Hey Cow Wintering Cost ?

[Stocker Steve]

Been doing some figur'in while the wood burner worked. Came up with U$S 1.20 to 1.40 per day to winter a dry cow on free choice hay and mineral. :compute:

I know cow sizes and hay costs vary - - but is this in the ballpark for you?
Are you sold on other approaches - - like grazing annuals or limit feeding?

 

[Caustic Burno]

Been doing some figur'in while the wood burner worked. Came up with U$S 1.20 to 1.40 per day to winter a dry cow on free choice hay and mineral. :compute:

I know cow sizes and hay costs vary - - but is this in the ballpark for you?
Are you sold on other approaches - - like grazing annuals or limit feeding?

I always say takes a buck and a half a day to maintain a cow.
If I remember right last year I was at 1.37.
Haven't finished the books this year.
You're definitely in my ballpark, I usually come in under that 1.50.

 

[Dave]

About 15 -20 years ago my goal was to keep winter feed under a dollar a day per cow. In the last 7 or 8 years or so I had one year where it was an even dollar. That was by feeding Bent or Bluegrass straw from the grass seed growers and limit feeding alfalfa. Cheap by products if available in your area are a good way to keep cost down. I fed the waste from a sweet corn processing plant for a while. It was great feed cheap until circumstances changed and the source dried up. I met a guy one time from your general part of the world. He would drive around looking for hailed down corn. He would make a deal with the farmer and strip grazed it. Wintered his cows real cheap.

 

[Aaron]

Been doing some figur'in while the wood burner worked. Came up with U$S 1.20 to 1.40 per day to winter a dry cow on free choice hay and mineral. :compute:

I know cow sizes and hay costs vary - - but is this in the ballpark for you?
Are you sold on other approaches - - like grazing annuals or limit feeding?

Yep. Numbers are the same in greenbacks. Or 1.60 to 2.00 in Canadian Pesos.

 

[Stocker Steve]

Been experimenting with annual mixes for a while. Got the tonnage per acre up but then the grazing utilization of stemmy stuff is low. Net annual mix cost/day can come out to about the same as cow hay here - - with higher TDN but more weather risk. So I think it is really better for weanlings or yearlings, as long as you don't mind managing multiple herds.

 

[gcreekrch]

If I was to cost hay at what it cost to put it in the stackyard and 5 lbs screening pellets at .10 a lb, I could arrive at $1.50

Hay being traded in this country at $190 to $250 per ton would change that figure significantly to $3.00+

 

[Silver]

I guess the trick if you put up your own hay is figuring out the true cost of it. Do you amortize the cost of rejuvenating hay land over the average life expectancy of a stand of hay? Cost of haying and farming equipment? Do you put a dollar value on your time?
It would be relatively easy for me to claim I can put bales in the yard for say $30 but it wouldn't be a true reflection of the actual cost of the hay.
For me it makes the most sense to take my annual total expenses and divide the cows into it to see what it's costing to carry them for a year.

 

[Stocker Steve]

Yes
Yes
Yes
No. You need to break total cost down into enterprises. Allocating costs is a bitch but you have to do your best. Cover crops and back grounding pencil out best here since the soybean embargo went into place.

Fresh snow is dragging on the bottom of the pickup today but I have to go feed some more of those $1.50 cows before it gets deeper. :cboy:

 

[bball]

Great topic. Since Oct 6th, cows have been on corn stubble and stockpiled native grass (in the form of ditch banks, sandknobs, and anything growing in the patches of woods not cleared for row cropping). Also, they are supplemented each evening with 3# 18% blended pellet at .09 per lb. That's .27 per day. The fencing is temporary and has been in use for 15 to 20 years. Takes a day to put up and 1/2 a day to take down come late March. Mineral and salt figure in at roughly a dime per head per day(varies).
So worst case scenario: .37 per head per day since Oct 6th to maintain BCS 5-5.5.
After Jan 1, they will be pulled off stalks and the expensive hay feeding begins- back to that $1.50 range again.

