has went down alot.
The trucker also told me you can not give a big bull away. He hauled a 2800 pound bull to four sale barns before anyone would take him. The excuse was the carcass was to big for the kill floor and carcass would have to drag and be contaminated.
Barn owners here are saying good young bred cows are the best property one can have know.
Depending on who to talk to who is buying or selling there is a difference between night and day between cows. Sure there are plenty of people still would like to make you think ayoung good bred cow is the same price as a 30 cent kill cow.
People here are finally waking up to quality cows and are getting paid for quality calves a cow in not just a cow anymore.
A local cattle rasier here started up his own meat shop this summer he is selling his a ground beef (the outdoor sign said $2.00 per pound) I am assuming its frozen.
The price range from high quality balck cattle to colored long tail yearlings the same weight has ranged a little over 20 cents for the better young blacks
Next time you make it to town walk by the ground beef a your store look at it a see how fresh it is and the price..Wal Mart here is selling Ground Beef in a plactic tube where one can not see it.
 
I took a package of weaned 527 lb steers to the sale barn last week and got $91/cwt. The cattle did not have fall shots but were weaned.

Yes, they were Herefords. :roll:

Last year's brothers to these calves brought $103.50/cwt as 9 weight yearlings in August.

Things have sure gone downhill ever since. Sat a couple seats away from a guy in the sale barn talking to another buyer. Said he hadn't bought anything this year, but the market has been getting cheaper every week all fall. :x

Yet we farmers and ranchers are gettin' rich off this high priced food in the grocery store, don'tcha know??? :!: If the liberal media keeps telling us that long enough, will it make it so? :wink: The scary part is that a lot of people drink that Kool-Aid. At any rate more than we can imagine I'm sure.

Soap, those cows you sold in July were wet or dried off? Pretty good price back then for dry cows. I'd say exceptional if they were wet.
 
I was going to ad in the prevoius post about school lunchs and prepared food for instutions. I am not going to say never but harldy ever does one get beef or pork at school anymore. Once in awhile maybe once a month if you are lucky and I am sure that is true at instutuions also. Everything comes prepared heat and serve.
I know there are school boards that have members that demand beef or pork on the menu but thats getting pretty rare.

Once we unlaoded smoked hams and turkeys for the FFA fundraising program and here came a one small ham off the truck. The driver said that was for the lunch room. That next day they had ham sandwich the cooks sliced the ONE ham for all the kids in school that ate that day.
They have two lines and usually serve 120 to 150 kids per day. Now thats thin sliceing for a $18 dollar ham.
Ask kids in your school what they have for lunch or read the posted menus
Remember a Pork Tenderloin is not a Pork Tenderlion. BBQ Beef on a bun came out of a plastic sack per cut and not graded
We are getting a new genertation of people cooking thinking prepared is the way to go. Ask school kids what they are learning in their cooking class bet not how to cook roast beef or pork steaks. Those kids that learned meat is not good for you 10 years ago are the ones buying food today.
I worked with two farm rasied Home Ec (Famliy and consumer science teachers)
that worked from the book mentions once in a while beef. Rarley did they ever serve or cook beef of pork in their classes.

But boy that chicken.. chicken strips, chicken tots, chicken on rice, grilled chicken pattey, chicken strips,chicken nuggets, chicken stars, chicken on a stick, chicken taco, chicken and noodles, chicken salad, chicken chucks with lettuce,
chicken Suprise, Chicken with BBQ sauce, Chicken with gravy, chicken soup, chicken wings and chicken things ...most favrote chicken bisquet for breakfast.
 
One thing I have a hard time reconciling is that the nation has grown by 50% since the 70's, about 200 mil in the late seventies and 300 mil now, but our cowherd is roughly the same size now as then.
 
alabama said:
Well I just won't take any to the stockyard while prices are this bad unless I just have to. All others should do the same and when the supply gets short the price should go up.
I try to fall calve and then I can sell cull cows in June at weaning. Cull cows seem to do better in June when people are cooking out more and the demand for hamburger is up. But then we have much milder winters in Alabama.
Click to expand...

