Grazing lease

[Nesikep]

I'm throwing around the idea of leasing land to pasture my cows for a couple months of the year, it's pretty close by (10 minute drive and on my way into town), the ranch recently got sold and the new owners only have about 20 cows on a ranch that easily held 80 year round, so they are certainly going to have too much feed. My plan would be to calve out at home, perhaps turn the bull out a week earlier for Mar 1st calving start, and graze most of my first cut, which would take me until mid july or so, at which point they'd go to the other ranch until weaning, so about 2-3 months. Another rancher in the general area has been leasing pasture for $.75 a day per pair. I'd also be able to increase my holding capacity to about 30 cows quite easily if I could just get rid of them for a little while, and I'd have much more second cut hay, which would be good too.

Wondering what you folks think of this? Sound reasonable? What would your upper limit be on a per diem price? (it's a good pasture, not bunchgrass)

 

[LRTX1]

Should be fairly easy to put pencil to paper on that one. Will the extra hay you make at home cover the expense of the lease and carry the additional head you can run. If it can I can't think of a why not.

Will your cows run with the other fellows cows. Does he use the same health protocols? Are there adequate handling facilities on site?

 

[Texas PaPaw]

Have been paying $.85/pair/day for pasture with care. With today's calf prices could probably pay a little more for right situation.

 

[Nesikep]

I would want mine to be separated from the other cows, as there may be a little cleanup breeding left, I haven't spoken to the people yet, met the new managers once (owners are rich folk from Seattle), I think the owners don't care for a profit, as long as the ranch pays its way. Manager and his wife seem like fairly nice folk, though a little wet behind the ears yet, All the cows were already on the ranch, it's been a fairly closed herd for the last 10 years or so. As for handling facilities, there is a squeeze and a chute, as well as a mobile chute.

If I pencil it out for 20 head and $1/day/pair, it's $600/month = $7200/year, if the calves of 20 cows currently bring about $24,000, I'd say i'm doing fairly well. If a pair eats a half a bale a day (they certainly do) here, and I can sell second cut for $8/bale, I think it pencils out well that way too... If I were feeding $25 rolls it may look a little different.
Around here last I checked (a LONG time ago), grazing leases on public lands were $2.50/pair per MONTH... pretty hard to not make money on that unless you have huge losses to wolves or something.