 

[Silver]

Yes
Yes
Yes
No. You need to break total cost down into enterprises. Allocating costs is a be nice but you have to do your best. Cover crops and back grounding pencil out best here since the soybean embargo went into place.

Fresh snow is dragging on the bottom of the pickup today but I have to go feed some more of those $1.50 cows before it gets deeper. :cboy:

Well I have done that. Even built a fancy excel spreadsheet to help me see it all. I put in all associated costs including wages, fuel, equipment depreciation included in rejuvenation to give me a cost per acre and averaged the cost per acre over 10 years. Figured cost of making hay including wages, fuel, equipment depreciation and twine.
The problem is that it's a little subjective. I didn't figure land taxes or land costs. The formula is only as good as what you put into it. But it's a guide I guess. Works out it costs me in the neighbourhood of $40.00 per 1500 lb bale in the yard, by my figures.
But in an operation like mine that does the same routine every year (calving cows, keeping replacements and selling calves) and about all we do is either roll feed up or unroll it, it's pretty easy to just subtract expenses from income and divide by head wintered to see how things are actually working.

 

[Stocker Steve]

Folks used to brag about the cheap meadow hay made around here. That was before climate change.

We don't have the cheap corn stubble like some. A BTO would just truck the cows SW, but I prefer feeding to ice fishing.

If you have Excel and don't have cheap winter feed - - then yearlings get attractive. Yearlings are often pushed for drought flexibility, but wintering flexibility is more valuable here.

The other wintering cost thing you can do without changing your routine is looking at stocking rate vs. grazing season. I am stocked heavy - - so the question is could fewer cows, and thus less hay fed, increase ranch gross margin?

 

[Caustic Burno]

You have taken the climate change bait hook line and sinker.
Climate has been changing from the beginning of time.

 

[Stocker Steve]

You have taken the climate change bait hook line and sinker.
Climate has been changing from the beginning of time.

Ready to start planting pineapples soon. :banana:

 

[gcreekrch]

Yes
Yes
Yes
No. You need to break total cost down into enterprises. Allocating costs is a be nice but you have to do your best. Cover crops and back grounding pencil out best here since the soybean embargo went into place.

Fresh snow is dragging on the bottom of the pickup today but I have to go feed some more of those $1.50 cows before it gets deeper. :cboy:

You need to go easy on the Dave Pratt coolaid.

Opportunity costs etc are just bs numbers thrown in to make everyone think they are losing money or can starve a living out of a cow. The only real number is an averaged cost of production per calf using real dollars that you actually spent per cow subtracted from your average income per cow.

If you think turning yearlings over is where the profit is on an annual basis you need to visit with a few old boys that have been there and done that. We use purchased calves as a write of late in the year. Sometimes they work better than they need to, other years they create more tax problems. Bottom line is yearling usually lose in 5 years what you make in 2.

May I ask what age bracket you are in Steve?

 

[1982vett]

The other wintering cost thing you can do without changing your routine is looking at stocking rate vs. grazing season. I am stocked heavy - - so the question is could fewer cows, and thus less hay fed, increase ranch gross margin?

I'm going to answer that with a yes. For me it has but it's more than just less hay fed especially when your growing your own.

Generally it's less fertilizer, fuel, equipment maintenance, seed, storage loss, labor and so on. Now operating here is vastly different than Minnesota. A longer growing season and a shorter hay feeding season makes a big difference.

 

[Banjo]

The other wintering cost thing you can do without changing your routine is looking at stocking rate vs. grazing season. I am stocked heavy - - so the question is could fewer cows, and thus less hay fed, increase ranch gross margin?

I'm going to answer that with a yes. For me it has but it's more than just less hay fed especially when your growing your own.

Generally it's less fertilizer, fuel, equipment maintenance, seed, storage loss, labor and so on. Now operating here is vastly different than Minnesota. A longer growing season and a shorter hay feeding season makes a big difference.

