Greg Judy and Profit per Acre

[Stocker Steve]

What happens when the corn & soybean farmers try to switch to regenerative agriculture? Seems like they would have to add ruminants to their operation sooner or later. Add that to a population of city folk that is told to eat less meat and beef in particular.

Many corn/beans/Cancun operations are either working with Grandpa' equity or trying to make it up with volume, but some are working with biology:
- Pretty easy to improve a 2 crop rotation by adding a third crop. Gets tougher from there.
- Cover crops are hard in the short season country unless you grow silage or small grains in rotation. Effective inter seeding is a challenge. Economics are also a challenge unless you are able to graze the cover crop.
- The trendy inputs is now bio stimulants. So you spray on the biology rather than culturing it.

I predict the new big regen program with be FSA trying to sign up dirt farmers for a carbon bank. I doubt they will give you credit for cattle.

 

[Dave]

Many of the little pasture farmers, people with 10 to 50 acres, that are direct marketing will usually state they actually make money with their poultry, chickens, eggs and turkeys. Every one if them is buying the feed and then running those 8'x4' wire cages on grass for fryers (tractors is what they call them). The cloth/wire fence around a hen house for the layers and the same setup minus the hen house but adding a roost hut for the turkeys. They're moving the fryers daily and the others daily or up to every 3rd day. Many of them move the layers onto the ground the cattle grazed 2 days after the cattle have left for fly control. It must work with as many people that do it. Most or many seem to be skipping the cattle all together, but they're butchering all the birds themselves and then selling them to their customers.

I'm thinking that's probably a pretty good management method for their land, they add the inputs with the manure and waste, give it a good rest and let the sun reinvigorate the grass and soil...let the worms and insects do their thing and keep on rotating. The one input they can't get around is the feed,and they're feeding tons of it. Some of them a few gravity wagons a month. They have to be doing something right.

I'm of the opinion that they're doing it better than most of the commercial ag, inputs and more inputs to make dollars per acre vs limited inputs and hundreds of dollars per acre.

I have a friend who is doing exactly that program with the chickens. He runs a few steers to chew the grass down ahead of the chickens. He is doing pretty good. But there has to be a limited number of people willing to pay $6 a dozen for eggs and fryers starting at $5 a pound. And his beef starts at $6 a pound for hamburger and goes up to $20 a pound for the best steaks. On the other hand he drives to Seattle 3 times a week to sell his product. There is not enough money to get me to drive to Seattle 3 times a week.

 

[Peace]

I have a friend who is doing exactly that program with the chickens. He runs a few steers to chew the grass down ahead of the chickens. He is doing pretty good. But there has to be a limited number of people willing to pay $6 a dozen for eggs and fryers starting at $5 a pound. And his beef starts at $6 a pound for hamburger and goes up to $20 a pound for the best steaks. On the other hand he drives to Seattle 3 times a week to sell his product. There is not enough money to get me to drive to Seattle 3 times a week.

Right, how thin is the air when you're asking 4x the cost of grocery store, or 2x the cost of whole foods or other "organic" stores. At some point fresh, local and organic lose that shine, but I'm pretty sure most of his customers aren't worried about how they're going to pay next month's mortgage.

I'm guessing he has no choice but to head to Seattle that often as he has to deliver that often to keep his customers, and is probably doing a couple farmers markets to get customers. I'm sure it's as much work as any other type of farming, but the $/acre is there. Even if he had a big enough customer base to take his production weekly, would there be any way possible to get them all to come to a central place in Seattle and all take delivery on the same day. (good luck with herding that flock)

 

[Lee VanRoss]

Did Greg Judy leave the building?

 

[Stocker Steve]

Did Greg Judy leave the building?

He is very busy. But you still have me!

Greg is very humble and a good story teller. One touching story was how he was so broke that he slept in his truck to attend his first MIG conference. A humorous story was how Greg rented pasture for rodeo stock and had a free range bucking bull take over the yard around his house. At one SGF conference he went on and on how much good work his wife did. At the end of his talk the only question from the audience was "does she have a sister?"

On a more serious note - - many folks go on about how they have reduced costs 5 or 10%, but if you look at a lot of Greg' more recent efforts, they always seem to include getting a big price premium for the product. Hummm.

 

[RDFF]

I have a friend who is doing exactly that program with the chickens. He runs a few steers to chew the grass down ahead of the chickens. He is doing pretty good. But there has to be a limited number of people willing to pay $6 a dozen for eggs and fryers starting at $5 a pound. And his beef starts at $6 a pound for hamburger and goes up to $20 a pound for the best steaks. On the other hand he drives to Seattle 3 times a week to sell his product. There is not enough money to get me to drive to Seattle 3 times a week.

