Demise of the Family Farm

[Richnm]

Feeding cows hay doesn't pay. If your smart enough to get BLM grazing, or even a dang lease your smarter than me. I tried. My pens are always calculating, if I run out of ink.... I somestimes write in the dirt with an Alfalfa stem.....

 

[Till-Hill]

Someone told me the other day the profitable farmers now, know what they are doing. The ones left are good at what they do and run a sharp pencil. Their are alot of farmers around me doing well making money, and expanding. You can not support 4 adults milking 45 cows from the original link.

my boss needs a sharper pencil but there's no way making money milking 173 cows for 3 families with some crop farming added. Boss here at 330 am leave at 7pm, I run 50-80 hours week. I dont know why he keeps doing it.

 

[Bigfoot]

We are all slowly being replaced by someone big enough to survive on a thin margin (not taking anything away from that guy because that takes carachas), or a foreigner that can do it with cheaper inputs and zero regulation. I honestly used to think that the quality of American beef would be our saving. I now think people will drench their steak in garlic butter and hope they don't get sick from eating a foreign grown product.

I'd like to know the percent of cow calf pairs in the United States, that are owned by somebody operating at a loss? You keep moving forward at that point for some other motivation, besides monetary reasons.

 

[HDRider]

Someone told me the other day the profitable farmers now, know what they are doing. The ones left are good at what they do and run a sharp pencil. Their are alot of farmers around me doing well making money, and expanding. You can not support 4 adults milking 45 cows from the original link.

LT I can't speak to a diary at all, and a dairy was what started this thread.

I am just trying to learn, and the only way I know to do that is to ask someone who knows, mostly asking why or how.

Seeing the beef market the way it is, I have to try and understand how and why folks do things.

I understand how volume helps spread capital cost, land and things like that. I am not seeking answers there. I am trying to see how someone sells at a decent margin (gross margin) over operating expense. From what I can tell, operating expenses are linear, volume goes up, operating expense goes up almost the same.

 

[Lucky]

What would everyone say the profit margin on a calf should be each year to stay profitable on a 100 hd herd? To make it easy lets say 0 death loss and we've been in this game long enough to be replacing culls with heifers we've raised. I use 100 hd because it takes about the same amount of time and equipment to deal with 100 as it does 30 hd, if there on the same place.
Edit: better add normal operating expenses too, we don't need 3 cab tractors for 100 hd. Around here land leases for $25 an acre w/ 1 cow to 4 acres.

 

[Bigfoot]

What would everyone say the profit margin on a calf should be each year to stay profitable on a 100 hd herd? To make it easy lets say 0 death loss and we've been in this game long enough to be replacing culls with heifers we've raised. I use 100 hd because it takes about the same amount of time and equipment to deal with 100 as it does 30 hd, if there on the same place.
Edit: better add normal operating expenses too, we don't need 3 cab tractors for 100 hd. Around here land leases for $25 an acre w/ 1 cow to 4 acres.

With $100 land cost, I'd say youd be making about $100 per cow. Cpu;dnt make that here, because land rents for more.

 

[callmefence]

https://youtu.be/GKeDcF1v_Y4

 

[Bigfoot]

https://youtu.be/GKeDcF1v_Y4

Good choice for the topic. It was a bunch of us around here raised tobacco. I thought we would forever. It eventually went the way the Indian......cattle will to.

 

[Richnm]

Indians (at least I am, and I speak 100% my language not like some politicians) are doing just fine!

 

[Bigfoot]

Indians (at least I am, and I speak 100% my language not like some politicians) are doing just fine!

You know good and well what I meant. Government regulated us out.

 

[Richnm]

Wanna see receipts for land ? Wanna see the funds that paid for it ? My dad had zero money, worked on a dairy milked cows , saved his money ,and bought land. That's America BABY!!!

 

[Bigfoot]

Wanna see receipts for land ? Wanna see the funds that paid for it ? My dad had zero money, worked on a dairy milked cows , saved his money ,and bought land. That's America BABY!!!

Yeah sure, if it makes you happy post some reciepts, I'll look.

 

[Richnm]

To clear up some myths. Land on the reservation has to be purchased, just like land outsidethe reservation. Nothing is free. We have 200 acres along the Rio grande outside the Reservation. Close to 1,000 inside the Reservation all farm land not grazing, laser leveled and planted in alfalfa, watered every 10 days 2 inches on water. Paid off. Let me finish watching Chiefs kill Raiders and I will post them

 

[Bigfoot]

To clear up some myths. Land on the reservation has to be purchased, just like land outsidethe reservation. Nothing is free. We have 200 acres along the Rio grande outside the Reservation. Close to 1,000 inside the Reservation all farm land not grazing, laser leveled and planted in alfalfa, watered every 10 days 2 inches on water. Paid off. Let me finish watching Chiefs kill Raiders and I will post them

I learned something on the ownership of land on a reservation. I had no idea it could be bought and sold. Strictly out of curiosity, what do your personal finances have to do with this?

 

[Richnm]

Indians (at least I am, and I speak 100% my language not like some politicians) are doing just fine!

You know good and well what I meant. Government regulated us out.

Maybe I misread your statement

 

[Bigfoot]

Indians (at least I am, and I speak 100% my language not like some politicians) are doing just fine!

You know good and well what I meant. Government regulated us out.

Maybe I misread your statement

Perfectly understandable. I hope the Chiefs win.

 

[Lucky]

What would everyone say the profit margin on a calf should be each year to stay profitable on a 100 hd herd? To make it easy lets say 0 death loss and we've been in this game long enough to be replacing culls with heifers we've raised. I use 100 hd because it takes about the same amount of time and equipment to deal with 100 as it does 30 hd, if there on the same place.
Edit: better add normal operating expenses too, we don't need 3 cab tractors for 100 hd. Around here land leases for $25 an acre w/ 1 cow to 4 acres.

With $100 land cost, I'd say youd be making about $100 per cow. Cpu;dnt make that here, because land rents for more.

$100 profit per head?? Wow that's low, I'd say around $300.

 

[Jeanne - Simme Valley]

Calf has to pay for cows yearly expense (including calf's exp: meds/vacc/eartag/etc). Everything over that "should" be profit.

 

[Stocker Steve]

1) An average cow calf operator makes a decent profit during only two years of the beef price cycle. So part of it is timing and determination for poor operators.

2) An above average cow calf operater does a little better in a number of expense and income areas. No silver bullet here. Some common threads are using some leased assets, a low cow replacement cost, and an above average weaning rate per exposed cow.

An interesting sitution here is called "too many cows". Some run more than they can manage, and/or more than their low cost forage can support, and these extra cows literally eat up the profit. So no - - operating income per cow is not linear.

Have you ever run numbers on what would happen if you culled the bottom 20% of your herd and stockpiled some forage?

 

[Lucky]

Calves need to avg $1,000 + at sale. The cattle business is a numbers game, the more you have the more you can make. 2 out of 10 yrs you might hit it right and make allot more money than usual but on avg cattle prices are flat. I always hear people talking about trying to save $20 a head on feed cost or $200 on replacement a cow. Rarely to you hear struggling operators talk about live weaning size calve percentages. To me the kick in the tail is when you have 100 cows and only 70-80% calf crop. It takes about an extra 30 seconds to feed 100 calves as it does to feed 75.