Reposting

[Caustic Burno]

Re:

Can you bale your pastures? I can and do.

OH another little unknown fact now trickles out.
So you do supplemental feeding, right? I thought so.
Are there any other extremes you plan for that would cause you to supplement your grass only operation?
Do you provide salt and minerals, or vitamin?
Have you ever tried feeding by-products which are cheaper then hay?
Where I'm at we plan for drought, winter, births, early frost, late springs etc etc etc.
SL

I believe the grass in the pasture should be the same quality as the hay field. I do feed salt amd minerals.
I do not see how being able to bale your pastures is supplemental feeding. Grass is grass for some reason you have trouble grasping growing grass for cow feed.

 

[Caustic Burno]

Hayfield

Pasture= feed


[/img]

Next time I bale a pasture I will take some pics for you with the cows in the pasture while it is being cut and grazing around the bales.

 

[Sir Loin]

CB,
Re:

I believe the grass in the pasture should be the same quality as the hay field.

And I believe that the hay should be of better quality then the pasture grass.
And the hay field should produce far more tonnage per acre then a pasture.

I do feed salt amd minerals.

Then you are doing supplemental feeding.

Re:

I do not see how being able to bale your pastures is supplemental feeding.

It's the cost factor of mowing, racking and baling, storage etc.
Now don't get me wrong, I also bale some of my pastures but for me, because of the low tonnage yield off the pastures it is more economical to feed $20 per ton feed.

Re:

Grass is grass for some reason you have trouble grasping growing grass for cow feed.

I don't have a problem with growing grass for cow feed. I do it all the time and have all my life.
But in my location, and many others through out the country it's either not economically possible or physically possible.

Look at it this way. I don't rent grass, I rent land. And I use the best land to raise grass to make hay to feed to the cows that are on the poorer lands that will not grow enough grass to sustain them year round.
I stock the poorer lands with cattle to a capacity that the best 6 months of the year will sustain them and supplement the other 6 months. I creep feed to allow me to NOT reduce my stock because of calving and to produce a better quality calf at weaning.

IMO if your cattle don't clean you pasture in the best 6 months of growth your cow per acre is to low, your under stocking, and you are not maximizing your potential profit.
If you have to depend on your pastures for hay, that's another story.

Now if grass and only supplemental hay and mineral salt works for you great, but if you are going to give advise to beginners in other parts of the country with different goals you need to understand you just may be giving the wrong advise.

Let me put it this way.
Grass is not cheap to establish, maintain and grow, nor are land costs for good land, if any is even available, in many areas of the country so supplemental feeding is the only feasible and economical way to go.
I've grown a lot of grass in my days but I still haven't learned how to get blood out of a stone.
SL

 

[Sir Loin]

Re:

Pasture= feed

NO! Pasture is going to waist!
If you have hay fields to supply you with enough hay to get you through droughts and winter, what I am seeing is not enough cattle to eat off their pasture.
The grass I am seeing is very close to needing mowed to avoid pink eye and that would be a real waist. You need to either bale it and sell it for hay or put enough cows on it to keep it from maturing and around only 1-2 inches high.
If it's a seasonal thing, throw about 50 stockers out there to help clean it off.

Hey, it looks good and makes a nice picture-------for a calendar, but what I am seeing is certainly not making you all the bucks you should be making.

SL

 

[Caustic Burno]

CB,
Re:

I believe the grass in the pasture should be the same quality as the hay field.

And I believe that the hay should be of better quality then the pasture grass.
And the hay field should produce far more tonnage per acre then a pasture.

I do feed salt amd minerals.

Then you are doing supplemental feeding.

Re:

I do not see how being able to bale your pastures is supplemental feeding.

It's the cost factor of mowing, racking and baling, storage etc.
Now don't get me wrong, I also bale some of my pastures but for me, because of the low tonnage yield off the pastures it is more economical to feed $20 per ton feed.

Re:

Grass is grass for some reason you have trouble grasping growing grass for cow feed.

I don't have a problem with growing grass for cow feed. I do it all the time and have all my life.
But in my location, and many others through out the country it's either not economically possible or physically possible.

Look at it this way. I don't rent grass, I rent land. And I use the best land to raise grass to make hay to feed to the cows that are on the poorer lands that will not grow enough grass to sustain them year round.
I stock the poorer lands with cattle to a capacity that the best 6 months of the year will sustain them and supplement the other 6 months. I creep feed to allow me to NOT reduce my stock because of calving and to produce a better quality calf at weaning.