The high dollar money is endless in Seattle... they LIKE to spend their techy money as a status symbol, to impress everybody else that doesn't have "a REAL job" making 6 figures. And I agree... not enough money to get me to go there either... have to do it every so often though... kids living out there...........

 

[RDFF]

Greg is really a great presenter, and tries hard to teach how he keeps his cost of overhead to a minimum. One thing about his operation though... if you've ever looked up his place on Google Earth, you'll notice that he's in "hill country" with lots of wooded land... not the "grain country" that I'm located in, for sure. There's lots of "hunting acres", and wooded pasture ground, etc., all around him... he's not having to compete nearly as aggressively with crop land for pasture ground. And one more... right now he's probably carrying more animals than he ever has... something close to 400 head... but do you recall how many actual ACRES he's running them on? Last I knew, it was like 1600. So that's 4 acres per animal (and alot of those, maybe close to half, are calves). So his actual annual stocking density isn't all that high. And THAT allows him the flexibility to have those extended grazing intervals. I realize that maybe half of that ground is woods... but that would still put him at something like 3 acres per C/c pair. And he's not in a "drought area"....

Don't want to put down anything he's doing there though... he's a great manager, and knows what he's doing, and I wish I could say I do as good a job as he is!

 

[Muletrack]

Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. Have a quarter of native pasture that I rent to a neighbor because my numbers are down. Might be a good place to put some late breds -- if I can buy them really, really cheap. My experience of buying these types of cows just to increase number has not been good. But a later winter cull date means putting some hay into them.

$62 will buy a pretty decent bale around here, but that cost doesn't consider the difference in calf mortality between fall and spring calving. Keeping 100 percent of my calve alive because of perfect weather conditions is the main reason I calve in the fall.

 

[Stocker Steve]

right now he's probably carrying more animals than he ever has... something close to 400 head... but do you recall how many actual ACRES he's running them on? Last I knew, it was like 1600. So that's 4 acres per animal (and alot of those, maybe close to half, are calves). So his actual annual stocking density isn't all that high. And THAT allows him the flexibility to have those extended grazing intervals.

With today's calf and hay prices - - many cow/calf producers would make more money by reducing their stocking rates and supplying less stored feed. Greg is stocking for what he can carry in the fall and winter, not what he could carry during the spring and early summer pasture production peak.

The long grazing intervals, in part, are building a fescue stockpile. How far you could go with this stockpiling approach is a function of land cost, type of forage you grow, and snow depth. What you see in the snow country are folks trying to graze a standing corn stockpile. Recent grain prices will challenge this.

 

[KAstocker]

I've heard Greg say they own or lease 1600 acres, 900 of which are grazable. The remainder is timber.

 

[FungusProudKY31]

"The long grazing intervals, in part, are building a fescue stockpile."
This does not work in SC. I have no idea of other locations. With some fences down due to logging, some high % fescue pastures were not grazed for almost 2 years. The fescue actually diminished without animal interaction one winter and the animals did not gain weight when forced to graze the old vegetation.

This whole discussion of long rotations makes no sense. We focus on the soil. It has to be healthy. Let's highly discuss that. Then we focus on the plants and they need to fit and be various. Let's highly discuss that. Then we begin to talk about livestock and we say "let them eat old woody and overmature forage and do great". The wheel is off of the wagon at that point. It is a choice to ignore the animal needs in the whole of the system. Let me feed you cardboard and wood dust for a week and let's see how you feel and how much you gain. If you believe that over mature forages are great to plan to feed, you are really abusing your animals and ought to sell out. I don't care how many funny stories you can tell or if you slept in your truck.

 

[Banjo]

"The long grazing intervals, in part, are building a fescue stockpile."
This does not work in SC. I have no idea of other locations. With some fences down due to logging, some high % fescue pastures were not grazed for almost 2 years. The fescue actually diminished without animal interaction one winter and the animals did not gain weight when forced to graze the old vegetation.

This whole discussion of long rotations makes no sense. We focus on the soil. It has to be healthy. Let's highly discuss that. Then we focus on the plants and they need to fit and be various. Let's highly discuss that. Then we begin to talk about livestock and we say "let them eat old woody and overmature forage and do great". The wheel is off of the wagon at that point. It is a choice to ignore the animal needs in the whole of the system. Let me feed you cardboard and wood dust for a week and let's see how you feel and how much you gain. If you believe that over mature forages are great to plan to feed, you are really abusing your animals and ought to sell out. I don't care how many funny stories you can tell or if you slept in your truck.

