Been away all day so there are lots to reply to.
Cowman, Yes I made money with my calves, I'm a low cost producer remember with crazy ideas like calving on grass and feeding cows some straw. In fact the calculation I ran for a discussion with kpb a while back shows that I broke even with the calves over the weaning to sale period. Given the estimated off cow values this year and the price collapse there has been since then I think this is no mean feat. It proves that by differentiating my calves from the crowd by adding value in terms of animal health and buyer appeal I am earning a lot of extra income most years by this process. I am selling now because I do not have confidence we can make more net income with this calf crop however long we keep them. If the markets move lower in the spring we have the option to buy cheaper calves although this would require renting summer grass and as we increasingly seem to be getting constricted in this industry to working on $20 margins (if we are lucky). I think I'd rather just send a cheque to my investment advisor who can earn me a 15% return with no work on my part and probably less risk than the cattle.
F_S, your trend line still doesn't seem very different from comparing your cattle to the average. Maybe comparing to the market average was the wrong terminology I used. I was in fact comparing them to cattle in the same weight range and in lots of more than 5 head. Bottom line comes out the same we still got close to 10 cents above the trend line by my rough calculation.
Greybeard, I think that it is easier now than ever before for feedlots or any buyer to keep track of where the animals came from - the eid tag will tell them and I'm sure the feedlots will look for this data. I know I am selling cattle that will not give them health problems - our death loss from weaning to sale (usually anywhere from 2-5 months) has been 0.4% over the last 6 years. Given the rate of pulls, treatments, deaths and poor performance sick calves give the feedlots they do want healthy calves.
Blackjack, we had quite a healthy ring of buyers - around 12 main ones. Three guys buying cattle for their (or a neighbours) farm feedlot operations. About 3 larger feedlot buyers and the rest order buyers. We had 6 different buyers on 9 pens of cattle so there was a wide base of interest in the calves. My top price 5 weight calves were bought for a guy who is going to background them and grass them next summer.
Cowman, Yes I made money with my calves, I'm a low cost producer remember with crazy ideas like calving on grass and feeding cows some straw. In fact the calculation I ran for a discussion with kpb a while back shows that I broke even with the calves over the weaning to sale period. Given the estimated off cow values this year and the price collapse there has been since then I think this is no mean feat. It proves that by differentiating my calves from the crowd by adding value in terms of animal health and buyer appeal I am earning a lot of extra income most years by this process. I am selling now because I do not have confidence we can make more net income with this calf crop however long we keep them. If the markets move lower in the spring we have the option to buy cheaper calves although this would require renting summer grass and as we increasingly seem to be getting constricted in this industry to working on $20 margins (if we are lucky). I think I'd rather just send a cheque to my investment advisor who can earn me a 15% return with no work on my part and probably less risk than the cattle.
F_S, your trend line still doesn't seem very different from comparing your cattle to the average. Maybe comparing to the market average was the wrong terminology I used. I was in fact comparing them to cattle in the same weight range and in lots of more than 5 head. Bottom line comes out the same we still got close to 10 cents above the trend line by my rough calculation.
Greybeard, I think that it is easier now than ever before for feedlots or any buyer to keep track of where the animals came from - the eid tag will tell them and I'm sure the feedlots will look for this data. I know I am selling cattle that will not give them health problems - our death loss from weaning to sale (usually anywhere from 2-5 months) has been 0.4% over the last 6 years. Given the rate of pulls, treatments, deaths and poor performance sick calves give the feedlots they do want healthy calves.
Blackjack, we had quite a healthy ring of buyers - around 12 main ones. Three guys buying cattle for their (or a neighbours) farm feedlot operations. About 3 larger feedlot buyers and the rest order buyers. We had 6 different buyers on 9 pens of cattle so there was a wide base of interest in the calves. My top price 5 weight calves were bought for a guy who is going to background them and grass them next summer.
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