How long to establish your herd number?

[cow pollinater]

Older native one iron solid mouth cows are the cheapest, safest way to grow faster than what you can do with your own replacements that I've found. They don't bring a whole lot more than kill price but they're proven and will either replace themselves with a native heifer or give you a steer worth about what you paid for the cow and you still have the cow to sell.

 

[Big Cheese]

Its always going to be a gradual process to grow unless you just go out and spend the money to buy however many you want or need. We've been expanding since we got back in the cow business a couple of years ago. We started out just buying a few young 300-600 pound heifers that were skinny and needed some groceries from time to time since we were in it for a hobby. But we are in it big again and from my experience in growing this is how I would handle it...mainly because this is what we did and it worked really well.

I would keep a few of my heifers every year so that you wont go in the hole on feeding them and keeping them up. That way you wont lose much money at sale time and you will gain cows cheaper. Then, throughout the year I would buy a bred cow or heifer from time to time. Either from a buyer/saler or from the barn or from someone you know that has to sell good cows every now and then. You can grow quick doing that if you know a buyer/saler. They will be able to get you exactly what you want for the price you want. This way you won't feel like your spending all kinds of money on cows and you will be growing in the process. Then, once you get to the number you want you can start keeping heifers every year as replacements and cull out the old cows and you will keep on rolling on along.

 

[Bigfoot]

Everybody is skipping over the loss of income when you hold back several heifers. With every one of them worth 12 13 even 14 hundred dollars, it gets in your pocket to keep very many. If you want to see true growth in your herd, it has to come at the expense of annual income.

 

[bigbull338]

Everybody is skipping over the loss of income when you hold back several heifers. With every one of them worth 12 13 even 14 hundred dollars, it gets in your pocket to keep very many. If you want to see true growth in your herd, it has to come at the expense of annual income.

but most of the time if you keep heifers you need to spend money raising them.i prefer to buy my replacement cows than raise them.cows provide a quick pay off.

 

[Bigfoot]

Your right, a bought cow will get you a calf to sell faster. I'm just kinda at the point I'm not going to buy anymore cows. A herd dispersal might be alright, nut they are few and far between in my area.

 

[Nesikep]

Everybody is skipping over the loss of income when you hold back several heifers. With every one of them worth 12 13 even 14 hundred dollars, it gets in your pocket to keep very many. If you want to see true growth in your herd, it has to come at the expense of annual income.

That's the big problem with trying to grow a small herd.. In order to achieve any significant growth, you have to settle on making NO income from the cows.. so you need another source.

Once you have a certain herd size, you should be able to retain the same percentage of heifers with less effect on your income because you have a better profit margin.

Growth has to be looked at in percentages.. growing from 20 to 30 isn't much different than growing from 200 to 300.. it's a 50% increase, and it's not hard to do in about a 4 year span... Growing from 30 to 100 is a much much longer process, and part of the problem is that getting too zealous keeping shoddy replacements early is they won't live long enough to see the 100 head herd, and their daughters won't be much good either, meaning a lot more than expected culling before you get to your goal... If you're only growing from 30 to 50, it doesn't matter much, because even not so good cows will live to see it, and once you're there, you'll have other replacements of better quality anyhow.. Yes, you will still have a higher cull rate for a while, but at least you'll have reached your capacity.

This comes from experience.. 23 years into this herd, starting out with 12 cows, we kept a bunch of crappy stock to increase our herd.. some of what we kept looked great, but had hidden problems (prolapses, bad udders, and hooves) surface as they got older.. We've had to cull a ton of animals at 5-8 years old because of it, and when only 1 our of every 3 or 4 heifers really turns out, you just can't get anywhere with the growth.. Once we finally weeded out the bad lines and stuck with it, even the not-so-good cows are lasting well enough, though they may not produce as much as we'd like, and we consider them terminal. Now, FINALLY, growth is much easier.. I have about 20 good cows (out of 27), and wouldn't have a hard time being at 30 in 3 or 4 years.

 

[Big Cheese]

One problem with buying to many outside cows is they can bring diseases in. We had that last year with a herd of 8 that we bought. Brought BVD in and we had 6 dead calves in a row. We got it under control now and 4 of those cows were culled.

 

[backhoeboogie]

For those of you who started at some point or decided to increase the family herd, how quickly did you reach the number of cows you wanted? If your goal was 50, did you just go out and buy 50, or was it a gradual process over the years?

I'm still not there. I have a little more than 1/4 of the cows I owned 5 years ago. Now the gravel miners have been relentless on leasing my best hay fields. Claiming there's over 40 feet of gravel down below the loam. I have priced it to them. I don't negotiate.

So I may be stuck at this level until I buy another place. Not really interested in going the lease route any more.

I think "numbers" is a never ending quest. Quality is too.

 

[backhoeboogie]

Lol. How much money is enough money? Cows are nothing more than stock investment. It's business.

 

[js1234]

im not sure i completely understand the question. numbers are such a moving thing depending on so many factors both within the operation and externally. our numbers have been basically growing with some contraction at various points due to droughts, lost leases, properties we've sold, ranches converted to stockers etc. etc. etc. since 1911.

 

[Big Cheese]

Lol. How much money is enough money? Cows are nothing more than stock investment. It's business.

Exactly. It's an investment.