Yes i agree...Atrophy sets in with too much rest.

 

[Rydero]

"The long grazing intervals, in part, are building a fescue stockpile."
This does not work in SC. I have no idea of other locations. With some fences down due to logging, some high % fescue pastures were not grazed for almost 2 years. The fescue actually diminished without animal interaction one winter and the animals did not gain weight when forced to graze the old vegetation.

This whole discussion of long rotations makes no sense. We focus on the soil. It has to be healthy. Let's highly discuss that. Then we focus on the plants and they need to fit and be various. Let's highly discuss that. Then we begin to talk about livestock and we say "let them eat old woody and overmature forage and do great". The wheel is off of the wagon at that point. It is a choice to ignore the animal needs in the whole of the system. Let me feed you cardboard and wood dust for a week and let's see how you feel and how much you gain. If you believe that over mature forages are great to plan to feed, you are really abusing your animals and ought to sell out. I don't care how many funny stories you can tell or if you slept in your truck.

Forage quality has to match the nutritional requirements of the animals grazing that forage.

There's a time and place for lower quality forage - ie dry cows but see the first statement. Leads to other questions. Most regenerative ag/grazing guru's advocate late calving to utilize spring growth to provide nutrition for lactation. What about the fall? Are these late calves supposed to be weaned when forage quality declines? Where's the high nutrition the calves need post weaning come from? I find weaning calves / feeding pairs early to meet their needs in the fall expensive so I calve a little earlier (March) and take the calves to market (hopefully) before I need to feed. 500 lb+ calves eat quite a bit more than baby calves.

 

[Djm961]

I have to agree with Stocker Steve. My budget sheet shows that I would be most profitable running my stocking rate for fall/ winter grazing. The only item I haven't fully jumped on board with yet is the spring calving to meet natures balance. My herd is all fall calving so I now take them through winter on stockpiled fescue and a little hay and run those calves until I began fall stockpiling again in August. Our grass quality is high in the fall for the cows and my calves are 6 months old when spring grass takes off. Im not sure if its the most profitable way or not because trying to run that out on a budget has a lot more variables.

 

[RDFF]

All very good comments. I think that it's critically important for us to devote as much time, thought, and effort (and some $ too) to growing HIGH QUALITY winter stockpiled forages as we normally are willing to devote to putting up something similar throughout the growing season, if you're ever going to be successful at it. It won't happen by "default", or on it's own, any more than high quality baled hay will happen on it's own. The forage has to be "staged" so that it's at optimum quality when it goes into dormancy from hard frost. And in our part of the country, you have to have some "tall forages" out there with the lower growing forages, to keep some "stubble" sticking up through the snow, so if it gets iced over, the ice is "perforated" so the cattle can graze down through it.

The animals should have as good of quality feed as you can accomplish (within practical financial constraints).... all year round, regardless of how that's done. Good quality doesn't mean "candy"... or even "outrageously high protein" or energy levels... it means achieving an appropriately BALANCED diet for their expected requirements.

Just my thoughts...

 

[Bigfoot]

I've heard Greg say they own or lease 1600 acres, 900 of which are grazable. The remainder is timber.

900 x $45=$40500
900 x $60=$54,000

Any way you slice it, at local rental prices it'd take several cows to make that work. Yeah. he's feeding minimal hay, but that's not the only expense in a cow.

 

[Stocker Steve]

Not everyone is lucky enough to have infected fescue, but it works well if you leverage it's strengths.

When does Greg Judy calve?

 

[Dave]

I would hate to think what the profit is per acre here. If I bought hay I could run about 100 cows. I have 1,200 acres of deeded land and over 15,000 leased (BLM alottment). That is 162 acres per cow. Profit per acre has to be less than $2 per acre. Profit per cow is probably a more realistic number to be looking at in a lot of areas.

 

[BFE]

Not everyone is lucky enough to have infected fescue, but it works well if you leverage it's strengths.

When does Greg Judy calve?

He calves in April/May give or take. He says to calve the same time as the largest wild ruminant in your area. That's about when the deer are dropping fawns in our area, his would be similar.

 

[Peace]

I would hate to think what the profit is per acre here. If I bought hay I could run about 100 cows. I have 1,200 acres of deeded land and over 15,000 leased (BLM alottment). That is 162 acres per cow. Profit per acre has to be less than $2 per acre. Profit per cow is probably a more realistic number to be looking at in a lot of areas.

Right, it doesn't really work when you're grazing desert. However it might if you use a cost analysis of land cost per head. that's probably the gist of the argument in the end.