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Silver said:
By my math he's planting corn for about $205 per acre. That's taking 250 cows x $.85 per day = $212 per day. He said 7-10 days per 6-7 acre paddock so 8.5 days x $212 = $1,802. Take that number and divide by the 6.5 acres = $277 per acre CAD. So about $205 per acre. My math might have taken a wrong turn. I haven't planted corn but this number seems really low. Anyone know what it costs to plat an acre of corn including tillage, fertilizer, seed, herbicide etc?
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Asked my Lloydminster friend who grows a lot of it. He will get back to me.
He did tell me earlier that with this years drought he is looking at 70 to 90 cow days per acre and is buying straw and screenings to feed cows.
 
Moparmaniac07 said:
I've always found hay to be more cooperative to move than cows. Just stays where you leave it, no fences or gates or nothing. I only have a small "herd" but I imagine that scales up. But I imagine it would depend on the situation. One continuous parcel, sure divvy up and graze on. A few leased acres here and there down the road a ways, haying would be easier to move and wouldn't require any infrastructure to do so. But I'm in the east, so parcels are smaller and broken up by housing developments and other farms, so an errant bale roaming a neighborhood won't cause quite the commotion an errant bull would.
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The other advantage of baling on leased land is that you are transferring fertility from leased land to owned land. With current nutrient prices that might be as much as $70 a ton. So long as the manure is distributed where it is needed. To put it crudely manure is money. I have seen many good hay meadows get ruined because hay was taken off and nothing was ever put back into the ground.
 
Silver said:
By my math he's planting corn for about $205 per acre. That's taking 250 cows x $.85 per day = $212 per day. He said 7-10 days per 6-7 acre paddock so 8.5 days x $212 = $1,802. Take that number and divide by the 6.5 acres = $277 per acre CAD. So about $205 per acre. My math might have taken a wrong turn. I haven't planted corn but this number seems really low. Anyone know what it costs to plat an acre of corn including tillage, fertilizer, seed, herbicide etc?
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all depends. if you hire some done or do it all yourself. depends on what seed you use for cost. i'd say for a more silage corn you're looking at at least 130 / ac for seed. fert. probably around 130. spray probably 40/ac. with fuel, possibly a fungicide.. equipment ..etc. i'd say you're looking at 350/ac. if you get 20ton to the acre. so somewhere around the 20 dollar to the ton price if you left it standing in the field. That's probably more on the low end. but 20 bucks for a ton of silage is a deal.

500 lb steer eating 25 lbs of silage a day with a 20% loss lets say.. 32,000 lbs to the acre of feed... 1280 calf days per acre. if you had 100 calves eating an acre of corn it should last them 12 days. lets say you planted a 10 acre field.. thats 120 days of feeding those calves .. gainining probably 3 - 4 lbs a day easy. for around $4,000.

vs. hay... 15 lbs x 100 = 1500 lbs = 2 bales 4x5/day. 50/bale - $100day. 120 days = $ 12,000 with a maybe 1.5 - 2 lbs a day gain.

so at the end you're looking at lets say a 350 lb gain and 40 dollars per calf. vs. a 200 lb gain at $120 per calf.

150 extra lbs x $2 lb = $300.00 = 300.00 weight profit alone. x 100 calves = 30,000$ difference in profit from hay feeding and then take into account saving 80/day on hay costs = another 9600. so almost a 40k profit from hay feeding.


so around 4k that it will cost to plant is pretty small compared to what you get!
 
gcreekrch said:
Asked my Lloydminster friend who grows a lot of it. He will get back to me.
He did tell me earlier that with this years drought he is looking at 70 to 90 cow days per acre and is buying straw and screenings to feed cows.
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So even on a good year if he got 200 cow days per acre, and an acre costs $600, he'd be looking at $3 per day.
Definitely not free. Add in the fact that you still need to put up hay to go with it raises the deal again. And the risk of losing a good percentage of it to 3' of snow. Or 300 head of elk moving into it.
I think it is an interesting concept and I've considered trying a little in the past (mostly because I like trying new things) but I can't quite get myself there yet.
 
Silver said:
So even on a good year if he got 200 cow days per acre, and an acre costs $600, he'd be looking at $3 per day.
Definitely not free. Add in the fact that you still need to put up hay to go with it raises the deal again. And the risk of losing a good percentage of it to 3' of snow. Or 300 head of elk moving into it.
I think it is an interesting concept and I've considered trying a little in the past (mostly because I like trying new things) but I can't quite get myself there yet.
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not sure where you're getting 600/ac.. the website you posted is saying 300 - 450 and that includes harvesting costs not standing corn. that's CAD dollars as well so higher$.

never had 3' of snow or 300 hd of elk move in around here so we don't have to worry about that.
 
also from your article looks like they are only getting around 8 ton/ac.. that would more than double the cost per ton from what we get here.. so that would make a pretty big difference.
 
cowman82 said:
not sure where you're getting 600/ac.. the website you posted is saying 300 - 450 and that includes harvesting costs not standing corn. that's CAD dollars as well so higher$.

never had 3' of snow or 300 hd of elk move in around here so we don't have to worry about that.
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Those were 2019 prices. I’ve read recently that $600 is 2024 price
 
Silver said:
Those were 2019 prices. I've read recently that $600 is 2024 price
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My friend’s words. He has been corn grazing a lot of cows for 25 years. I know of a couple years there were troubles with drought and snow pack.

Corn costs. About 200 to 250 per acre. Depending on fertilizer. But generally. Get. 160 to 225 cow days per acre Risk is high. With frost and hail but generally worth the gamble
 
I went to a grazing workshop years ago. The keynote speaker was a man from Nebraska. He said he would drive around looking for hailed down corn. The farmer would have already collected insurance on the corn. He would pay the farmer for it. Run hot wires and strip graze the corn. That was how he cheaply wintered his cows.
Trouble is they raise very little corn around here. And hail hard enough to knock down corn almost never happens.
 
gcreekrch said:
My friend's words. He has been corn grazing a lot of cows for 25 years. I know of a couple years there were troubles with drought and snow pack.

Corn costs. About 200 to 250 per acre. Depending on fertilizer. But generally. Get. 160 to 225 cow days per acre Risk is high. With frost and hail but generally worth the gamble
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It is an interesting concept. Probably figure on $1.20 per day then.
 
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It isn't just that we have to much machinery but that the machinery we do have is fancier and not as durable as the old stuff. My grandfather told a story about going to Detroit with my great grandfather to buy their first Ford Model A pickup truck and driving it back to California. He said that at that time it took 10 steers to buy a pickup and each time he bought a new pickup it took more steers to buy it. Today it is not uncommon to hear of pickups costing more than a $100,000 and basic little ranch trucks are no longer made. Mahindra makes an updated version of the Wily's Jeep for around 10 steers but it isn't street legal.
The tractor that I disked with as a kid was an IH TD-9 crawler tough as nails. One year it flooded and we took it home flushed out the engine with gasoline and brought it back from the dead. Now a day, you can't even work on your equipment.
 

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