IMO if your cattle don't clean you pasture in the best 6 months of growth your cow per acre is to low, your under stocking, and you are not maximizing your potential profit.
If you have to depend on your pastures for hay, that's another story.

Now if grass and only supplemental hay and mineral salt works for you great, but if you are going to give advise to beginners in other parts of the country with different goals you need to understand you just may be giving the wrong advise.

Let me put it this way.
Grass is not cheap to establish, maintain and grow, nor are land costs for good land, if any is even available, in many areas of the country so supplemental feeding is the only feasible and economical way to go.
I've grown a lot of grass in my days but I still haven't learned how to get blood out of a stone.
SL

First to address your land statement I am not in the land business, I am in the cattle business. If you think you are going to go out and buy 100 acres somewhere build fence buy the equipment to run and maintain the cattle you are never going to get a return on your money with todays land prices.
The days of 200 dollar an acre land is gone and that was for good land. Today here the same land is 4000 an acre in impoved pasture. You are better off to take your 400,000 dollars and put it in the bank. Most of the posters on here are hobbiest and part timers they have sunk everthing they have in getting a piece of heaven in the country. If they don't learn how to manage grass they are never going to be able to get the cows to pay for there way . This was never about recouping there intial startup cost because they can't.
I have never said you are wrong for your enviroment but you still have to manage grass. There are no two areas alike regions vary greatly in just a few miles I get sixty inches of rain a year go west a 100 miles they are lucky to get 30.
I have long contended so many fail by not realizing the importance of grass management in the cow/calf operation and overgrazing. Pushing the pasture until they are one drought away from a fed sack or giving them away at the salebarn.
You will never win out of a sack paying 4 dollars a bushel for corn and having it trucked in. Cattlemen have ran grass operations in this country for hundreds of years this is not a new concept from the Gulf to Canada. It is a lot different running a feedlot than a cow calf operation.
I will agree there is a cost to good pasture it is still cheaper than a feed bucket.
I still stand behind you are a grassfarmer first. If you can't grow grass and manage grass you are not going to be succesful in a cow/calf operation.

 

[3MR]

Sir Loin - Where are you getting a ton of feed for $20?

Also, Im not taking a side, because I think you guys are comparing apples to oranges and arguing about semantics, but.....

I think keeping your pasture at 1-2 inches is way to short. You can still get a lot of growth out of it without even coming close to worying about pink eye. Also, you have to take into account what kind of grass you are growing in the pasture. 1-2 inches is way to short for many, if not most, types to get regrowth.

 

[aplusmnt]

$20 a Ton I would feed it also.

Seems pretty simple to me, the Cows eat grass, some people SUPPLEMENT the grass. The better your grass the less the Supplement. The less the Supplement then less your cost are.

Another thing I have noticed with my cows is the ones that do good on grass only are the easy keepers in general. If a cow can stay fat on grass, hay and mineral then it will be cheaper to maintain during the good times as well as the hard times like drought. Genetics play a big part rather the cattle are Red or Black.

With good grass and good genetics it is hard to go wrong.

 

[3MR]

$20 a Ton I would feed it also.

Seems pretty simple to me, the Cows eat grass, some people SUPPLEMENT the grass. The better your grass the less the Supplement. The less the Supplement then less your cost are.

Another thing I have noticed with my cows is the ones that do good on grass only are the easy keepers in general. If a cow can stay fat on grass, hay and mineral then it will be cheaper to maintain during the good times as well as the hard times like drought. Genetics play a big part rather the cattle are Red or Black.

With good grass and good genetics it is hard to go wrong.

Yup!

 

[Proverbs 12:10]

Dang! At $20 per ton...I'll sell my land, cancel the leases, sell my tractor and implements, forget the fertilizer, put some troughs in the barn and be done with it. Where do we get some of that?

 

[Brandonm2]

First to address your land statement I am not in the land business, I am in the cattle business. If you think you are going to go out and buy 100 acres somewhere build fence buy the equipment to run and maintain the cattle you are never going to get a return on your money with todays land prices.
The days of 200 dollar an acre land is gone and that was for good land. Today here the same land is 4000 an acre in impoved pasture. You are better off to take your 400,000 dollars and put it in the bank.

