Jim, we weaned in early November. Still shaking my head about the weight but at least the mid-weight feeders are in demand.
We have a couple slick bull calves that were born out on grass in June. I should take a pic, they are hefty but then again I missed our sell weight by 100lbs!
Jim, we weaned in early November. Still shaking my head about the weight but at least the mid-weight feeders are in demand.
We have a couple slick bull calves that were born out on grass in June. I should take a pic, they are hefty but then again I missed our sell weight by 100lbs!
But the time and effort and cost of putting on that next 100lbs is taking a chance of the price holding or + or -. So figure how much time and let us know if you would have won or lost or broke even.
Norm
There is not enough darkness in all the world to put out the light of even one small candle----Robert Alden . If it wern't entertaining, I wouldn't keep coming back.------the BigSky
Sam, you're birthing all the calves you sell. How many calves can you get from a heifer? How old is a heifer when she is first bred. Didn't I see you mention having bulls? You don't buy semen? Have been trying to figure out which state you're in. I give up! Where are you? Enjoying the thread!
We have it added to our protein pellet for the animals in our feedlot. It's one of those products you have to be religious with, can't half ass it. Otherwise you wasted all your money.
Any withholding or are you feeding the public, insect growth regulators? Implanting beef with growth stimulators and feeding them insect growth regulators, What the [bleep] could go wrong? This is why I buy no beef in the store.
But the time and effort and cost of putting on that next 100lbs is taking a chance of the price holding or + or -. So figure how much time and let us know if you would have won or lost or broke even.
Norm
Norm, judging by the Miles City sale they had in early November back when we weaned, we probably would have got about $1400 for the better steers calves. That is estimating a wean weight of 450lbs at $3.10/lb.
As I mentioned we got $1813(565lbs at $3.21lb)
$1813-1400 is $413 more per head.
Of course we have about 90 days worth of feed in them and figure it's $1.50 per day to feed a calf. So that's $135 off of the $413 difference leaving us with a gain of $278 per calf.
I should also add(knock on wood) that we lost only one calf this winter since we weaned which is really good. And we tried to get that calf out of the pen for a shot but he got wild and we figured he must not be very sick so we aborted the mission. Laying there dead the next morning... So death loss was basically nothing when it comes to the profit.
Time-wise all we do in the winter is feed cows anyway so it's not like we'd be doing something fun like go on a trip like the farmers do in the off season.
Sam, you're birthing all the calves you sell. How many calves can you get from a heifer? How old is a heifer when she is first bred. Didn't I see you mention having bulls? You don't buy semen? Have been trying to figure out which state you're in. I give up! Where are you? Enjoying the thread!
Trapper, yes we raise all the calves we sell.
A heifer will have her first calf right around when she turns two years old and they have a 9 month gestation period so they are roughly 15-18 months old during breeding season.
We tend to sell our old cows when they are 11-13 years old so they'll raise around 10 calves during their mature lifetime.
We buy bulls from other ranchers and all of our cows are bull bred in the pasture, no AI'ing.
And we live in northeast Montana where the living is always easy!
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