Buying older bred cows

[HalfCircleJ]

Has anyone had any success buying older bred cows or cow/calf pairs at the sale barns or from a rancher and put them on pasture to get the calf around 4-500lbs and then just sell back the cow and calf at the sale barn? Kinda bypassing having to mess with a bull and what not. Any ideas or suggestions? I'm thinking buy an older (8-10 yrs old) bred cow at a low packer price then hoping that the weight put on the calf will give me some profit left over. My thinking is that you can turn your cattle over more times per year increasing your cash flow by doing it this way and you don't have to stand a bull. Thanks.

 

[salebarn junkie]

I have been doing this for awile I sell the calf and if ive got good pasture or plenty of hay I hold the cow for 60 days and let her put on weight try to buy the cow for slaughter price if there broken mouth dont buy them to thin.

 

[Anonymous]

Thats a gamble. If youre lucky the calf will pay their daily cost to hold them over and a little profit. If you don't buy em right, or the market falls, they can end up costing you money or you might break even.
Older cows dont always milk as well, and usually it takes 2 calfs to pay for the cow. Some may surprise you though. I do something similar but with younger cows. Buy bred, calve, wean, sell calf. So far I have culled 75% of the purchased breds for various reasons. Open, poor milkers, poor doers.
But every once in a while you find that one cow that fits and does well.

 

[Bigfoot]

Also assume when buying older cows--------they are probably older than anyone could tell by just mouthing them. They could be almost ancient.

 

[bird dog]

I have had some luck doing this. You will have some bad ones of course but you also will get surprised on some and decide to keep them. The trick is to not pay much more than slaughter price. In most cases, if the cows were bad, they would have been culled years ago. This is a good time of the year to buy them if you have some grass and hay. Buy short breds that will calve in early spring. If the cow looks bad, let her raise her calf out and sale as a split pair. If the cow and calf look good, sale them as a pair in March when everyone has grass and the prices are good. If the price of cows goes south you might lose some money but not any more than any other cattle investment.

 

[Caustic Burno]

Has anyone had any success buying older bred cows or cow/calf pairs at the sale barns or from a rancher and put them on pasture to get the calf around 4-500lbs and then just sell back the cow and calf at the sale barn? Kinda bypassing having to mess with a bull and what not. Any ideas or suggestions? I'm thinking buy an older (8-10 yrs old) bred cow at a low packer price then hoping that the weight put on the calf will give me some profit left over. My thinking is that you can turn your cattle over more times per year increasing your cash flow by doing it this way and you don't have to stand a bull. Thanks.

Do it every year I buy heavies calf them out rebreed them and sell them in the fall.
You just need to know what your doing buying through the barn.
I like to buy heavies in March/April that are 7 to 8 month's bred and sell them when I get ready to start feeding hay.
Never spend more on the heavy than she will bring as a slaughter cow. If I loose a calf, I broke even on that cow.
Be ready to come home with an empty trailer. I don't go to the barn to buy a cow's I go for a deal .
I paid 890 for a big Brangus girl this spring and she has already put a bull calf on the ground that will dang near clear that this fall.

 

[salebarn junkie]

Thats a gamble. If youre lucky the calf will pay their daily cost to hold them over and a little profit. If you don't buy em right, or the market falls, they can end up costing you money or you might break even.
Older cows dont always milk as well, and usually it takes 2 calfs to pay for the cow. Some may surprise you though. I do something similar but with younger cows. Buy bred, calve, wean, sell calf. So far I have culled 75% of the purchased breds for various reasons. Open, poor milkers, poor doers.
But every once in a while you find that one cow that fits and does well.

With this system hes talking about there shouldn't be any carring cost you only have the cows when you have grass. Your selling off a 100 percent of your cows and calves every six months or so. I make better money this way than when I kept cows for years, plus you dont have the expense of the bull.

 

[cow pollinater]

I've made money doing something similar. I was buying late/spring calving older cows and running them on easy irrigated pastures over the summer and splitting at the sale in the fall. The only hit was that there's not a big maket for weaned calves in the fall here but overall I made some money doing it.
The key is good feed. An old broken mouth cow won't work for most people but if you can feed her she'll raise a good calf and sell for beef price(which is about what ou paid for her) and you get the growth on the calf plus any gain the cow made.

 

[B&M Farms]

During the drought we were in last year, I seen alot of good younger bred cows go to a sale barn and get bought for slaughter. No one here had the grass to buy them. I look for cow prices to go up spring of next year if the weather turns good for most of the states. You should do good buying bred cows and calving them out. I would breed them back and keep the better ones though.

 

[Ouachita]

I have an 84 year old friend that sold his herd 4 years ago. He thought he was going to retire, and found out he couldn't handle retirement. Sale barn is his social life and he started bringing older heavy breds home. Says he does every bit as good or better with them. He still has all his land, and hires his hay cut on shares, so he has the hay and grass; more than enough for "piddling or dabbling with ole cows" as he calls it. He buys them heavy bred starting after Christmas, with expectation they will domino Feb and March. Sells them as pairs in the fall. Says he wishes he had been doing that all along, and that he might "be inclined to keep a few if I could get around to bunkin them in the winter".

 

[Dave]

I do pretty good doing that. In the mid winter I buy cows that are getting too old for the harsh environment of the high desert in SE Oregon for little over kill price. I calf them out and turn out to lush pastures in the spring. In the fall I wean the calves by hauling the cows to town. About 4 weeks later I sell the calves. The cows weigh more than when I bought them and generally bring more than I paid for them. All I have into the calf is 7 or 8 months worth of feed and about 5 months of that is pasture.
Those old cows didn't get to be old because they raised little calves. Had that been the case they would have been sold off years ago. And those bigger ranches they come from buy better bulls than I do, so the genetics are there for the calf.

 

[TexasBred]

I use to go to the dairy sale and get in the kill pen and check udders on cattle. Amazing how many cattle are culled that still have sound udders and small calves inside. Mad pretty good money off it over the years.

 

[HalfCircleJ]

Thanks for the replies. Very helpful.