Similar to you
@Dave , the bull calves are .25 to .40 back of a steer of the same weight. There are often 10-20% of the total "male calves" at the sales, as bulls. One reason is that small operations here don't have the facilities to get them in and cut/castrate them. A few years ago they were maybe .10 back of steers so not worth the time or effort on the small operator.... but that only happens about once every 10 years or so. Also, so many of the smaller operators... and I am talking 25-50 cows or less, are farmers that are getting older and help is getting harder to find, so they just can't get them done.
We will buy some of the nicer bull calves.... 450-550 wts.... and castrate and keep for a month and then put together with others and sell as steers in groups. It works to get them early in the year.... Dec/Jan/Feb and then sell in March after they are healed, weaned and eating. For example we bought a nice group of 6 bull calves weighed 525... for 1.26.... we castrated ( we band with a callicrate bander as we have had good luck with that) and kept for about a month/6 weeks maybe. They sold for 1.75 and weighed about 550/560 ... in a group of 12 that we put together. Total spent in purchase was 661.50/hd. Total received for sale 962.50. So 300/hd increase. They get vaccinated and a few had gotten a snotty nose so all got treated for a week with aureomycin crumbles in the feed. With feed costs, vaccine, multimin, and even the week long crumbles, we still figure we got around 200/hd profit for 6 weeks. No, we don't do that often, but we figure if we clear 100 or more per head for a 4-6 week time frame, that is positive cash flow. We did a little of this the last 2 years, but did more this year with all the corn silage that we had available.
This is not counting the "common" misfit cattle we buy at reduced costs and then sell direct to the other guy direct. Those we try to buy in the .60-.85 range and then sell for 1.00 direct. Not alot of money there but still a little on the plus side. Plus they can be either heifers or steers and we can buy more of the cheap heifers....
Black is what sells around here, so any of the hereford heifers and even steers, that are cheap, are good candidates for this buy/sell deal. We can buy hereford type of cattle greatly discounted here. It is sad that good cattle that are the "wrong color" will not make a farmer a fair return on their animals.
I will buy more hereford and red cows at the bred cow sales for cheap prices because of the "black cattle" mentality.
I like my cow/calf operation....but that said, we can make more money, FASTER, with a better turn around, buying and selling ...... basically as cattle traders.... although we do not "trade" cattle with turnaround weekly... we take them and work into groups to make them more attractive to a buyer, and partly because we also want them to do good for the buyers. So in some ways we have become "backgrounders" .....
We do not have the availability of rangeland/grazing here in this area, like out west. What grazing land is available, we are paying more for and the upkeep of fencing etc is getting to make it all cost too much. Too many people, too much liability with fences, houses, roads..... too much time spent with travel back and forth to places, most places too small to handle more than 10-25 head cattle so LOTS of places needed....
And add to that needing help to keep up the fences and checking on cattle, and not being able to find reliable decent help that has some ability and knowledge and COMMON SENSE on how to do the daily stuff.
