Cost of production

[PureCountry]

I'm not going to ask anyone to open up their books on here, but I'll throw some numbers of my own out there, and you folks let me know what you think. I just spent a few hours each night this week calculating this stuff out, and I came out with my costs as such:

1)Cost per cow to raise her - $492
calf and grass-finish it
at about 14mths. of age

2)Cost per acre - $21.06

3)Cost per cwt of calf - $44.30

I usually figure it out per cow, but a friend told me to do it per acre, so I calculated that out on pasture acres, and crop acres for feed - including swath-grazing. Then I read an article by Harlan Hughes where he stated that your costs of production should be calculated as dollars per hundred weight. So I did that too.
Now, I know I did my math right, and even the wife couldn't find anything I missed, but I have no clue if these are 'good' numbers or not, as I have nothing to benchmark them against. If anyone has any input, I'd love to hear it.
Anyone?

[PureCountry]

Sorry folks, I read the wrong number off my calc. sheet. My cost per cow is not $492, it's $547. That's pasture, winters' swath-grazing and feed for cow and calf, then spring/summer pasture to finish the yearling.

[grassfarmer]

Does that include your fixed costs (eg tractor to feed cows, power bills to run waterers etc) or is it only feed costs?
Do you really mean to finish the yearling at 14 months off grass or am I misunderstanding you?

[cowman]

I would suggest everyone should be trying to feed that cow for around $1/day on a year round basis...or less? Pretty hard to find pasture in my area for less than $1/day. Decent hay is still in that 3 cents/lb. etc.
I believe it is important to include all the costs when you are trying to make any kind of business decision? That means paying yourself wages(at a realistic rate) and interest/depreciation on your investment in land, cattle, feed and machinery? The only problem is if you do this you quickly come to the conclusion you are either working for free or actually paying to work! So you may have to "cook the books" a bit to justify what you are doing!
However having said that, we have all chosen to do this thing and the trick here is not to get all hung up on how much money we are losing but to try to keep our costs as low as possible while getting as much production as possible? It can be a fine line to walk?

[campbellc]

An interesting little program that may be of use is located at this website - http://www.agr.gc.ca/pfra/land/wealthyrancher_e.htm.

It breaks your operation down into three components. It provides some valuable insights into individual operations.