Newbie here and I would love some input on what I'm doing and how I might be able to do it better. I'm also showing how dull my pencil is for the original poster. I'm pretty new to raising stockers and recently moved onto a 20 acre place (ranchette or hobby farm if you want to call it that) in central Texas that I divided into 6 paddocks using a hot wire. Cows didn't make any sense because there'd be a lot of expense feeding all year to only sell a small handful of calves a year. That said, I started buying smaller calves, averaging 225# which seems like the sweet spot, 10-15 at a time that are mainly angus or charolais cross. The first two weeks I have them, they're in a pen to make sure they stay healthy. They eat around 15 bags of either a 10 or 12% protein and go through around 4 square bales of hay along with some mineral containing bovatec while i'm getting them started. All said, purchase price plus input in the first 3 weeks I have around $400-$450 in each one. After the first 2 weeks, I turn them out into a coastal pasture (winter months I overseed with ryegrass) but still supplement feed them while they transition. I usually have 20-30 at a time and rotate them every 5-7 days allowing each paddock to rest nearly a month. Thus far, I have been selling them anywhere from 425# to 500# after 4 months so they've been averaging 2# or more of daily gain on mainly just grass (without overgrazing because we are grass farmers after all), netting me $150 - $225 per head on a buy/sell model (I base income on sell/buy because you have to replace your stock at some point). Following all this, I am buying and selling around 75 calves per year when there's normal rainfall and haven't had any die yet (fingers crossed).
Looks like you have a good plan.
I guess my question is this: on small acreage, do the small calves like this make sense because I can stock more of them or is there something I could do differently to net more in the end (and still not overgraze)?
