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Operating a cattle feedlot can be a brutal business. Cattle feeding is dominated by several major players in the TX/KS/CO area with multi thousand head yards and by small, independent operators (1000 head or so) in the midwest up through the Dakotas. It is brutal to try to compete with them on margins alone. While a crossbred animal (Angus or Hereford crossed on Charolais/Simmental/limo/etc) give you hybrid vigor if you have to freight them in from parts unknown death loss and shipping will soon eat into feed efficiency. Depending on finish weight, 80 bu of corn (56#*80) or 4480# plus protein suppliment could finish them. If you are finishing at 900# thats about a 10:1 feed to gain conversion. If you are finishing at 1150 it would take poultry like efficiency to do it. I've retained ownership of cattle through the feed lot, fed out my own, sold off the cow, and sold off of backgrounding. For me, the cost wasnt worth the risk. Best year I ever had feeding cattle, margins were positive (fall to spring), had a feed cost under $90 a ton, ADG's better than 2.8 and I still only neted about $30.00 a head clear over had I simple sold off the cow. If I had a thousand head thats pretty good money, with 30 head it wasnt worth doing. I either needed to get big or get out. When I got into that size I'd have some death loss and some vet bills that I didnt have on my own steers. That gets into profit in a hurry. Then my normal paranoia sets in, one of my friends had 1700 steers weighing right at 1150 when the mad cow scare hit back in Dec, no futures position to cover his down side.
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