Land use for rearing beef.

[cowman]

Assuming that a cow/calf need 2.5 acres of grass for the summer( Central Alberta) and the going rate is right around $30 AUM for 5 months, or $150 dollars then the rent is $60 acre? Now you would need to put a little effort and money into maintaining fencing etc. so you might get a return of around $55?
That's not too bad? Probably fairly close to renting grainland?
I know a dairy farmer who has 200 beef cows and they never leave the lot. He feed silage every day and says he gets it done for a lot less than $1/day in the summer! I believe he said his silage cost 1.5 cents/lb. and he fed over 50 lbs. a day/cow...not real sure about these figures? Don't think he really calculated his cost of feeding into that price, as he had to feed the dairy cows anyway.
I will agree with Horse that you can grow one hell of a lot more cereals in a dry year than grass. No way grass will grow like barley in a dry year.

[kpb]

cowman, you've raised a very interesting point. My silage costs me just a hair over 1 cent a wet pound not including land and feeding costs (in the pit). I figure on about 55 lbs. day for a dry cow, and closer to 75 wet pounds for a pair. Even still you could feed a pair over the summer for, say, 75 cents in silage plus feeding costs per day. Times 30 days and you've got $22.50 plus feeding costs (but no fencing or transporation costs). Makes you think doesn't it.

[blackjack]

kbp...just wondering if you have tried feeding cow-calf pairs silage through the summer... been swath grazing three hundred head of cows plus some silage...figure I'm feeding approximately 20 lbs /hd in the swath and 20lbs of silage...since it is my first time at swath grazing greenfeed very happy with results...

[kpb]

blackjack, thx. very much for replying--I have not fed pairs through the summer and, until cowman mentioned it, had never even worked out the numbers. I always assumed that pasture would be cheaper but he got me thinking...based on my numbers maybe pasture isn't cheaper? Now I wonder if the pairs would miss something important by not being on grass?
I have a couple of questions for you. Will you swath graze right up to calving time? How did you figure out the amount of dry stuff per cow per day (what sort of tonnage do you get per acre of swathed material and how does this compare with your silage crop)Do you have much wastage? Why are you feeding silage with your swath grazing?
thx for your time and I'm very interested in your replies.

kpb

[blackjack]

kbp...I live out in the Spruce View area and we ended up with silage crops ave. just under 9 ton/acre this past year...the reason this field ended up in greenfeed was of poor germination so I reseeded late June... as for the yield on the greenfield I figured it to be around 4 ton/acre dry...

...as for feeding I started by what I thought would between 25 to 30 lbs / hd a day... with the up and down weather the cows some days were wasting a bit...since I'm feeding silage to calves...thought I might as well make it so the cows cleaned up the swaths with little waste... its my first time feeding this way so far I'm happy with results... will run out of swaths end of the month...

[cswilson]

We graze all our own land plus send quite a few head out to custom graze-it's getting to the point where grazing is pricing itself out of the picture. There are alot of other costs invloved than just your per day head costs-freight,labour etc. It's hard to find a good grazier/stockman to send cattle too. There's too many frustrated farmers or up and coming team ropers out there. The last cattle we sent out of the feedlot were 58 cents per pound of gain not much higher than grass costs if you include 'ALL' costs. I'd gladly send yearlings to an outfit that charges on cost per gain for grass our problem is too many Albertans sending cattle here who will pay anything for grass-lucky Ralph digs deep for you guys. One thing though we charge them postie wages to gather cattle for them lol.

[cswilson]

We graze all our own land plus send quite a few head out to custom graze-it's getting to the point where grazing is pricing itself out of the picture. There are alot of other costs invloved than just your per day head costs-freight,labour etc. It's hard to find a good grazier/stockman to send cattle too. There's too many frustrated farmers or up and coming team ropers out there. The last cattle we sent out of the feedlot were 58 cents per pound of gain not much higher than grass costs if you include 'ALL' costs. I'd gladly send yearlings to an outfit that charges on cost per gain for grass our problem is too many Albertans sending cattle here who will pay anything for grass-lucky Ralph digs deep for you guys. One thing though we charge them postie wages to gather cattle for them lol.

[jensend]

this year, instead of sending cows out we will keep more at home on annual pasture. the outlook for grains is so bad we're further ahead to save the trucking and grazing fees and use our own land. with trucking rates sure to increase due to fuel costs and no sign of grazing fees easing i'll pay myself this year. haven't figured out a profitable way to use the rest of the land though.

[grassfarmer]

Interesting to come back to this thread after a few days and see how it has mutated. I have no experience of sending cattle away to pasture - I was making the case for intensively grazing them at home rather than renting additional pasture or growing feed for them at home.
Cowman, the figures you show of 2.5 acres to summer a cow for 5 months highlights that - The better half of my land produced over 100 Auds per acre this summer so needed only 1.5 acres to maintain that cow calf pair. "Maintain" is the wrong word - my dairy farmer friend looked over my pasture on 1st October and said he would happily have put his milking cows on it the quality was so high. Remember I'm out in the sticks west of Rimbey, not on that high quality/ high price Red Deer land you are on. As the farm responds to better management I feel we could push production far higher - maybe 140-150 AUDs per acre - if I rented out this grazing I would be grossing $140-$150 per acre with virtually no inputs or machinery costs.
kpb, your silage costs just over 1c/lb (75cents/day to feed a cow/calf pair)not including land or feeding costs - so it is basically just the cost of growing and harvesting the crop?
My comparitive cost for grass would be 16 cents per day fertiliser cost plus the cost of fencing - but you would need to have yours fenced too either in fields or corrals?
Why can't we let cows do what they do best - be cows and eat grass?

