Forage based Stockers

[cross_7]

In your stocker programs
What kind of gain are you getting, cost of gain, and input cost

 

[Stocker Steve]

Gain varies a lot - - perhaps from 0.5 to 3.5 lbs per day. With average 6 wt steers, good mineral, and good pasture you should see 1.5 to 1.8 lbs/day. Best gain is usually supplemented continental cross steers.
Cost of gain varies a lot. Are you looking at back grounding or grazing, steers or heifers, owned land or leased land ??? Loest cost of gain is usually leased pasture.

 

[cross_7]

Gain varies a lot - - perhaps from 0.5 to 3.5 lbs per day. With average 6 wt steers, good mineral, and good pasture you should see 1.5 to 1.8 lbs/day. Best gain is usually supplemented continental cross steers.
Cost of gain varies a lot. Are you looking at back grounding or grazing, steers or heifers, owned land or leased land ??? Loest cost of gain is usually leased pasture.

4-5wt steers on summer grass with protein supplemented as needed, bank owed land and I pay them to let me take care of it

 

[Stocker Steve]

Don't know what kind of quality we are talking about, but a COG from 30 to 40 cents per pound is possible. :2cents:

 

[cross_7]

Don't know what kind of quality we are talking about, but a COG from 30 to 40 cents per pound is possible. :2cents:

What would figure average daily gain on grass ?

 

[Bigfoot]

I was going to go through my backgrounding numbers tonight. I can definativly tell that I have been seeing gains of 60 pounds per month. I need to dig some receipts out to tell you what that gain has been costing me. Feed is at $215 a ton. Those two numbers I know for sure.

 

[cross_7]

I was going to go through my backgrounding numbers tonight. I can definativly tell that I have been seeing gains of 60 pounds per month. I need to dig some receipts out to tell you what that gain has been costing me. Feed is at $215 a ton. Those two numbers I know for sure.

BF how much are you feeding ?

 

[bird dog]

I have run about 70 steers and heifers for the last two years during the warm months and paid a lot of attention to weight using scales. I ran two batches each year. No supplements or feed. Free choice mineral. Mixture of Klein, Blue stem and Bermuda unfertilized pasture. This is an area close to Waco. This year had more rain, but the calves gained less. The grass did not look quite as good even with more rain. Calves out of my herd gained about 1.6 lbs per day last year and about 1.4 this year. Sale barn calves were about .2 lbs per day less. A few of the sale barn calves were very poor gainers and brought down that average.
The group in the last half of the summer performed considerably worse than the earlier in the year group that had some Rye Grass. Since your imput costs are low, you can make a little money on even the poor calves.
Some calves will amaze you and gain nearly 3 lbs a day. Some will disappoint and only do 1/2 lb.
I am trying to start eliminating the sorry gainers early and cut my loss but it is not easy to return two or three at a time to the sale barn. Maybe the best way to do it would be to replace the bottom 20% or so after about 45 days.

 

[Bigfoot]

Comes out to 16 pounds a day. That's 8 pounds in the morning and 8 pounds in the afternoon. That number might be artificially inflated a little. I get feed out of my bulk bin as needed around on the farm as needed. Calling the cows up, maybe putting a cow up here and there etc.

1. Meds are just at $16 a head. That's two rounds.
2. Mineral idk. I keep it out, seems like I'm buying a pallet everytime I turn around. I feed same mineral to every beef animal on the place.
3. I don't do a land charge. I have 45 acres of my acreage kinda permanantly devoted to backgrounding. What ever that is worth. Nothing to me fwiw
4. 1.5 rolls on my winter bunch, and surprisingly .5 rolls on my summer bunch. They are my rolls, but I call them worth $45 a piece.


I usually try to take a 400 pound calf to 775. Sometimes I take a 550 pound calf to 775. I look for frame when I'm buying-------Black sims, and charlois and charlois crosses are prefered

 

[Angus Cowman]

Comes out to 16 pounds a day. That's 8 pounds in the morning and 8 pounds in the afternoon. That number might be artificially inflated a little. I get feed out of my bulk bin as needed around on the farm as needed. Calling the cows up, maybe putting a cow up here and there etc.

