What farms are most profitable?

[grassfarmer]

kpb, Your math is faulty - I said we started with 40Aud/ acre land but reckon it could go to 3 or 4 times that. 4 times that would be 160Aud/acre (160 x 160 = 25,600 divided by 150Auds (1 cow for 5 months) equals 170 cows per quarter. The output I'm getting was expressed as Auds which you converted to cows per quarter for five months. In fact we carry less cows per quarter but for a longer season. Last winter we started feeding a partial ration to the main bunch on boxing day with them only being on full feed from January 15th or so through until April 3rd. I stand by the potential production I think we might have as we had a 13 acre paddock produce 147Auds last year. That would be the equivilant of 156 cows on a quarter and there is still room for improvement.
As for work ethic I'm the laziest person I know! Normal workload year round is about 2 hours a day, not counting the hours that I spend sitting planning at nights certainly. You are right though it's difficult to get away for more than a couple of days break. We try to have an infinite number of paddocks - about 40 permanent fenced enclosures (9-100 acres)on a section but with crossfencing we usually aim to graze around 2 acre paddocks from July through until the following spring. Only in the spring flush do we graze bigger paddocks. Running three bull groups plus grass yearlings this year which makes planning more difficult.

[kpb]

grassfarmer, sorry I was just fuzzy last night I guess. Or maybe just getting old.

Still 160 or 170 pairs per quarter is an achievement that I have never of heard before for an extended period of time. Good on you.


kpb

[grassfarmer]

I'm sure everyone has areas on their place that yield way more than that kpb. Often it's just an area in the corrals that gets a lot of fertility in winter or a low lying place that always has a thick dense sward of green however dry the year is. The challenge is to get these areas to spread across your whole place. Joel Salatin in Virginia talks about getting 400 Auds per acre off his place (426 cows per quarter for 5 months!)- fair enough they will grow for a longer seasonand have more moisture than me but they will also get hit by real hot weather in summer which will limit their production. Looking at that field of mine that produced 147Auds/acre last year I don't see why we couldn't hit 200Auds an acre - if it was all as good as the best part in a year of reasonable moisture.

This extra potential excites me because their is no increased input involved to achieve it - it's essentially free output. And it's size neutral to an extent - I can open a fence to let 100 cows through in the same time it takes to let 50 through. Winter feeding and cattle handling may take slightly longer but the bonus is the more cows we run the quicker we improve the production of the place, both through recycled grass (manure and litter)and imported fertility (winter feed).

[grassfarmer]

Another thought kpb, you must have some really good pasture quantity and quality if you can consistantly pick up a fat bred cow and a fat calf in the fall. My cows are not fat by any means when I wean them - if they were I would think I'd given them too much good grass! They do come in with well grown,fat calves though. My cows get fattened on good banked pasture once they have been weaned which takes a lot less grass that fattening them when they are rearing a 500lb calf. The more typical scenario I see with uncontrolled pasture management is fat cows weaning calves that have been sliding in condition for the last two or three months. The markets are full of long legged, long dull coated, gaunt calves in October.

[kpb]

grassfarmer my cow pasture is not good quality at all, in fact it's really rough but there is a lot of it and it is really cheap.

my experience is that it is hard for a baldie cow to get thin or to bring in a thin calf. they just seem to get bred, be fat and keep their calves fat on just about any sort of pasture. Again, going back to Allan Nation, he has pointed out many times that cows should be considered clean-up or low quality pasture eaters and your best pasture should go to yearlings that will pack the pounds on. I agree with this concept and try to work it as best I can.

I don't advocate any breed over another but my cows and calves generally come off of very rough pasture in the fall, after being left by themselves, in pretty good shape (although a little wild sometimes). I don't feed much or high quality over the winter and they gradually lose condition until they calve in the spring and go back on the grass. As far as fall grazing is concerned, the cows graze again some scrubby land at home and the fields left over from the yearlings for a while.

I don't try to graze late as I'd rather use all the grass by having more grassers over the summer rather that stockpiling grass for the fall. I've found that buying feed is cheaper. Most years I can buy hay now for $20 or less per bale--it's not the best hay in the world but it sure is good enough for those fat cows coming off pasture and dry all winter. Any calves I'm backgrounding or feeding get silage.

