A few begining questions

[Herrmann]

Hello, after one year of starting in the beef industry I sold a few of my first finishers. Makes a guy feel good! Im 21 years old, I grew up dairy farming. My dad sold the cows and now he raises dairy steers, my goal is to take over the farm of about 200 tillable acres and maybe 20 waste land that would be good pasture. Anyways, I rent our old heifer barn from him where I raise Hereford and angus steers to finishing, I bought some heifers and have them at the home farm and got some bred. my question is has anyone done a cow/calf herd and finished out animals. any profit in that? My calves I would like to finish myself. Can having a cow/calf herd to put a few calves in my finishing herd save me any money from buying calves from a sale barn or private seller? I want to get bigger but I have a full time job but farming is in my blood. Currently I run 20 cattle to finish and I have 5 heifers that are bred. My father has about 150 cattle that run from bottle to finish. any advise is greatly appreciated!

 

[bigbull338]

yes if you have the room feed and time to run a cow/calf setup with your feeder setup it will save you from buying some steers.plus you know what the cattle are that your feeding.

 

[jerry27150]

agree with bigbull

 

[Deepsouth]

To me the question is which is more profitable. Having fewer cows to raise calves to finish or having more cows and selling more calves as feeders. Also have to consider not having any cows at all and just buying all your feeders. And to complicate matters worse is changing markets from year to year.