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GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!

Ouch ! Wow that is low ! I haven't been following prices lately but that seems crazy. What type of sale did it go to ? We won't have to sell any till end of next summer. Beef calves. Usually I watch the prices in the paper called the country folks which also covers your area I believe. Foss livestock and the pavilion market are our closest and what we base our prices off of. Local big guy about a mile has been buying our young ones based on the sale houses and local auctions. We usually do ok that way.
 
Holstein? One of the Mennonites raises dairy heifers. He had a free martin and a steer,asked a hauler which one to eat and which one to ship to the sale barn. He said eat the heifer,it won't bring anything. I assume feeders know that and won't pay anything for a heifer calf either. Holstein fats are at a big discount anyway.
 
So, I should lock in a price now for the heifer calves I will be buying in May-June...?

How much should I charge for the fat calves going to butcher in a couple of weeks?
 
Don, us farmers are getting robbed. May as well just put a bullet in the calves head, and deny the feeders and the processors the profit from not paying for the calves. Getting fed up with being ripped off by the market too!
 
That happened in Iowa in the late 60's and early 70's. If you took a calf to the sale barn, you better not stop on the way home or you might have another 4 or 5 when you got home. We bought a lot of those calves and though they took an awful lot of work we did well when they were sold. If you can keep them I would, cost more to take them to the sale barn
 
Consider yourself lucky. Outfit my brother works for sent calves the other day and got a bill. My grandfather talked about feeding bull calves to the hogs. Hogs then weren't worth anything either.
 
What kind of calf? Makes a lot of difference. Holstein heifer is presumed to be a freemartin (or you'd have kept it), so brings the same as a bull.
 
When there are twins and one is a heifer and one is a bull the heifer is sterile and is called a freemartin.
 
its a gay cow!!! lol. joking. the heifer has no reproductive organs. it will never produce offspring.
 
Ouch! You need to figure out how to get several at once to an area without dairies. Around here, there's always a market for bottle calves, except maybe jersey. A few years ago, even jerseys were bringing $100.
 
(quoted from post at 12:30:33 02/17/19) 96 pound heifer calf went to the sale Thursday. $3.
Click to expand...

I know nothing of the cattle business but i butcher deer that size with no difficulty. Why don’t guys buy them and butcher them? Would taste a lot better than a deer.
 
If you butcher them yourself, okay. But if you take them to a butcher it costs more than the meat is worth. Because of the heavier bone structure of a calf, there is quite a bit more meat on a 100 pound deer than a 100 pound calf. BTDT.
 
No it wasn't a freemartin. One only has so much room to raise replacements and one needs only so many replacements. We are raising more than we really need now. Most of the local cattle truckers now use their own judgement on calves as to whether or not they are worth sending to the sale or not.
 
What do the large multi-thousand cow dairies do with their unwanted calves? They may have buyers arranged to take calves without involving a sale barn, eliminating the high commissions at sale barns.

What does it take to make a profit fattening dairy calves: inexpensive pasture; cheap hay; no grain; an extra year to get to weight; and a buyer that specializes in grass fed beef?
 
I remember many years ago this situation hitting the news media pretty good......typical sensationalism.....oh my gosh....... Article was a ditch a dairyman had and he was filling it with newborns because at prices like $3 or less it wasn't worth it for him to even transport them to the barn for sale. Course what didn't come out in the article was the utility and financial benefits from the heifer calves that he kept.

I started raising cattle with dairy bulls because I could afford to purchase them to feed my family and had the assets to raise them. Bought straight from the dairy. Course I paid him a fair price and it was a win win for both of us. As time went by I was able to purchase reproductive animals and get a mom-pop shop rolling.
 

With sexed semen being available now things are going to change. You aren't going to see many dairy bull calves in a few years. There's no market for dairy calves in my area (just north of Don) now because so many farms are going out. The market is flooded. I saw nice looking cows in milk going for beef at 60 cents@lbs last fall and some were under 40 cents. Thats simply crazy.

I wouldn't try to get into agriculture, at least the dairy end now for love nor money.
 
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