Lowest price

[Howdyjabo]

I have been thinking that some younger cattlemen have forgotten the past. They are crying the blues about what calves are bringing.

Around here a good 600lb steer is .94/lb right now
Back in the 60's my husband remembers his Dad selling the same calf for .15/lb
I remember .60/lb in the 80's(Dairy By Out)

Whats the lowest you remember?

 

[dyates]

Also, don't forget to share what the cost of land, hay, fertilizer, diesel fuel, etc. was at that time!

 

[TexasBred]

Bought a cow/calf pair back in '74 for $110.00....small cow but probably works out to around $.10 per pound. Good land was $500 an acre, hay a dollar a square bale. Don't remember what diesel was but probably wasn't much. I was only making about $550 a month at that time too. Sold the same cow six month latter for about what I gave for her and had the calf butchered and put in the freezer.

 

[MikeC]

Sold a Blue Ribbon Show Steer for $.32 per lb. back in 1961. That was a big paycheck!

 

[Angus In Texas]

I can remember as shortly back as the drought of 1996 when 500# calves were bringing in the $.30 range if memory serves right. I know some sold for as little as $.10 a pound but I don't remember if that was cows or calves or what.

 

[TexasBred]

Sold a Blue Ribbon Show Steer for $.32 per lb. back in 1961. That was a big paycheck!

hehehe...Mike, figure your labor in there and you still owe for that steer. Course labor was cheap back then too...and free if you worked for yourself. :nod:

 

[shorty]

I can remember buying feeder steers back in the seventies for 45-55 cents.

 

[mitch2]

nothing cheaper than being knocked on the head... that is what holstein bull calves are bringing right now.... people tired of owing money after the auction instead of a check.

i know this has happened in the past quite a few times also...

Michele

 

[hillsdown]

When you have to pay close to a million dollars for a quarter section of land with no handling facilities and a sh@tty house and then buy cattle and all facilities as well as machinery to only get 94 cents a pound (which is even higher than you will get now) for a steer I think we all have the right to b@tch and complain unless you have inherited everything ......... and if this is the case you need to shut your mouth.

 

[Howdyjabo]

We made everything we have-- almost lost it all several times too.We Found out that crying about it doesn't count for anything.

 

[spoon]

Part of the reason according to our state cattlemens association is that when people are making money off their cows they expand and get more cows. After a few years of people doing this there is too many cows on the market and the price goes down. They said that Ky beef raisers had 8 profitable years in a row but that this year wouldn't be near as good due to many factors.

 

[Red Bull Breeder]

Was talking to a friend of mine the other night he had been going threw some papers of his dads in 65 his dad sold 30 calves 100.00 dollars a head took that and bought a brand new pickup. Now lets see you do that now even if calves were 1.50 a pound. Seems to me them calves might not have been that cheap. In 1967 his dad bought a ajoining farm a about 120 acres for 3500.00 dollars payed for it in calves that fall.I will take some of that kind of cheap.

 

[Howdyjabo]

You picked out two examples buying vehicles and land that are not representative of how much disposable income was available.
They were dirt cheap compared to todays prices- so you could sell calves dirt cheap and still buy them .IF you had any disposable income left which most didn't at .15/ lb calves.

 

[Red Bull Breeder]

Howdy i can assure you that things were as bad here as any where else, we raised what we ate and what our cattle ate, That old man did not wear his truck out hauling store bought feed. And if we want to make money on cattle today we better be doing it that way agin.

 

[stocky]

As recently as 1996 I got 45 cents for 500 lb heifers and 47 1/2 on the steers. In the 60's we got 18-20 cents for calves. We wintered the cows on cane and a 400 lb calf was a big calf. The cows weighed 800 lbs because you couldnt afford to feed them better. Supply and demand always sets the prices. Our government has always been able to suppress prices by opening up more beef imports. This did not hold true when we were able to export so much beef to Japan, but the mad cow outbreak killed our export markets and we have never gotten them back. As we import more the supply goes up and the prices go down. I live where I was born 50 years ago in a rural, cattle (used to be dairy) area. I have never known a family who made a living on the farm without outside income from the wife, husband, or both. Where I live, farming is not a self sustaining venture. All of the previous posts have truth in them and many pages could be written by each author about prices, costs, etc. It is and always has been a very tough business to survive in. When we are talking about how much cheaper everything was in the old days, dont forget interest rates. Compare 7-8 percent rates today with the 23 percent rates in the mid 80's that caused over half of the farmers in my area to go under.

 

[grannysoo]

Part of the reason according to our state cattlemens association is that when people are making money off their cows they expand and get more cows. After a few years of people doing this there is too many cows on the market and the price goes down. They said that Ky beef raisers had 8 profitable years in a row but that this year wouldn't be near as good due to many factors.

Exactly! When cattle prices are high, everyone jumps in and is going to get rich raising them. Markets get glutted and prices fall.

Falling prices are nothing more than an opportunity to buy more cattle and better your herd. The prices will go back up and when they do, it's time to sell. Repeat as necessary....

 

[pdfangus]

Oddly,

I had just finished reading this thread and closed out the web site and moved on to do some of the stuff they pay me to do......

And a producer I work with walked in and in his hand he had some copies of old sales invoices he had recently found in the farm files.

They go back to 1894 and one is recreated here below
Oct 10, 1894

6 cattle 5670 @ 2 1/4 127.57
16 cattle 10020 @ 2 1/2 250.50
6 cattle 3870 @ 2 77.40
31 sheep 2250 @ 2 1/4 50.63
59 lambs @ $1.00 59.00

total 565.10

 

[Howdyjabo]

Hope we don't fall into those historical lows

 

[Brandonm22]

Oddly,

I had just finished reading this thread and closed out the web site and moved on to do some of the stuff they pay me to do......

And a producer I work with walked in and in his hand he had some copies of old sales invoices he had recently found in the farm files.

They go back to 1894 and one is recreated here below
Oct 10, 1894

6 cattle 5670 @ 2 1/4 127.57
16 cattle 10020 @ 2 1/2 250.50
6 cattle 3870 @ 2 77.40
31 sheep 2250 @ 2 1/4 50.63
59 lambs @ $1.00 59.00

total 565.10

Well, I learned at least one thing from that.......I see why we aren't all in the sheep business!

Of course those were GOLD dollars back then. At ~a $1000 per ounce their old $5 gold piece will buy more sheep today than it did back then!!

 

[bigbull338]

i looked up our local sale barns prices yesterday an 500lb steers was avging .85 a lb. so thats $425hd.now the low price was .65 to$1.07 lb.