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Soapweed I take exception.

Big Muddy rancher

Well-known member
It went to the Soapweed colum from the home page and read your posting about Kit Pharo and his philosophies. Know I am not defending Kit as I don't know him and have read only some about him.
What I take exception to is not your reason why you calve when you do and how you do it but what you said about people that calve later. Sure they might waste some time on ranchers but don't we all that post here. But because they don't calve early is going to lead to a gambling addiction ect is crazy. We all can have valid reasons for doing what we do. Some might not have the facilities to calve early, some might not have the numbers to justify the luxury of a night calver or even be able to afford a top notch hired man like Saddle Tramp. Some wives dont have the will or the ablility to rope ride and open gates like Peach Blossom (Your a lucky man). Some wives have careers that take them away from home(They have aspirations as well).
Some might like to change their work load around to invest more time with their kids, other have off ranch jobs to feed their ranching addiction.
I admire your ranching ability and your ranch and cattle and I think ranching is the greatest life going but one thing ranching allows us is to find what works best for ourselves .
 

Northern Rancher

Well-known member
Geez your own private sounding post-were not worthy-were not worthy lol. Now I gotta run to the casino since I'm not busy baby sitting my winter calvers I got money to burn-toooo funny.
 

Soapweed

Well-known member
So sorry, my muddy amigo. :wink: I would have hoped you would realize that the last paragraph was written completely tongue-in-cheek. Also, keep in mind that my whole line of baloney was written over two years ago. I do know that the weather is warming up (actually getting hot out) and I'm real glad that we're nearly done with calving.

For anyone that gives a darn, here is my rambling on the subject from early in 2004:

Low Imput Ranching
Jan 25, 2004

Recently my wife and I had opportunity to attend a talk given by Kit Pharo. He suggests that "low input" ranching has more potential to be profitable than does ranching with higher costs of production. The talk was interesting and informative, and the concept works for him. However, after much head scratching and pondering, I am not quite willing to give up many of the standard traditions which we presently employee in our ranching.

Kit infers that he can raise a calf for $270 per year, and any money over and above that figure is profit. That may work in his Colorado country, but it doesn't here in the Nebraska Sandhills. For starters, the going rate for summer pasture in this area is $30 per pair (cow and calf) per month. Whether a rancher is putting out cattle by the month or taking them in, this is an "opportunity cost" that must be considered. As summer should be the cheapest time to run cattle, the other months are understandingly more expensive. By using the $30 per month figure and multiplying this by twelve months in a year, it looks like the very minimum cost per cow per year would be $360. This doesn't include any other expenses such as taxes, fencing and windmill upkeep, pickup repair, machinery costs, salt and mineral, etc.

The Pharo philosophy maintains that a 50,000 pound pot-load of 400 pound calves is worth more dollars than a 50,000 pound pot-load of 600 pound calves. This could be debateable. A small-framed calf weighing 400 pounds might be at the same stage of his life as is a moderate-framed calf at 600 pounds. There might me less growth potential on the small-framed calf than there is on the bigger-framed 600 pounder, and consequently not as efficient and as good an investment as the bigger calf.

As a rancher that puts out cattle by the month, I get more bang for the buck having a larger cow nursing a larger earlier calf. Pasture rates seem to be the same regardless of cattle size. It seems to me that a calf born on March 1st will weigh substantially more by October 15th than will a calf born on April 1st weighed on November 15th. This is considering that both examples are still sucking their mothers by the fall weaning dates. A May 1st calf weighed on December 15th would not even be in the ball-park. I think it has to do with the earlier calf being more adapted to grazing the summer grasses, and the fact that the pastures dry up and are of poorer quality in the fall.

In these days of fairly cheap interest on money borrowed from financial lending institutions, fast turn-over is not as important as at other times. In times of high interest, the quicker a person can retrieve a pay-check from their investment the better. In other words, a big calf for sale at weaning time can sell well and bring in optimum money. A May or June calf would have to be held over until the following year before there is enough weight to sell for many dollars. Consequently more interest owed is a negative on the bank statement.

My philosophy is to always keep my cattle "saleable." In the low-input system, there is much of the year when the cows are just barely getting by and are too thin to be of much value to a potential buyer. In the event of a bad winter, this thin condition could be life-threatening. I figure that if at any time my cows are worth top dollar to a potential buyer, they are also worth that to me.

