Precondition or sell normal?

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Calhoun Farm

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Our barn has special preconditioned sales about once/month, in order to sell that way the animal has to meet this criteria:

- wormed
- vaccinated for respiratory disease IBR/BVD etc, 2nd dose modified live
- Pasteurella
- 7 or 8 way blackleg
- installed free Z-tag with their logo on it

Regular sales don't require any of this stuff. The steer I'm wanting to sell has been wormed twice already and given the 7way once. In order to give the other vaccines and buy a Z-tag gun (I use y-tex tags) it would cost me over $75. Of course that is buying 5 doses of each vaccine, so I could precondition more if I needed to in the future, but the initial investment is a little costly. I looked at the sales charts just as an example this week 600lb steers avg 1.33/lb, the last preconditioned sale those wt steers avg about 1.50/lb.

600x1.33= 798
600*1.50=900
 
An extra 102 bucks per calf just for putting a tag in and extra shot or 2. Not hard to figure out that one.
 
I understand that. But the the gun is a one time cost, vacc cost per head is maybe 5 bucks. The rest is labor profit.
 
If you only have one steer, why not keep him and finish him out for your own deep freeze or to sell privately for someone elses?

Around here it's getting definitely tougher going on sale day with non-preconditioned cattle and smaller than 50K lb load lots.

If he matches up could you pool him with a neighbor's similar cattle?

I'm afraid you'll take it in the shorts either way selling one steer, vaccinated or not. Seen it too many times.
 
Do you have a neighbor that you could throw in with?? Then you could share vacc. costs and sell together and prorate the money. Maybe a neighbor would buy your steer,I'm fair'ly sure that your state does not have brand laws so no problems with mixed cattle. There is always a way .
 
Yes it will pay, but also keep in mind that when you mix the modified live virus it has to be used then. You can not keep it for later use.
 
Some blow hard always jumps me, when I say this, but here goes---------The industry as whole suffers when people sell cattle that are not prepped for sale. That is especially true for people east of the Mississippi, and north of the mason Dixon. I can make some decent $ claiming that $102 for myself, from people not willing.
 
Bigfoot":gsc6b1jx said:
Some blow hard always jumps me, when I say this, but here goes---------The industry as whole suffers when people sell cattle that are not prepped for sale. That is especially true for people east of the Mississippi, and north of the mason Dixon. I can make some decent $ claiming that $102 for myself, from people not willing.
And most of the time it's the ones that won't do anything like this, that say they don't make money on there cattle.
 
I agree that to precondition is the best for the calf. Sometimes it does not pay though. Held some early this year for a weaned calf sale, cost me about $50 a calf compared to a normal sale the day before. Had a odd size steer a few weeks ago that was weaned and all shots, the sale I normally go to has a weaned pen, he got comingled with others that were sorry calves lost money compared to the regular graded calves. Sometimes it pays others it don't.
 
Calhoun Farm":f3k0krcn said:
Our barn has special preconditioned sales about once/month, in order to sell that way the animal has to meet this criteria:

- wormed
- vaccinated for respiratory disease IBR/BVD etc, 2nd dose modified live
- Pasteurella
- 7 or 8 way blackleg
- installed free Z-tag with their logo on it

Regular sales don't require any of this stuff. The steer I'm wanting to sell has been wormed twice already and given the 7way once. In order to give the other vaccines and buy a Z-tag gun (I use y-tex tags) it would cost me over $75. Of course that is buying 5 doses of each vaccine, so I could precondition more if I needed to in the future, but the initial investment is a little costly. I looked at the sales charts just as an example this week 600lb steers avg 1.33/lb, the last preconditioned sale those wt steers avg about 1.50/lb.

600x1.33= 798
600*1.50=900

It's size of scale.... you better be darned sure the weight and money is their.
 
I would be very hesitant to believe sales charts. You can go to the sale and then look at the market report and you will swear you were not at the sale that is being reported. I go to several sales per week, but none of the ones reported USDA reports have any accuracy as to the prices. They do give you a fairly good idea as to the trend and they tell you how many were marketed. Very seldom will weaning, castrating, and vaccinating pay. Most years you are better off to sell off the cow and bulls intact. About the only cattlemen around here who wean are just holding until after Jan 1 for tax purposes. Sell your calves by Labor Day, or hold until Jan. 1 and you will usually hit a market with good demand. Mid Sept-Dec can be tough months to sell
 
On 9/28 I saw a big difference between steer and bull calves, $8 to $10 per cwt. on 500+ bull calves and $10 to $15 per cwt on 600+ bull calves. Haven't seen that much spread in years. Many of the buyers had steer only orders - no bull calves. I asked one of the buyers what was up with steer only orders? He said their customers told them they no longer had the labor and couldn't stomach the financial loss from the extra stress of castrating, weaning and selling stress all ay one time.
 
stocky":3ckg42z8 said:
I would be very hesitant to believe sales charts. You can go to the sale and then look at the market report and you will swear you were not at the sale that is being reported. I go to several sales per week, but none of the ones reported USDA reports have any accuracy as to the prices. They do give you a fairly good idea as to the trend and they tell you how many were marketed. Very seldom will weaning, castrating, and vaccinating pay. Most years you are better off to sell off the cow and bulls intact. About the only cattlemen around here who wean are just holding until after Jan 1 for tax purposes. Sell your calves by Labor Day, or hold until Jan. 1 and you will usually hit a market with good demand. Mid Sept-Dec can be tough months to sell

Here it always pay to castrate anything over 300 pounds. Last week there was a 30 cent difference between bulls and steers. And calves that are vaccinated right do bring more. One of the problems is that people don't read the directions and give one shot with no booster and try to sell as vaccinated calves.
 
I went ahead and bought everything needed to do the preconditioned vaccines. I will probably however, just wait until Jan '14 to sell this particular steer because of market prices. If I were selling say 10 steers the preconditioned sales might be worth it, but for just 1 I'm afraid he'll mixed with some junk stuff and I'll end up not making what I should on him. He's a good steer (black baldie momma/black angus sire) the name of this breed escapes me at the moment. He should be in the 750 range by new years and I would imagine should bring some good money by then.
 

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