My best pasture and most attention goes to the yearlngs where I can make the most money by putting on the most pounds.

kpb

[grassfarmer]

I'm interested in the species composition of your really rough (I'm assuming northern?)pasture. I have an area that is part tall timber, part slough, part willow bush with a multitude of woodland plants and grasses in there. It really is easy to see 40 different plant species growing among the trees. What always amazes me is that the cows totally drop salt and mineral consumption when they are in there. I think there is a lot more power in these "natural" pastures than we give credit for.
On the other hand another bunch are on timothy, quack, clover and limited alfalfa mix on fairly depleted former grain land - and I can't keep them going in salt or minerals. 60 pairs and 2 bulls drank 1100 imp gallons of water on this area yesterday. They would literally eat a salt block in 2 days. Is too much salt making them that thirsty or are they taking so much salt because they are drinking so much? Only good thing about this developing drought - it might kill that damn timothy off!

[kpb]

you know, grassfarmer, you have raised a very interesting point and one that I have pondered since I tried a little experiment a few years back.

My northern ranch is much as you have described--it's near Lac LaBiche and I confess I've never counted all the species on the land--it's a couple of thousand acres of bush, pasture, river flats and swamp. But here's what's interesting and brings me to your point.

I think it was in 1997 or whenever calf prices were really low I happened to be reading a book written by Gordon Hazard who has some very interesting ideas about ranching. One of the things he is interested in is in producing marketable cattle that do not require much work or input. He doesn't care about their color but he cares a lot about easy keeping. That's very important to me too given that I just turn the pairs out on rough pasture in the spring and check them rarely during the summer. He breeds for low input by getting rid of any cow that does not bring home a calf for any reason and by culling cows that show any inhererent weakness.

Anyways the calf prices at the time were horrible so I thought what the heck and I didn't put out any salt or mineral all summer. I know it's sacrilege to say this but I thought I'd cull out any animal that needed salt or mineral on their summer pasture.

I suspect you know the bottom line--there was no percentage difference in culling rate in the fall (preg checked) from previous years and no fall-off in number of calves brought home or weaning weight. This was on 320 pairs. I know it's not scientific.

The next year I did it again but also put no fly tags on the cows. About two weeks in I had a serious infestation of flys so went and got some salt blocks that contain an ingredient that inhibits insects (they don't land on the cow's back). It worked very well.

Since then I have never, in any year, fed minerals to the pairs. I also have not used a fly tag in some of the buggiest country you can imagine. My ranch employee does use the fly salt blocks which work well in insect control. If I didn't ranch in bug country I would not use salt blocks either.

I have not used salt blocks in the fall or winter since then but I do use mineral. Maybe sometime I'll have the nerve to drop it too in the winter and see what happens.

There's no science here but my gut feeling is that if your cows are exposed to a variety of edible plants to eat they likely do not need mineral or salt supplementation??? Before everyone thinks I'm mistreating these animals I can assure you that I am not and that the cows are fat and happy--some are old--and the number and weight of calves produced are very economical.

kpb

[grassfarmer]

Very interesting even if it flies in the face of the accepted "sound science". Like many things it's clear that the wild animals could manage their own salt and mineral intakes before man came along. I think as long as you have a decent size area and variety of species it will work. Are all my "tame" grass varieties really deficient in micro nutrients because they grow faster or are they deficient because they are grown on land that was severely depleted by growing crops? I'm reading a book by Bonsma just now that is getting into the soil fertility/ph versus grass nutrients/ cow health debate.

I questioned the idea of feeding salt when I came here because we never did it in Scotland on our very leached, acidic soils. Everyone insists you must feed salt here, so I have done. My guess is it's a bit like chocolate - I love it but I don't really need it! Cows certainly like salt but do they need it?
I have a friend here that has built up very run down soils on his place by adding manure, legumes and intensive grazing. He tissue tested some cattle this summer and found them to have very high sodium levels so he won't be feeding any more salt to them as too much salt won't be healthy for them, just like in people. Unfortunately he didn't tissue test the cattle 10 years ago so that's not really a scientific experiment either. One point he made was that salt doesn't cycle in the land, it accumulates there. So buying in salt blocks year after year will raise your salt levels in the soil - perhaps even to excess levels.

[crossfield_beef]

Honey farms are profitable. Much of the honey is exported to the US or Europe. Canada has a world wide image of being a pristeen country and the honey is in demand. Many of the honey operations are very large businesses.