Re: Herd reduction advice

Posted by JD Seller on July 09, 2018 at 21:34:31 from (173.215.45.26):

In Reply to: Herd reduction advice posted by Morgan in ar on July 09, 2018 at 17:11:40:

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.

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