Herd reduction advice

I am facing possibility reducing my cow herd due
to lack of hay. I lost two hay fields, and with
the dry weather, I don't have neatly enough hay. I
am currently running around 30 pairs. I usually
average around 7 bales fed per pair per winter.
Right now, I only have hay for about 10 pairs, and
a second cut doesn't look promising. Hay for sale
is getting tough to find, and running around $40
for fair 4x5 rounds.
I have thought about reducing the herd to match
the hay, and spending that money on chicken litter
and spray. That would put the money back into
production, and avoid income taxes on selling
cows.
I could also just sell enough to buy enough hay
to make up the difference. I really hate the idea
of selling, I just finally got the herd
increasing. There are a few that I know need to
go, old enough for bovine social security, but
what else? Bred heifers? They are always kind of
risky. What are your options?

I'm in the exact same boat. Had planned to not breed any heifers and cull a dozen or so,but the way it's working out,I need to get rid of 20 or more. I have some late calvers,so in addition to culling the ones that are obvious,I'll wean the older calves first,wait for the cows to settle down,then wean the young ones and pen the cows that are bawling then. If they were all tagged like they should be it would make it easier,but life happens.

Sounds like a good plan to me.

If You were down the road from my place I would Keep You in Hay here in indiana

sounds like the need for covercrops has reared its head! anybody raise wheat around you?

Hay was short and now am running out of grass. Pulling some calves off cows a little early to sell. My front yard is as brown now as it is in January.

Morgan What I would do would be based on your long term plans.

A) If your planning to stay in the brood cow business and even might be still expanding your herd then I would only cull any bad cows. One with breeding back issues, health/utter issues, temperament issues, etc.

B) So your thinking you can buy rounds the size/weight you use for $40 each and each pair uses 7 rounds per winter. So you talking $280 per pair if you had to buy the hay. Really $280 to keep the cow because I assume your not going to sell them real early as a pair but fall wean and sell separate.

Couple of ways to work this:
1) Cull cows would bring around $60/hundred. So let say yours are average 1200# cows at weaning. So your looking at $720 per cull cow Gross.

These options are IF you plan on staying in the brood cow market long term.

Option A) Selling 6 cows would gross you $4320 leaving you with 14 cows you would need to buy hay for at a cost of $3920. Doing it this way would let you keep 24 total head without outside money. Also just selling 6 cows should not put you into an income tax problem with the additional hay expense.

Option B) Sell the calves this fall at a smaller weight. This would reduce your hay needs for over winter. I would say reduce 2 bales per cow. So that would mean you would only need 150 bales for all the cows and you have 70. So that would leave you with need to buy 80 at the $40($3200) with keeping the entire herd. This would reduce your over winter cost to $200 per cow. So using the same estimates you would need to be able to buy cows back at $720+$200=$920 To be equal money wise down the road. I can not buy Good cows for that kind of money. So if you can afford to buy $3200 worth of hay now I would do that and keep the cows you have.

Option C) Selling a cow with a good sized calf will just about always gross more money unless your in a total drought area. Pairs will usually sell higher when there is more pasture to put them out on. So pick out the cows you would not miss BUT still have good size calves on them. Selling them ASAP should get you in the $1200-1500 a pair. Depends on the cow's age too. The theory is they will sell high when there is still pasture and hay around. When there is zero pasture(winter) and hay is already sold out (winter again LOL) they will sell for less. So you would only need to sell 3-4 pairs right now to go buy hay while the market is not SKY high like it might be this winter. I usually can sell good sound cows, even if they are older, privately early this way. Just advertise them and see what kind of calls you get. Now if they are canners just cull them now and take that money and BUY hay ASAP. The key is to be proactive in getting hay bought RIGHT NOW. So you need to decide pretty darn quick on the number your going to keep.


Different way to look at doing this IF your planning on reducing your herd or just staying the same in the future.

Option D) Sell 10 pairs now. Take the money and buy enough hay for keeping a total of 20 cows/pairs. Then buy your litter/fertilizer so you can expect twice the hay crop next year. So if that would be an reasonable yield on your future hay acres than you would be stabilized to match your hay acres.


Things I do not know about your operation. I do not know if you can afford to buy hay NOW without selling cows first. I do not know your future hay yields so I do not know how many cows a normal hay crop would carry in your area. The biggest unknown is what your future plans/dreams are for your cattle business.

I also do not know what ground feed costs in your area. A few ton of ground feed will go a long way when compared to hay. Corn and soybeans are getting cheaper not higher. So buying feed and supplementing your hay will be cheaper IF you have reasonable feed cost in your area. I roughly figure 2-3 times the energy in a ton of ground feed when compared to dry grass hay. So I would guess your round bales are going to cost $100-120 per ton. So If you can buy ground feed for under $200 a ton it is a much better buy. Locally here I can buy 12% protein cow feed for around $160-180 a ton. This is 4 ton bulk batches. #50 bags with be $50 a ton higher. Old gravity wagon and tarp can save you money real fast.

So here is general stuff. LOL I would sell pairs now rather than cull cows later. The reason is it reduces your pasture pressure now. So you can save hay in the fall by not having to feed as early. You need to get your hay bought ASAP. In a dry year the price raises until the next crop. Conversely the local brood cow market falls as pasture runs out and hay becomes more expensive. So culling/selling now will usually yield more money than selling later.

Remember all of this is really very location sensitive. So what would work for me here in North-Eastern Iowa would not work in a lot of other areas. Email me if you would want to talk. We can exchange numbers.

Morgan
You're lucky to be able to buy $40 4x5 rd bales. That same hay where I live would cost $60-$80 per bale. I've sold 1/3 of my cows & if I don't get some substantial rain in the next few weeks I'm seriously considering selling the remainder of my cows. IMHO feeding $60-$80 rd bales to beef cows doesn't pencil out very well especially with what calves bring at local livestock auction.

I've sold down several times due to changing conditions and things going on it ain't the end of the world for sure and keeping the best cows I ended up improving the herd over all.I've had
over 200 cows at times now down to about 50 that's all I want for now.Did the same thing with my goat herd sold over half my does one time ended up being the biggest improvement I ever
made to the whole herd. I always say a stock trailer can improve a herd way more than any bull or buck goat.

We've got probably 40 acres of hay standing in the fields here in Upstate NY that we can't get rid of. Been shopping for an affordable round baler all spring.

Sadly, no.

How far over in Arkansas? I know a grower that hauls over there with a semi. 5x6's are $30 here. We are just out of the drouth area in East Oklahoma

Far northwest.

Be glad to pass on contact info if you are interested. Grower-trucker is at Stilwell.

(quoted from post at 12:30:11 07/11/18) Be glad to pass on contact info if you are interested. Grower-trucker is at Stilwell.

Click to expand...

I'm interested in buying several 18 wheeler loads of rd bales. Please email me with contact info. My email box on this site is open
Thanks,Jim

Yes. Let me make sure my email is open.

I think I opened up my email. Please send me the
contact info. Thanks again

For what it's worth, I checked a sale barn in N. Tx. (Emory Livestock Auctions) and another in Durant, OK, (Durant Stockyards). You can google both and get the sale reports for yourself.

Of particular interest is the bovine price over the year. Seems beef are fairly flat within $15/hwt over the year. That could change, as we are dry here too but it's a market. Do what makes sense to you.