Kit says that if a person makes ranching easier, there is more time to spend at the coffee shops (or maybe piddling with the "bull session" on the internet, lol!). Soon the coffee shops and the bull session will not be exciting enough, and the bored person will be finding thrills at a local casino. Next thing you know, the ranch will be gambled away, and it won't matter what size of a calf you raise. Maybe it is more desirable to stay busy in the first place, spend time in the calving barn, and try to raise the biggest meatiest highest quality calf you can, then sell it for the most money available. These are just some thoughts in trying to justify all the "mistakes" I've been making all my life. Cheers.
 

Tap

Well-known member
Soapweed, I will save my thoughts on lower input ranching, but a saying somes to mind as far as your open mindedness on this subject.

"You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink."

I say if you like what you are doing and it is making you a good living, then by all means you are doing the right thing. But there are other options that work well too.

I say all this respectfully as always.
 

Jason

Well-known member
Soap, that was one of the posts I really enjoyed and remember well. You clearly state you are talking about your corner of the world.

I have experience calving later and it isn't for me either. We don't get green grass every year, and when we do it seems the nutritional value is not what it could be.

For a time I maintained 3 distinct 45 day calving seasons. Fall, winter and spring. Losses without good nutrition are/were worst in winter, but selenium cured that problem. Now losses are worst calving on pasture in the rain. Costs for feed were highest in the fall.

It seems we all find what works for us. Still being in the cattle biz is proof we all do something right.
 

Soapweed

Well-known member
Everyone has their own stars that they shoot for. Some of our neighbors like to fish. I enjoy fishing about twice per summer. If I had to fish much more than that, it would soon become a drudgery.

Sports in general do not thrill me much. I don't like crowds. A stock show or rodeo is fun, but anything having to do with a ball seems to me to just be an exercise in futility. As one local cowboy remarked one time, "Why don't they just buy another football, and then they wouldn't have to fight over that one." Good point, with which I whole-heartedly agree. :wink:

On a blazing hot summer afternoon, it just isn't all that bad of a job to sit in an air-conditioned tractor and bale hay. Listening to good old-time country music on the radio, staying cool, and actually accomplishing a worthwhile task is about as good as it gets.

We possibly spend a little extra effort by calving early. Some of the rest of you spend extra effort AIing cows. We just turn out bulls, and they need no further instruction. The cows get "with calf".

I wasn't condemning Kit Pharo's methods. They work for him, and they work for a lot of other people. I was merely stating the reasons why I am personally not ready to change my ways that radically. Also, I've seen Kit Pharo "wanna-be's" that just didn't have his "master's touch". The wanna-be's can turn Kit's methods into a total wreck.
 

Tap

Well-known member
On a blazing hot summer afternoon, it just isn't all that bad of a job to sit in an air-conditioned tractor and bale hay. Listening to good old-time country music on the radio, staying cool, and actually accomplishing a worthwhile task is about as good as it gets.

It can get better than that Soapweed. I posted some stories about a local character a while back. This guy runs a few cows, but I can't fashion him doing much haying. One terribly hot summer a few years ago someone asked him what he had been up to. He reported that he just sat around listening to the local radio station, and kinda moved around the house all day following the shade around. :shock: :D
 

Soapweed

Well-known member
Tap, about three years ago we got air-conditioning in our house. Prior to that, it was much more fun to be in the tractor than it was in the house on a hot summer afternoon. :wink:
 

Soapweed

Well-known member
An old gentleman retired and started to take life easy. One of his neighbors asked him what he did with his time. He replied, "Sometimes I sit in my rocking chair and think, and sometimes I just sit in my rocking chair." :wink:
 

Tap

Well-known member
A retired relative of ours had some business type cards made up. He had a few catchy slogans, but one I liked said, "when I feel the urge to get out and do something, I just lie down till it passes."
 

Mike

Well-known member
Tap said:
A retired relative of ours had some business type cards made up. He had a few catchy slogans, but one I liked said, "when I feel the urge to get out and do something, I just lie down till it passes."

I like that one. Everything you do on a farm or ranch costs money...........except.................................... taking a nap.
 

Soapweed

Well-known member
Mike said:
Tap said:
A retired relative of ours had some business type cards made up. He had a few catchy slogans, but one I liked said, "when I feel the urge to get out and do something, I just lie down till it passes."

I like that one. Everything you do on a farm or ranch costs money...........except.................................... taking a nap.

