This headline should drive farmers nuts...and every farm group should be responding

[Sheepwheat]

Our sons raise roasting chickens. last year they wee $3.75/lb. This year - $4.50.

Today is their butchering date. Cost is now nearly $4.00/bird for minimum processing - kill, chill, bag, label.

Our last few batches of lambs finished on pasture, usually I have fed them for the last couple weeks before butcher. Economical except grass is taking a beating and I just can’t get over the hump of enough fences and grazing land. Think I need to bite the bullet and just do it finally.

Yeah my boy has been charging 4 buck a lb for his chickens. We get free meat from him, he gets subsidized grain from us. Works ok so far.

My original statement was sort of tongue in cheek. Our prices are good prices net to us on the lamb, but it was looking rough because lambs have been 3 to 3.50 live for quite a few months, and so our marketing direct advantage was very slender. Now lamb prices have crashed almost in half so we feel we are being paid properly again. Our wholesale and retail prices will stay as they are.

[Guest]

We have a number of steers on full feed of grain again this summer for freezer orders. Started them on feed at 590 LBS.

One of these chaps eats about 2 tonnes of corn, or in this case, barley to finished weight.

Both of those feed grains have gone up by $140/T since last year this time. So we need to recover another $280 dollars per animal to cover the feed grain cost increase.

Need another .35 -.40/lb just for increase in grain cost on an 8-850# carcass.

The processor will take that amount and blame it on you

[burnt]

The processor will take that amount and blame it on you

These are direct sales. Only a handful of steers. I'm the first man and the middle man and the retailer.

I've learned one thing anyway - it's far better to make some decent money on a humble lot of feeders than to loose thousands on sales rings full of beautiful feeders. Bin there dun that.

[Sheepwheat]

These are direct sales. Only a handful of steers. I'm the first man and the middle man and the retailer.

I've learned one thing anyway - it's far better to make some decent money on a humble lot of feeders than to loose thousands on sales rings full of beautiful feeders. Bin there dun that.

We sell every single lamb off our farm this way. It is rewarding and for the first time since my first crop in 1992, I feel like I have value, am valued, and respected by our buyers.

[Guest]

We sell every single lamb off our farm this way. It is rewarding and for the first time since my first crop in 1992, I feel like I have value, am valued, and respected by our buyers.

And it’s good !!!!