With our harsher winter environment, these cows that are crippled and a bit on the thin side anyway will do nothing but go downhill. It is usually best to stay current and sell the culls as they present themselves. A little money is still better than no money, unless of course it isn't enough to buy fuel to get back home. :?

John SD said:
I took a package of weaned 527 lb steers to the sale barn last week and got $91/cwt. The cattle did not have fall shots but were weaned.

Yes, they were Herefords. :roll:

Last year's brothers to these calves brought $103.50/cwt as 9 weight yearlings in August.

Things have sure gone downhill ever since. Sat a couple seats away from a guy in the sale barn talking to another buyer. Said he hadn't bought anything this year, but the market has been getting cheaper every week all fall. :x

Yet we farmers and ranchers are gettin' rich off this high priced food in the grocery store, don'tcha know??? :!: If the liberal media keeps telling us that long enough, will it make it so? :wink: The scary part is that a lot of people drink that Kool-Aid. At any rate more than we can imagine I'm sure.

Soap, those cows you sold in July were wet or dried off? Pretty good price back then for dry cows. I'd say exceptional if they were wet.
Click to expand...

They were "wet" having just had their calves pulled off of them that morning. Besides, they were crippled or had other blimps and blemishes. I was delighted with what they brought at the time considering what they were. Good thing there was enough ecstasy back then to help even out the lack of ecstasy for this week's markets. :roll: :wink:
 
Yep-- right now I can't figure out this cattle market...I just looked at the Glasgow Stockyards website
http://www.glasgowstockyards.com/php/calendar.php
at their upcoming yearly December bred cow sale...

I couldn't believe the number of bred cows and heifers already consigned...Some estate and dispersion sales- but don't know about the others...Maybe its the lack of feed in the area....Price of breds may be pretty cheap-- and the canner price has really been dropping....

I hauled a trailer load of older bred cows in this morning, and they already had 700 bred cows in the yard for tomorrows sale....
Nothing drasticly wrong with these I'm selling and would probably make some folks a good calf for a couple more years- but with the heifers I've saved and bought- just more than I need- and more than I may have feed for if winter sits in this weekend as they're predicting with the 20 and 30 BELOW and blizzard predictions :shock: ...
Bred cows and heifers might be pretty cheap tomorrow...
 
I am sick of the "give-away" prices on cull cows too. My kinda simple partial solution is to market hamburger cows to the nearest large citys. Here that is Salt Lake and the rest of the wasatch front. I advertise on local websites, post flyers in stores and have even taken out an add in classifieds. Slowly but surely i have a client base of 20 and growing who love getting a whole or half hamburger cow. I deliver the cows to a slaughter plant for my price and they pay for custom cut and wrap. I realize each of ya'll have lots of different circumstances which may not make my plan work, but i thought i'd throw it out there. Folks want to know where there meat comes from and they swear our hamburger tastes better than supermarket burger! When cull cows were higher we got $800 a head and currently we are getting $600 a head. I'd have to haul them 150 miles to the sale barn in Salina, Utah. Now i haul em' 70 to the plant.
 
Last month or the month before, Allen Nation printed something in SGF about retaining culls through the winter if you have the feed, that prices should be up in the Spring, I can't remember all the reasons he mentioned, but it made sense at the time when I read it. There were a few market factors, one I think was the liquidation of the cow herd in the South East, we'll see what happens.

I wonder what it would cost to ship the hamburger from out west to my neck of the woods, as long as the cows haven't been fed grain.

There is a "natural" and "organic" producer here that came up with a good idea. For his organic beef, he started buying culled dairy cows from organic dairy farms.

Now if I could find some herds who didn't feed any grain or corn silage...
 
I sold 7 head of cull cows last week averaged 1167 and brought 26.02 which is 20 cents more than they'd of brought during the BSE fiasco. Had one poor made cow brought 13.75 and two got to .35 cents. *0 buck a ton hay makes it pretty easy to clean house. You can trade two canners for a pretty good bred heifer if that's your kind of deal this year.
 

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