And sometimes that costs money, too. "You snooze, you lose." :wink:
 

Northern Rancher

Well-known member
Three calving seasons should catch just about all those frame 8 drys lol. Actuallty there's a widow lady up here calves about ten months a year-runs one bull on a 100 plus cows-she just sorts out 20 or so even calves every three months or so and takes them to the mart-works for her. Since BSE I think alot of people-me included got a little slack on breeding seasons-it converted a few guys to late April from February up here.
 

Jason

Well-known member
While I was out working a second job during BSE things did slip somewhat.

However in this area a drought can wreck havoc on breeding seasons.

The worst wreck I had was one year I got a batch of bad semen. It was a bull I had gambled a lot of cows on and with bad semen it blew up. I still used the bull after getting some better semen, but it sure made me think twice about using 1 bull so hard.

BTW the 3 breeding seasons were accomplished by catching cows up, not dropping them.
 

Big Muddy rancher

Well-known member
The point i was trying to make was that there is probably some Soapweed wannabe's that have failed as well. Maybe they moved to earlier calving but didn't have the facilities or didn't have the work ethic of Soapweed that put them out checking often enough. To each his own as long as the welfare of the animals is looked after aand pastures used properly. It doesn't have to be a low input rancher to have overgrazed pastures either,there is lots of guys that calve early and feed cows that have overgrazed pastures. Generalizations don't fit.
 

Denny

Well-known member
I calve about the same time as soapweed but my buildings are'nt much a 26x40 pole barn that has no doors on the north or south end.

Most guys who calve later here are more lazy than foward thinking they don't feed worth a damn and have 30 opens on 200 cows.I think a little money spent on feed would be money well spent.You can't starve the profit's out of the cattle.What works for one person won't for the next.
 

BRG

Well-known member
I am not targeting anyone specifically here, but I have heard the statement on here several times that if you winter feed you are either starving the cattle, or lazy. This is at least in our case simply not true. So here goes why we do it:

Just because you winter graze DOES NOT mean that you are starving your cows. We set 10 quarters of grass to the side and save it for the cows to graze during the winter. We then calve in May and June, and this also DOES NOT mean that we are lazy. We found out that we have a higher % of live calves, no frozen ears, and they don't have to be fed a higher quality feed during the last trimester. They are on green grass getting all they need. We do have draw backs. They milk a little to hard early because they are on green grass, and an 80 lbs baby can't drink it fast enough. It is a little hard on their bags. By winter grazing it cheapens the feed up alot for us. We pay $11 a pair a month year round for pasture. You can't compare that to the expensive hay ground lease and the fuel and iron it takes to put that up. We are one of the few ranches in our area that does this, and everyone thought we were crazy when we started. But it works for us. The cows are in better shape, and are alot happier now that when we were feeding them. We decided to go with this route for a few reasons. Labor was 1. With 500 cows and over half being registered, labor was short. We go and bid on all of our customers calves in the fall, all winter, and in the spring as a service to them. So we don't have time to feed all of these and calve them out when we are on the road helping out our customers. Plus we winter all of our home raised calves, so that alone takes up alot of time. 2nd is the cost. As I stated earlier, iron, fuel, and farm lease is to expensive for this ranch. 3rd We now sell our bulls as 16 to 18 month olds in the fall. We are hitting a niche market for our bulls. If we sell this time of the year, their is no reason at all for us to calve in Jan, Feb, or March.
 

Faster horses

Well-known member
I think you have figured out an excellent labor-saving way of doing things. Seems to me there are more and more purebred outfits going this way. Not that there are a lot yet, but Redland Black Angus out of Wyoming and DeBoos out of Valier, Mt. are two that come to mind.

You know your outfit and whatever works; as long as the cattle are taken care of, as BMR mentions. That's the bottom line.

But I certainly understand what Denny is saying too. The difference is care of the cattle. If you graze out, then you need to calve later or you won't have enough protein that last trimester and the calve could suffer.

I remember when they had this big to-do over in the Bitterroot. It was a disease they called 'weak calf syndrome.' When they studied it what they found was not enough protein to grow a strong calf. Protein needs should be met, but gets expensive when they are exceeded. These cattle didn't get the required protein in order for their calves to be stong at birth. Big mistake!!!
 

Northern Rancher

Well-known member
Denny-never be afraid to be lazy-makes life a whole lot simpler-in fact I'd be willing to put oin a "Applied Art of Loafing' seminar in your area. At last something I can speak with authority on.
 
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