Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Beef prices are headed up.

Heard it was awful dry down south. TX and OK wheat crop needs a drink?

Yep and California is washing away.

Fred

Hope my MIL has a canoe....grin



FWIW, I think decent alf/grass mix is going for about $100 ton delivered(depending). Straw is about half that, good wheat crop so there was alot of nice straw.

Rolled out a chitload of bales this Winter!

Rock Chuck I hear they are shipping hay out of the Platte Valley to dairies as far away as Ohio..... Hard to compete with the price those guys will pay.

you got in cheap . today at the sale barn I seen a cut of red 553 lb steers bring $1.5850


for all you ethanol haters , the price of grain ain't whats driving this market. this is supply driven , export driven , old average age of ranch operators driven , many years of piss por returns driven , and a whole lot of other factors .


you can get alfalfa/grass mix round bales in eastern Dakota for around $60 a ton fob the farm


Sam......big ol snowdrifts and subzero temps is why you wanna switch from March calving to LATE April(grin)

"Washes out" is the operational phrase. Todays highs will bring extreme lows in the future as ranchers dump their cattle because of high feed (corn) prices.
Ethanol isn't the entire reason for this but it certainly makes no sense to turn your food into a poor additive to fuel. We are crazy to do this. High food and limited supply were the genesis of much of the unrest in the middle east.

Ethanol isn't a player in the corn prices. Most of that stuff is bought thru contract and not on the open market.
Paving over good farm ground for houses and shopping centers, combined with miserable weather nationwide for crops, a growing population world wide, and food is going to get expensive.
Ranchers aren't dumping their cattle because of high feed prices. Many of us are close to retirement and can sell off the cows and get everything paid off. Then lease the grass out and take a little time to smell the roses..
Beef numbers are down due to the fewer numbers of cattle by drought, foreclosure and loss of public land leases, and the ever encroaching land developers.. Buy a ranch smuch it up with houses, and those ol cows that lived there go to the local Arby's.
But don't worry it's not been that many years ago we sold 5 weights for a buck and a quarter then turned around and had to nosale the next years bunch at 50 cents. It'll happen again and due to the dummies paying these high prices the banks will be in a crunch credit will get tight and our prices will be in the tank again, but the prices you pay at the grocery store likely won't reflect what the guy that's producing the raw product is getting..

Yes I agree about ethanol, but it doesn't help matters when you are diverting food to fuel. Plus there is a new loss in BTU's when you make it. According the alternative fuels website, it take 98,000BTU's to make one gallon of ethanol which yields 76,000 BTU's. That is a net loss of 22,000. On the other hand, a gallon of gas gives you 114,000 BTU's and it taken 7,000 BTU's to make it. Not to mention the huge amount of water needed to make ethanol - so much so that water is being trucked in because small towns are afraid of the status of their aquifers. Not to mention again, that we have subsidized this lunacy to the tune of $6.6 billion dollars in the last 20 years. AND IT STILL CANT STAND ALONE IN THE MARKET!!!
ARE WE STUPID OR WHAT?!?!?!?

Steers I bought back in late May (400-450 lbs) for $0.95/lb sold last week for an avg $1.23 (avg 700 lb); yep, steak is heading up.

On the other hand, the nations corn crop is at almost 10 billion bushels and ethanol is looking for 2.6 billion bushels this year.
Basic economics tells me when you divert 26% of your food crop to ethanol, it certainly has an influence on price for the end user. And the EPA has authorized raising the ethanol percentage from 10% to 15% for vehicle 2007 and newer. This country is absolutely nuts!

There is a reason why many successful operations run cows and farm.
High grain generally means low cattle.
High cattle combined with high grain equal win/win(happens once every 100 years).

Anymore though grain/beef is truly a global market.

None, not a kernel of that corn they're making ethanol out of would be food for people, not even the same stuff, and do some real world checking and the bulk of that ethanol grain is pre contracted before it even gets planted...
Didn't hear any whining when there was a rash of ethanol plant bankruptcy and the farmers were forced to take about 10 cents on the dollar for the corn because the bankruptcy courts said so... How many of those guys' places are now strip malls do you suppose?
I don't like ethanol either, but to blame it for high food prices is just flat wrong.
Ethanol and windfarms are in the same category, if the government wasn't subsidizing the snot out of it , it wouldn't happen.

First time in a good many years that there's almost been something close to a profit in the cow business.
Will be interesting to see if we can get another year of good prices, or if we'll have to go back to just scratching thru and living at or below the poverty level, while the folks that consume our products keeping getting higher and higher wages and benefits for what they do... [/quote]

Yep, always wondered why ranchers stayed in the business since they always claim to be broke. We ran cattle here on a small scale and figured out right quick, they give an ag exemption but are not a break even deal on small scale, that you'd have to have about 200 or so to think about making a living.
Of course your poverty and my poverty version could be different... but I choose to do what I do where I do rural, and I live with it instead of complainign. Ain't enough money there to make me move to a city.

Thats funny ,down here in TX a cousins husbands family farms appx 20,000 acres of mostly corn. Used to be all sold for feed purposes of some kind. Now its sold at market to ethanol plants at times.. it is not pre paid though by far. If the ethanol folks want to pay the rate, or more, then they get it. So down here ethanol is the complete worthless joke it is, and it raises food prices.

What really pisses me off is the price of popcorn.

Rost 200 might make you a living If the land was paid for, and IF the cows are paid for, and IF the wife or both work intown to make the day to day stuff.
People that don't live it, don't understand it, and despite having distant relations that are doing it don't really have a clue on what the ag community does or why.

You forgot to mention working every morning(day) from Thanksgiving until Easter.


That part gets old, always something that needs to get done. Time off? Yeah right.
Of course you are your own boss so maybe it's worth it.

That's a true statement Ken.

That's about what we got for our calves both years.

Now, to the bad part. At .85 cents per pound last year we BARELY made enough to keep operating. With the higher prices this year, it was a help. But due to the lack of ANY rain since last Sept. we are feeding heavy right now, and for no telling how much longer. And with a load of feed delivered the other day costing over $7000 cash on the barrelhead, it won't take long to watch the little bit extra disappear like the dust behind the pick-up truck in a spring wind.

TFF!!

Well Sam sure you can take time off, if you can get somebody to stop in and do the chores,and check the water..... lol