[Cattleman]

I always find it interesting when producers say their pasture does not yield anything near their annual crops. Yet they will spend $75/acre on their crop and nothing on their pasture. WHat do they expect. There is huge potential grassfarmer.

[Cattleman]

cowman does the dairy farmer you refer to keep cows in a confined area like a corral year round including calving ? I would wonder how large an area he confines them in. Confining cow/calf pairs year round would seem risky as far as disease in the calves is concerned.
Watching the backends of the cows head out to pasture with the calves is one of the nicest sights of the year to me !!! Mind you, I don't have to haul cows to pasture so having them at home during the summer makes checking them a lot easier.

[kpb]

grassfarmer, my home ranch is east of Carstairs and the land values here are out of sight. The silage costs I quoted were seeding, fertilizer and cutting and into the pit. I do none of this myself--I realized years ago that it doesn't pay to have all that machinery hanging around. Over the years it's worked out to about $20.50 per ton of wet silage in the pit and that included everything. But not feeding costs or land costs.
The reason that I find this thread really interesting is that it is impossible to expand down here due to land costs. About 12 years ago I bought a ranch up north near Lac La Biche and have expanded it steadily since then. A quarter costs about $60,000 there and you can graze as many AUM as down here. So that's good but what is bad is that a liner load of pairs in the spring costs about $1,000 from here to there and the same in the fall which works out to about $50 round trip per pair. And we've got a fellow working for us up there to ride and check the cows and there's fence repairs, etc.
With land costs so darn high in the corridor it's hard to expand down here. Yet, at the same time, it's the increase in land values where we make a lot of our money.
Really interested in all the comments, thx to everbody who takes the time to write.


kpb

[grassfarmer]

kpb, Tell me about crazy land prices. I moved here partly because it was impossible to expand in Scotland - our poorer quality land there sold for @$2400 acre which is more than twice what I paid at Rimbey. Farmland near me brought $200k for a quarter last summer. Land prices the world over are increasing due to the "back to the country" move by urbanites as well as their expanding concrete jungle. As you say land value appreciation can provide a good investment - but only if you are selling or trading - it doesn't put food on the table apart from that. At the same time it is a physical asset unlike paper trading on the stock market which produces better returns but how secure is that?
When I see how little agricultural land there is in the world it drives me to manage mine intensively yet sustainably - as my Dad used to say "they aren't making land any more"

[cowman]

Emerald: These cows are in a fairly good sized lot(I'd guess maybe 20 acres) and they keep it fairly clean. I don't think dairy farmers are to adverse to getting out the old syringe and treating anything that might look sick? This farmer also feeds around 1000 head year round so he has the feed wagon out everyday anyway.
grassfarmer: I wasn't trying to knock grass, just trying to show that there are other options. The locals tell me they got around 11 tons/acre barley silage this year. Not sure how they price that this year, but I think a good rule of thumb is if barley is worth $3/bu. then silage should be $30 ton? Or if barley is $2/bu. then silage should be $20/ton? So maybe $220/acre this year? I doubt many barley crops did that, but I guess a person would have to add in the value of the straw?
Not real sure how that works as I'm not a "silage person"! I hear guys talking about 16 tons of corn silage/acre but I don't know how much corn silage is worth. I also suspect some of these annual/perrenial rye grasses might have some impressive tonnage?
Around here most people doing silage rely on a custom operator to do the job. Obviously the custom operator must be able to do it cheaper? Quite often there is some fairly decent regrowth on silaged land(oats/wild oats) and an opportunity to regraze the land in the fall.
I often wonder if it is a good thing to leave grass down for too long? Seems the darned June grass has a habit of taking over, in the long haul? Also seems if you fertilize too much you tend to lose the clover? I also sometimes wonder if we get enough rain here to really grow good grass? Hayland/pasture always seems to be "dry land" while cropland seems to have more subsoil moisture? It seems in a dry year hay does poorly while wheat or barley can flourish?
Managing pastures is always quite a balancing act, in my opinion! You have to be ready to get those darned cattle off it when it is dry and put more on when it is wet. I would think intense pasture would suit a yearling operation better than a cow/calf operation, in that you could move animals off and on easier? Buy more when the grass does well, sell some when it is dry...not so easy to do with cow/calf?
When I said 2.5 acres/AUM I was guessing an average. On some of the tame fertilized pastures it would be much better. In my area we have a lot of land that is just not suited to farming(hills and pot holes)and a cow/calf can utilize this waste land and get some sort of return. In reality you need good land to pay the expenses of grain/hay farming? Not a lot of sense running expensive equipment over land not capable of growing a decent profitable crop?

[cswilson]

Most of the long time profitable ranches up here run a cow-grass yearling operation-which is really the most flexible-you have the cattle numbers to handle the phenomanal may/june growth we get plus the flexibility to move yearlings if it gets dry. THE BIG PLUS IS YOU DON'T CALVE IN THE WINTER LOL.I'll tell you how ranchy this neck of the woods is-there are guys that seed quackgrass on purpose. It really is a great pasture grass if you know how to manage it.