It's Been Two Years

[farmers_son]

Two years ago today...

Its been two years, and I am still here, not broke yet. Things that have changed on our farm:

Keeping a lot of cows that would have been sold as culls.

Keeping calves until fat and selling for slaughter rather than backgrounding resulting in nearly the same cattle income as before BSE although with more feed and work.

Stronger focus on making sure we have feed, so never pressured to sell herd due to drought.

Not culling due to late, any calf better than no calf.

Selling some fats direct to consumers.

Don't follow the U.S. futures much any more... like who cares.

Substituting manual labour for capital purchases where ever possible.

Changed focus from when will the border open to when will we get more packing capacity.

Have had some cows die on the farm which would have been hauled to auction before BSE.

Done some pretty good cash flow management, certainly have tightened the belt. Hard to manage cash flow with unpredictable government payouts.

A lot of other things, like preg checking, herd health, feeding remained the same.

If someone told me that we could carry through two years of this on May 20, 2003 I would not have believed them. But we have. I also would not have believed the border would not been open by now.

[cowman]

farmers are a hardy lot as you know farmers_son. It has been tough for most of us, and without knowing when the end of this situation is in sight its pretty difficult to make any long term plans.

I am sure that many planned expenditures have been put on backburners across the country. Here fences have been mended, vs building new ones, and many more cost saving measures....lets hope that by the time the third anniversary rolls around thing are a lot brighter !!

[Joe-2]

It is amazing that most of us are still standing!!! I would dare to say that if members of nearly any other industry had had their incomes cut by as much as ours have been, in the last 2 years,.....well...CARNAGE!!
I think we should be proud of ourselves!!!
Any govt. cheques we have recieved are certainly welcome BUT I had to laugh at this latest one that amounted to $12.00 per cow......sale barn commission is about $18.00 per cow!!!!!

A few things that have changed around here;
- All tire repairs done at home
-All hydraulic hoses made at home
-All mechanical work done at home
-If she can raise a calf,she stays
-Wal-Mart oil..$29.00 a pail vs. $48.00 for Esso or Shell.

Never mind the income loss due to BSE,fuel prices have DOUBLED in the last 5 years.I make a bunch of round bale silage and we were getting plastic for about $85/per roll.It is supposed to be around $100/per roll this year.
We are good at what we do but you can only tighten your belt so far before you can'y breathe anymore!!!!!!

[pandiana]

I have been reaping the harvest of your points: "Not culling due to late, any calf better than no calf." "Keeping a lot of cows that would have been sold as culls. "
Having a few fall calves, compliments of my neighbors bulls, has been a bit of a pain. Yes its a calf, but it seems we are weaning and feeding the odd calf totally out of sync with the rest of the herd. How to you sell them at auction when they go through a few at a time and still expect to get a decent price. You can't feed them with bigger calves so need extra facilities. The dams don't get bred back on time. I am having to rethink this one.

Whenever I think of replacing anything (improvements not even considered) I think in terms of how many calves it costs. My trucks are all getting very old, 91, 93. It would cost be between 50 and 60 calves to replace them at next to new or new price. It costs 1.5 calves to replace the tire on my tractor. It cost 1 calf every month to pay my utilities. So on and so forth.

[cowman]

Well I think our government says inflation is pretty minimal?...I guess the price of yachts or BMWs are not up that much?LOL!
Fuel, anything plastic, steel! All are actually pretty high? Not to mention natural gas and electricity?
Bought any parts(for just about anything) lately? Incredible!
However have no fear, if the inflation rate starts to get up there our government has the perfect remedy...raise the interest rates! That will surely get us back on track and on top of things!
At the end of the first World War our government brought in the parity act, mainly devised to keep rising farm product prices at a mangeable level. The basic concept was that farm product prices moved with the rate of inflation. Of course it was repealed once the farm commodity prices started going the other way! It would be interesting to know what prices would be like today if that policy had been kept in place?