About the turn of the century. I met an old man at some of our teamroping jackpots and practices. I guess he was 70 or so. He had 12 different 30-40 acre pastures he rented. Well, not really pastures, mostly fenced in planted pines and cut-over timber. One was a 50 acre abandoned auto junkyard. Back then, the local timber company leased land for hunting clubs, etc, for next to nothing. The clubs would put up the gates and cables, and monitor for tresspassers and poachers for the company. This old man would buy Corriente cows from people...a lot from me.. and had 25 in each pasture. Jan pasture, Feb pasture, etc. That would be the month they calved in. Jan 30th , if a cow hadn't calved, he'd move it to the Feb pasture, etc. Had 3 Brangus bulls most of the time, that he moved every month. Like this month the bulls would be with the herd that calved in October. etc. His goal was to have 25 calves each month, polled black calves, that he sold to team penning contractors and arena owners for $300 a head. In competition you use 30 head in a pen, numbers 1-10 but for most practices and jackpots, you used 21, numbers 1-7. And if he didn;t have those 25 calves sold at weaning time, he'd take them to the sale, often brought more than the $300. But, he was retired and that was all he had to do was go check on them about once a week per herd. The man got $7500 a month..not bad income. Virtually no inputs other than rent, and occaisionally buying a Corr replacement cow, which the sale of one calf would cover. He had a few of the teenage ropers that came to the practiced and jackpots, that would come out every month to heel,tag and band the bull calves. I havent seen him since about 1010 or so, he may be dead by now. Since the Obama Depression, teampenning has waned in popularity, due to the higher costs and lack of people's disposable income, and team sorting is the rage now. Takes less cattle and not as much space. He probably had $75k in those 300 cows, and they paid him $7500 a month. Not a bad ROI at all.