If you can graze long into the winter and only have to feed hay 60 days or less.....its probably profitable being stocked to the gills. But if your feeding hay 5 months it will take a fortune in hay if buying it or half the farm set aside for baling hay if you grow it.

 

[Stocker Steve]

Yearling feeder economics look OK, and they are less labor as 1982vett said.
Yearling replacements don't look OK - - showing negative cash flow from selling a cheap cow and buying back a heifer calf.
So I am trying to be cautious in 2019.

 

[1982vett]

I think being cautious in 2019 is the way to go. I don't think it's going to be good to us.

 

[JMJ Farms]

The other wintering cost thing you can do without changing your routine is looking at stocking rate vs. grazing season. I am stocked heavy - - so the question is could fewer cows, and thus less hay fed, increase ranch gross margin?

I'm going to answer that with a yes. For me it has but it's more than just less hay fed especially when your growing your own.

Generally it's less fertilizer, fuel, equipment maintenance, seed, storage loss, labor and so on. Now operating here is vastly different than Minnesota. A longer growing season and a shorter hay feeding season makes a big difference.

If you can graze long into the winter and only have to feed hay 60 days or less.....its probably profitable being stocked to the gills. But if your feeding hay 5 months it will take a fortune in hay if buying it or half the farm set aside for baling hay if you grow it.

As a general rule I feed hay 5-6 months EVERY year. Fall is almost always hot and dry as a popcorn fart. Bermuda grass gets tough and they won't hardly eat it. Too hot and dry to plant fall/winter grazing, not to mention the armyworms. Then we get to plant around November and it turns cold fast. Winter grazing comes on about March-April or whenever it starts warming up. I'm not trying to be pessimistic. It's just how it works here most years. This year I started feeding hay the first of November. And will probably continue until mid April. Right now I'm feeding 3-4 bales a day depending on how cold it is. 150 days x 3.5 bales = 525 bales. $50/bale x 525 bales =$26k = $260/cow. Hard to have any profit left at that rate. I've really got to figure out a way to pay for a pivot and well so I can have dependable winter grazing and use hay for emergencies. IMO, GOOD hay is second only to tubs as the most expensive way to feed a cow. At least for me.

 

[True Grit Farms]

I'm going to answer that with a yes. For me it has but it's more than just less hay fed especially when your growing your own.

Generally it's less fertilizer, fuel, equipment maintenance, seed, storage loss, labor and so on. Now operating here is vastly different than Minnesota. A longer growing season and a shorter hay feeding season makes a big difference.

If you can graze long into the winter and only have to feed hay 60 days or less.....its probably profitable being stocked to the gills. But if your feeding hay 5 months it will take a fortune in hay if buying it or half the farm set aside for baling hay if you grow it.

As a general rule I feed hay 5-6 months EVERY year. Fall is almost always hot and dry as a popcorn fart. Bermuda grass gets tough and they won't hardly eat it. Too hot and dry to plant fall/winter grazing, not to mention the armyworms. Then we get to plant around November and it turns cold fast. Winter grazing comes on about March-April or whenever it starts warming up. I'm not trying to be pessimistic. It's just how it works here most years. This year I started feeding hay the first of November. And will probably continue until mid April. Right now I'm feeding 3-4 bales a day depending on how cold it is. 150 days x 3.5 bales = 525 bales. $50/bale x 525 bales =$26k = $260/cow. Hard to have any profit left at that rate. I've really got to figure out a way to pay for a pivot and well so I can have dependable winter grazing and use hay for emergencies. IMO, GOOD hay is second only to tubs as the most expensive way to feed a cow. At least for me.

Your discouraging me, I'm having trouble keeping ahead of the deer on my winter grazing. The biggest waste of money for me is not having my new hay barn up. I have a 100 rolls left outside that the cows won't hardly eat, and I don't really blame them. I feed 4 good rolls out of the barn one day and 6 crappy bales from outside the next. Every other day I'm giving the cows 7 - 8 lbs of wcs and corn to keep them heated up.