1. Meds are just at $16 a head. That's two rounds.
2. Mineral idk. I keep it out, seems like I'm buying a pallet everytime I turn around. I feed same mineral to every beef animal on the place.
3. I don't do a land charge. I have 45 acres of my acreage kinda permanantly devoted to backgrounding. What ever that is worth. Nothing to me fwiw
4. 1.5 rolls on my winter bunch, and surprisingly .5 rolls on my summer bunch. They are my rolls, but I call them worth $45 a piece.


I usually try to take a 400 pound calf to 775. Sometimes I take a 550 pound calf to 775. I look for frame when I'm buying-------Black sims, and charlois and charlois crosses are prefered

BF if your feeding 16lbs of grain pr hd pr day at $215pr ton you are putting $1.72 in each calf would be hard to come out with that kind of input

 

[Bigfoot]

Yea. I'm digging in my shoe box as we speak. Looks like I had a bad year. I'll have something concrete by bed time. Looks like Uncle Sam is going to end up oweing me.

 

[Angus Cowman]

Yea. I'm digging in my shoe box as we speak. Looks like I had a bad year. I'll have something concrete by bed time. Looks like Uncle Sam is going to end up oweing me.

not trying to be a smart a$$ I guess was just wondering if I read your statement correct
If you can make it work for you that is great but I can't seem to make those numbers work unless I was getting 3+lbs on ADG

 

[Bigfoot]

Yea. I'm digging in my shoe box as we speak. Looks like I had a bad year. I'll have something concrete by bed time. Looks like Uncle Sam is going to end up oweing me.

not trying to be a smart a$$ I guess was just wondering if I read your statement correct
If you can make it work for you that is great but I can't seem to make those numbers work unless I was getting 3+lbs on ADG

I'm not taking it that way. Looks like each calf ate about 1700 pounds of feed in almost exactly 5 months. What does that work out to. Little over 11 pounds a day. Still not very good

 

[Bigfoot]

$780.00 purchase price of steers
$16.00 Meds
$180.00 Feed
$70.00 hay
$15.00 mineral
$1061.00 total. I'd say more like $1075


Calves brought $1160

Roughly $85 profit a piece. This is why I say I make nothing on cattle. That $85 doesn't include a host of things like-------fuel, wire, insurance, fertilizer. You name it. Probably in the end, it was a break even or lose group.

But guess what. I'll start all over again here in a few weeks.

 

[Stocker Steve]

There is a big difference between forage based stockering and feed based back grounding. Many operations (including mine) mix the two. When Harlan runs back grounding budgets for Beef mag the numbers are sobering. If you run separate budgets you may find that you "lose money" on the back grounding but "make money" on the stockering. Another way to look at this would be to run fewer head with less purchased feed and try to get compensatory gain on pasture.

 

[cross_7]

There is a big difference between forage based stockering and feed based back grounding. Many operations (including mine) mix the two. When Harlan runs back grounding budgets for Beef mag the numbers are sobering. If you run separate budgets you may find that you "lose money" on the back grounding but "make money" on the stockering. Another way to look at this would be to run fewer head with less purchased feed and try to get compensatory gain on pasture.

Thanks Steve
In my part of the world when you figure land cost, tractor, equip, fuel, seed, and etc
It's tough to make a profit on wheat pasture
Grass looks better if you can get on gain on it, that I think is going to be where supplement comes in and may wreck the plan

Bf
80 profit per head wouldnt hurt my feelings

 

[Bigfoot]

It wasn't terrible. My feed cost may also have not been quit that high. I had 40 or so on feed, and I weaned 6 calves off of my cows during that time. They were up for about a month eating out of that bin.

 

[Stocker Steve]

Supplementing and stocking rate are complicated.
The first bit of supplement that gets mineral and ionsopore into them is very profitable.
Some short seasonal energy or protein supplements can be somewhat profitable.
Heavy supplementation went out with $2 corn.