Price Trend

[Dave]

At the sale today feeders were off a good 15-20 cents. But kill cows were still strong at $0.85.

 

[Stocker Steve]

At the sale today feeders were off a good 15-20 cents. But kill cows were still strong at $0.85.

Light weight grass cattle too?

 

[Dave]

Light weight grass cattle too?

Yes, pretty much the entire market except kill cows. B wants 650 pound heifers that cost $950 ($1.46) or less. Got 13 #1 black heifers for $1.30. I only need another 3 cows. All the bred cows were big, fat, and short bred. They went to kill for $0.85.

 

[farmerjan]

Guess you have to take the good with the bad. We hit a home run yesterday. Took 29 nice steers to town. Weaned, vac, bunk conditioned... sold in 2 groups 14 and 15.. had one that went over a gate as there was supposed to be 30.... Anyway... the ones that weighed in the 465 wts brought 2.05... bidding was brisk. We had hoped for 1.85.... the ones that weighed in the 560's brought 1.90.... Some were calves we raised off our own cows, some were bought calves, mostly bulls that we castrated and conditioned. I think my DS has found what he is best at....we had a friend that is a grader come and look and helped sort them on Wed afternoon and we put them on one side of the barn and the others and the heifers we were planning to sell on the otherside. They have been getting corn silage and hay; weaned 60-90 days.
The early smaller stuff was off about $. 30 from last Friday... with the sudden jump in fuel prices last weekend, I was sure that we would get hurt.... but they did REAL GOOD. We sold the last 12 heifers for 1.43 they weighed in the 450+ range... this guy has been paying going rate and we take them to his barn, run across the scales, and he pays us on the spot. Closer than the stockyard, easier in and out, no sitting waiting to unload. I think we will not be replacing so many cows and he will transition more to this buying and conditioning and selling. They will not always do this good, but he likes this better than dealing with cow/calf pairs. Not me, I am a cow/calf person. We still have alot of summer pastures that the cow/calf pairs work better at....

 

[hurleyjd]

Guess you have to take the good with the bad. We hit a home run yesterday. Took 29 nice steers to town. Weaned, vac, bunk conditioned... sold in 2 groups 14 and 15.. had one that went over a gate as there was supposed to be 30.... Anyway... the ones that weighed in the 465 wts brought 2.05... bidding was brisk. We had hoped for 1.85.... the ones that weighed in the 560's brought 1.90.... Some were calves we raised off our own cows, some were bought calves, mostly bulls that we castrated and conditioned. I think my DS has found what he is best at....we had a friend that is a grader come and look and helped sort them on Wed afternoon and we put them on one side of the barn and the others and the heifers we were planning to sell on the otherside. They have been getting corn silage and hay; weaned 60-90 days.
The early smaller stuff was off about $. 30 from last Friday... with the sudden jump in fuel prices last weekend, I was sure that we would get hurt.... but they did REAL GOOD. We sold the last 12 heifers for 1.43 they weighed in the 450+ range... this guy has been paying going rate and we take them to his barn, run across the scales, and he pays us on the spot. Closer than the stockyard, easier in and out, no sitting waiting to unload. I think we will not be replacing so many cows and he will transition more to this buying and conditioning and selling. They will not always do this good, but he likes this better than dealing with cow/calf pairs. Not me, I am a cow/calf person. We still have alot of summer pastures that the cow/calf pairs work better at....

You have to have someone somewhere to maintain and keep a cow calf operation for you to buy calves at the sale to background. A lot of the herds in my area will be reduced drought and age of the operator will be the reason.

 

[farmerjan]

I agree that you have to have someone to do the cow/calf operations for the next step of buying and conditioning those feeders.... and with the reduction in cow numbers the drought has caused, and also the aging of those cow/calf operators, there will be reduced calves available. I have no intention of getting out of the cow/calf operation. I am just saying that if my son does better at buying the feeders and getting them conditioned and into groups to sell, then that is what he should do. There are many many smaller places here in this area, that have 10-20-40 cows. I think that there will be calves around here to supply the feeder market for awhile because there are alot of people that work "real jobs" and do their farming on afternoons and weekends. There are not the big tracts of land here like out west. There are alot of 10-50-100 acre places here and still land to rent. Most is priced way too high for a person to make a living off renting and running cattle... but it is not too high for those that have outside income and want to "fool around" with some cattle. Those are the kind of people that want to make a "little" and want the tax write offs and the reduced land taxes. And sadly for them, and good for us, many are not as dilligent as far as getting the bull calves banded as babies and then just sell them as 4-5 wt bulls... they have a dozen cows that produce a calf every year that they can pull off and sell and people like us will take the chances and make them into a more saleable "product" for a grazier down the road. They are making what they want or need just by selling the calf... it is a "windfall" or extra income for them.
You have to play the game and know what you can do or not, to make this work around here. It is probably different for different areas.