Demise of the Family Farm

[Stocker Steve]

There is one neighbor here that buys nearly all his feed. Owns no hay land at all, has close to 100 cows. Cuts a few bales of his own on rented land. Does a pile of custom hay, enough that he runs a pretty line of JD green equipment.

He struggles each year to find enough feed, so I wouldn't be too keen on that amount of stress in my life.

I initially bought all my hay from two semi retired dairy farmers. Worked OK since I had a small herd and they were very close. Now I need alot more hay, one of them has died, and the other has had several strokes...

So it also depends alot on size.

 

[Stocker Steve]

Does it make cents for buy 3 years worth of hay when it gets real cheap?
Can you store effectively w/o a hay shed?

 

[Dave]

There is one neighbor here that buys nearly all his feed. Owns no hay land at all, has close to 100 cows. Cuts a few bales of his own on rented land. Does a pile of custom hay, enough that he runs a pretty line of JD green equipment.

He struggles each year to find enough feed, so I wouldn't be too keen on that amount of stress in my life.

I initially bought all my hay from two semi retired dairy farmers. Worked OK since I had a small herd and they were very close. Now I need alot more hay, one of them has died, and the other has had several strokes...

So it also depends alot on size.

It depends a lot on size here too. You have to be big enough to utilize semi loads. Buying is smaller lots and you will pay a premium. You have to have have equipment to handle the big squares. There is a premium on the small squares. If you were to park out by the freeway here you would see as many as 100 semi loads going by in a day. A fair number of trucks pulling a set of triples. But you will sit there for a month or more waiting to see a load of round bales go by.
As to buying up 3 years supply when hay is cheap. How many cattlemen you know of with that much cash on hand? The real thing is there are two times of the year to buy hay. Buy the hay for the winter by the first of October. Just don't get in a position where you need hay in February. Secondly, if there is lots of hay left in late March buy up a lot of next winters stock pile. You can really wheel and deal with hay suppliers who have a surplus left over that time of the year.

 

[gcreekrch]

I agree that RFP has alot of good business management messages, but their operational advise seems a bit shrill, and one size fits all.

I saw bios for some of their top graduates. Don't think you were included, but Dave might fit in. ;-) They all were either leasing some land and/or leasing alot of cows and/or grazing yearlings to increase ROI. Sound familiar?

Very familiar. The favorite scenario was to charge landowners for managing the fire hazards on their properties and charging cattle owners grazing fees on the same land. Equipment list for these operators was a worn out Toyota and electric fencing supplies.
I personally know 2 guys that followed the RFP mandate to a T and are both machinery free, cattle free and the banks have the land for sale today.

 

[Stocker Steve]

I have two worn out trucks and alot of electric fencing supplies... :cowboy:

Did these two RFP guys run short of other peoples land or short of custom grazed cattle?

 

[gcreekrch]

I have two worn out trucks and alot of electric fencing supplies... :cowboy:

Did these two RFP guys run short of other peoples land or short of custom grazed cattle?

LOL, they might tell you to sell one truck!

Both of these elite students were Californians, who knows what they are doing now.

 

[Stocker Steve]

LOL, they might tell you to sell one truck!

I need the second truck for parts. Did they cover that at RFP?

 

[Dave]

Maybe they had things backwards in their advertisement. Instead of RFP it was actually the other way around. PFR (profiting from ranchers).

 

[gcreekrch]

Maybe they had things backwards in their advertisement. Instead of RFP it was actually the other way around. PFR (profiting from ranchers).

Bingo!

The class I was in only had 24 students in it. The instructor actually stated they like to see at least 40.

A little cowboy "rithmatic" and I ciphered the school cost $15,000 at the outside to put on. Per head tuition fee was at that time $2500.

 

[Aaron]

Maybe they had things backwards in their advertisement. Instead of RFP it was actually the other way around. PFR (profiting from ranchers).

Bingo!

The class I was in only had 24 students in it. The instructor actually stated they like to see at least 40.

A little cowboy "rithmatic" and I ciphered the school cost $15,000 at the outside to put on. Per head tuition fee was at that time $2500.

Gotta love the 'expert' speakers. They know how to siphon money off the ranch easier than any other input. I get very suspicious of people who are 'wildly successful ranchers' and do 25 speaking gigs a year at $20k a pop. And these are in cheap small town venues.

 

[gcreekrch]

Gerald Fry was speaking at an event a friend of mine was at several years ago. After Mr. Fry gave his speech about the perfect forage cow and concept of lineal measure to pick the best ones there was a question period.

My friend was the first to the mic. He asked Mr. Fry where his home was as he wanted to come and see this herd of perfect cows. Mr. Fry replied that he didn't own any. There were no further questions.

 

[Dave]

A big part of my job for nearly 20 years was teaching pasture management to all those backyard places in Thurston county. Of course my services were free to them. But the job sent me to a grazing workshop or two every year. I think I listened to every national and regional grazing "expert" in the country. I am still on a first name basis with some of them. I learned a lot from some of them. I generally picked up something from every one of them. Although by the time I retired I had been to enough of the workshops that I had pretty much already heard what they had to say. But I darn sure wouldn't have wanted to pay to attend a lot of them. The good thing for me was that the job paid my tuition and my wages to attend.

 

[greybeard]

Back in the early to mid 90s, I worked at a machine shop in San Angelo and part time (weekends) at a cattle/sheep/goat ranch just south of town (mostly fence repair) and I know the machine shop owner hired illegals (he still called them 'wets') from the Stop N Go parking lot for $4-$5/ hour to do labor on his other non-machine shop related properties and grub out small mesquite around the machine shop just N of town.
It was on that ranch out at Wall Tx that I found out a San Angelo bar didn't mean Blaine's Pub downtown. 18 lbs of mankiller and I thankfully still own one.

 

[Boots]

Back in the early to mid 90s, I worked at a machine shop in San Angelo and part time (weekends) at a cattle/sheep/goat ranch just south of town (mostly fence repair) and I know the machine shop owner hired illegals (he still called them 'wets') from the Stop N Go parking lot for $4-$5/ hour to do labor on his other non-machine shop related properties and grub out small mesquite around the machine shop just N of town.
It was on that ranch out at Wall Tx that I found out a San Angelo bar didn't mean Blaine's Pub downtown. 18 lbs of mankiller and I thankfully still own one.

I've got a few worn down to the 8-9 pound range. Not broken or cut. WORN.

 

[Mountaintown Creek Ranch]

Back in the early to mid 90s, I worked at a machine shop in San Angelo and part time (weekends) at a cattle/sheep/goat ranch just south of town (mostly fence repair) and I know the machine shop owner hired illegals (he still called them 'wets') from the Stop N Go parking lot for $4-$5/ hour to do labor on his other non-machine shop related properties and grub out small mesquite around the machine shop just N of town.
It was on that ranch out at Wall Tx that I found out a San Angelo bar didn't mean Blaine's Pub downtown. 18 lbs of mankiller and I thankfully still own one.

You can't hardly dig by hand around here in the mountains without a San Angelo bar !