https://www.foxnews.com/us/coronavirus-cattle-industry-may-lose-billions-covid19
Gonna be a rough stretch for the foreseeable future.
Gonna be a rough stretch for the foreseeable future.
we did meat bundles. It doesn't help. You just don't get the hamburger helper crowd because they're all at Walmart.HDRider said:I expect you are correct. I highly doubt I get past the trailer stage. Our processor seems to be a good marketer and warned me of the same thing. His answer to the problem was what he called meat bundles with prices ranging from $75 to $300 containing fast and slow moving items.shaz said:The problem I ran into with my meat store is we were selling individual cuts. we had 7 chest freezers to separate cuts. We also had 3 freezers on a trailer.
This kind of operation appeals to the steak crowd. Mostly men who liked buying meat for the grill. Within a year or two we had very little steak but 3K lbs of hamburger. This is obviously a cash flow problem and we didn't have enough restaurants to ease the problem. We never had more than one person working the store at any given time.
To mitigate the inventory problem we ended up buying steaks from a wholesaler in Nashville to resell. This is clearly not what our customers wanted.
If you can only sell 1/4, 1/2 and whole beef you can bypass this issue but there's no reason to have a meat store if you do it this way.
I have often been accused of being stubborn. I do know I have to sometimes take a punch on the nose to learn a lesson.
I appreciate your words of wisdom, and experience. Thank you
Brute 23 said:Yes, you have to find people in a bind and get their cattle on the cheap and then sell them to a bright eyed new comer that wants pets or doesnt know there is no money in it.
WFfarm said:Brute 23 said:Yes, you have to find people in a bind and get their cattle on the cheap and then sell them to a bright eyed new comer that wants pets or doesnt know there is no money in it.
Sounds like the Dexter raisers around here.
sstterry said:One has to wonder just what amount of collusion between the big 4 may be going on. I have first-hand knowledge of how one big Dairy Cooperative was raping its own farmers. I suspect the same is going on with the Packers.
But it certainly doesn't look like there is a lot of price competition when they are selling to the retailers.HDRider said:sstterry said:One has to wonder just what amount of collusion between the big 4 may be going on. I have first-hand knowledge of how one big Dairy Cooperative was raping its own farmers. I suspect the same is going on with the Packers.
I am not sure they would have to collude.
All they have to do is not buy until the feed lots get full and desperate.
How many days of inventory of frozen beef can packers have?
sstterry said:But it certainly doesn't look like there is a lot of price competition when they are selling to the retailers.HDRider said:sstterry said:One has to wonder just what amount of collusion between the big 4 may be going on. I have first-hand knowledge of how one big Dairy Cooperative was raping its own farmers. I suspect the same is going on with the Packers.
I am not sure they would have to collude.
All they have to do is not buy until the feed lots get full and desperate.
How many days of inventory of frozen beef can packers have?
ccr said:I wonder how it got this way. 4 processors that control 85% of the market and 2 of them are foreign owned (JBS - Brazil, and Smithfield - China). Am I understanding this right?
callmefence said:Raising cattle is a business. It's also a skilled trade if you will. Same with growing stocker calves, and feeding feeders. Same with running a store. Do you have experience in all these things.?
I can't count the people I've seen fail in a few months of opening a business. They expect to hang a shingle and the money starts rolling in.
It very rarely works that way. I was taught not to start anything and expect a profit in the first three years. I found that to be true. Don't expect the business to pay any of your personal bills for some time. And you better be capable of supporting the business for several months.
Experience is very important, the most important. Alot of the money in a small business is hidden. You learn to see where the money is over time. A lot of people won't understand that, but a few will know exactly what I mean.
You see it all the time.... someone opens a cafe because they are a good cook. In 60 days their broke. They may be the best cook in the world, but they knew nothing about running a restaurant, and didn't have the funds cover the bills without immediately becoming profitable.
Holy Smokes that's high!!! Where I take mine charges $35 kill fee and .45 lb hanging weight processing fee. My half on a 625 lb dressed heifer was $160.Nesikep said:The butcher will take a good chunk of your profit! Last steer I did cost me $1050, or my price on 1/4 of the beef cut and wrapped.. so I do 2 years of work and the butcher takes 1/4 of it in a few days work..HDRider said:You can't make a profit the way most of us go to market. I want to take out the backgrounder, feedlot, distributor and the retailer with minimal processing cost. I'm thinking if I take their profit margins and make them my profit margins, even at a small scale, I can make a profit.MurraysMutts said:O we dont eat those. I thought u wanted to sell em, not eat em.
We let someone else make em bigger.
Are u the someone else?
I do see your point tho. When we feed one out to butcher, it costs quite a bit as we have to buy feed.
Idk how anyone can afford to make em bigger and then sell em and still make money. Not the way practices and prices are now.
Where does one find feed cheap enough to make em that big at a big scale? Ya got me..
It is stupid high.. that is CAD, so about 750USD at the time.. still high... but that's what happens when the regulations get stupid and no one wants to do it.. that's the nearest one at 2 hours away, how far do you want to bring a steer?hillbilly beef man said:Holy Smokes that's high!!! Where I take mine charges $35 kill fee and .45 lb hanging weight processing fee. My half on a 625 lb dressed heifer was $160.Nesikep said:The butcher will take a good chunk of your profit! Last steer I did cost me $1050, or my price on 1/4 of the beef cut and wrapped.. so I do 2 years of work and the butcher takes 1/4 of it in a few days work..HDRider said:You can't make a profit the way most of us go to market. I want to take out the backgrounder, feedlot, distributor and the retailer with minimal processing cost. I'm thinking if I take their profit margins and make them my profit margins, even at a small scale, I can make a profit.
ccr said:I wonder how it got this way. 4 processors that control 85% of the market and 2 of them are foreign owned (JBS - Brazil, and Smithfield - China). Am I understanding this right?