bred cow prices

[cowman]

Whiteface: No 700 quad here. Not practical in my opinion. A simple Yamaha Big Bear and a Honda 450, and both are usually out working! No "great whites" either...mostly reds and soon some blacks!
Not much of a "lifestyle" either...always out hustling trying to keep the wolf out of the front door! But hey, I'm having fun!

[Cattleman]

I see you brought up the cow cycle grass farmer.....thats a toughone the last couple decades, not sure I believe much in besides the fact that decisions at teh cow herd level don't show up for a couple years, as long as it being cyclicle, thats a debate. I just say all this as the cow slaughter in the US is very high, and playing the cattle cycle theory, is getting tough. Not trying to bash, just want to get people thinking.

[PureCountry]

As far as I'm concerned, we're keeping as many heifers as we can afford to this year. We advertised some bred cows for sale, only had a couple tire-kickers come around. There are so many dispersals advertised for this fall, I'll be very surprised if prices go up from here to year end. There are thousands and thousands of cows going up for sale between now and then, when you start looking through papers and breed mags.

Wish I had advertised mine a little earlier now. Oh well, hindsight is 20/20 right?

[kato]

Last fall we made the decision to sell our replacement heifers and buy bred cows instead. The heifers sold over $800.00, and the cows averaged $580.00. Out of 32 cows, we weaned 30 calves. One calf had died of scours. It was our only loss from scours all year, and it's mother hit the road the day it died. One cow never did have a calf. We're blaming that one on poor preg-checking.

We knew we were sticking our necks out bringing in new animals of unknown health status. We went into it with our eyes open, and lots of vaccine on board. (Since we also buy feeders, our cow herd is pretty well vaccinated.) The new cows got double doses of scour vaccine and BVD/IBR/vibrio/Lepto. Other than the cow that had the scouring calf, we had no health problems with any of the new cows or calves.

All in all, it turned out well. We sold some of the calves off those cows last week, and not one calf went for less than it's mother cost. If we'd kept heifers, we would have seen no return on them at all yet.

Our thinking is that last year, and maybe this year also, are unusual in that the price spread between heifers and cows is right out of whack. We've never seen a time before where you could buy a bred cow for less than a heifer calf is worth. In normal times, with calves selling for well over a dollar, bred cows should cost a lot more than they do.

We're also waiting to see what the bred cow sales bring. If it looks like last year, we'll probably do it again. It'll probably be the last opportunity to do this. Cows won't be cheap forever.

[grassfarmer]

That's what I was reckoning there was potential for Kato. All the articles on beating the cattle cycle I've read advocate this type of policy. The problem I have with doing this at the moment is,like Purecountry, i'm changing the herds genetic makeup. This takes time and money and means I can't buy similar older cattle to replace my heifer calves. So we are also putting in a big number of heifer calves. We really need to anyway as we still have half the herd as teenage cows, a legacy of the BSE cow theft program run by the packers. A lot of these crossbred cows don't take to being teenagers as well as my purebreds do!

[cowman]

People raise cattle for alot of reasons, and sometimes making the most money isn't one of them!
The way I see it is I have to look at them so they might as well be something I can enjoy!
Ever notice how if you have a really ugly cow she likes to stand by the road so all the neighbors can see!