That was the first thing you said in this string that I disagree strongly with. $400,000 in the bank at 5% interest (and most of the last 10 years you couldn't get that) is only a pathetic $20,000 per year return and after you pay federal and state income taxes on that it is only a $12,000 return. I would much rather have my $400,000 parked in land (even if it is not in cattle). The hunting rights lease will MORE THAN pay the property taxes. Land appreciates just about every year and you pay nothing on that appreciation. We have a paper dollar that is backed by NOTHING other than people's faith that it has some value. When oil, corn, beef, land, gold, steel, stocks, and foreign paper currencies all go up at the same time versus the dollar that is NOT prices rising; that is simply the paper dollar losing some of it's value. I would much rather have my assetts sitting in good ground no matter how much paper it is supposedly worth. 9 times out of 10 even at the absurd price of $4000 an acre it will be worth more next year than it was this year. Now people BORROWING money to buy land is an investment strategy I will not endorse; but I don't buy stocks on margin either. Land speculation is an entirely different business than cattle. I certainly don't expect the cows to actually pay for the land. They should be able to return their purchase price, the equipment needed to maintain the herd and the property, their inputs, return something on the labor and management needed to care for them, and return more on the land than raising pine trees, leasing the property for corn, or running a hunting club would yield. Land is the longterm play. You CAN pay too much for it; but on the whole the fundamentals still look strong to me. The American population has doubled since 1950. http://www.census.gov/popest/archives/1 ... ockest.txt

and is actually trailing the growth in the world as a whole
http://www.census.gov/main/www/rss/popclocks.xml

I am certain that Congress will figure out how to import more foreign workers (either legally or illegally) and I fully expect to see America easily hit 350 million people in my lifetime. All those folks need ground to live on. They need ground to work and play on. They need board lumber for the house they will live in. They need meat on their plate, bread in their belly, and increasingly they will need corn ethanol to run their little cars around. The American landowner will provide them with what they will need and will make a profit doing it. I am very bullish on land, timber, and cattle. If I were somebody like Bill Gates (with revenue streams out the wazzoo to invest), I would be purchasing tens of thousands of acres of cattle ground out west (preferably WITH mineral rights), Mississippi timberland, rice ground in Arkansas, and own 200,000 plus acres of the best ground I could purchase in Brazil and be cherry picking farms and forests 20-60 miles out of the fastest growing American population centers.

 

[Brandonm2]

Re:

Pasture= feed

NO! Pasture is going to waist!
If you have hay fields to supply you with enough hay to get you through droughts and winter, what I am seeing is not enough cattle to eat off their pasture.
The grass I am seeing is very close to needing mowed to avoid pink eye and that would be a real waist. You need to either bale it and sell it for hay or put enough cows on it to keep it from maturing and around only 1-2 inches high.
If it's a seasonal thing, throw about 50 stockers out there to help clean it off.

Hey, it looks good and makes a nice picture-------for a calendar, but what I am seeing is certainly not making you all the bucks you should be making.

SL

THAT was nonsensical. IF you have been following the news, this has been a wet year for Texas. Everybody in Texas SHOULD have more grass than they know what to do with 'THIS' YEAR! If your grass is only "1-2 inches high." in ideal weather conditions the cows are going to be pawing the ground for roots in a dryer than avg year. Here in Alabama, where 90% of the state is now at the govt.'s 'extreme drought' category the sod is DEAD and people are selling half their herds and trying to find hay sellers in Texas. Such is life in the cattle business. Smarter men than me had all of this figured out thousands of years ago....Jacob's son Joseph, while working for the Egyptian Pharaoh, advised his master to collect the good harvests and barn it KNOWING that bad harvests are inevitable and you use the good harvests to survive the bad harvests. Sadly, Jacob himself did not have THAT much sense so he let his flocks devour his own lands during the good years and then had to come begging to Pharaoh so his family would survive when the good times were over (Genesis Chapters 37-47). The folks in East Texas need to be baling as much of that hay as they can possibly barn THIS year so that they won't be the ones paying $70-100 a roll when inevitably the next drought hits. The person who keeps two years of hay on hand from his good years can just turn his cows loose in his hay fields when there is a bad year and he will be feeding his cows $20 a roll hay from the good year while his ill prepared neighbors are paying 4 times that for poorer quality hay.

 

[KNERSIE]

$20 a Ton I would feed it also.

Seems pretty simple to me, the Cows eat grass, some people SUPPLEMENT the grass. The better your grass the less the Supplement. The less the Supplement then less your cost are.

Another thing I have noticed with my cows is the ones that do good on grass only are the easy keepers in general. If a cow can stay fat on grass, hay and mineral then it will be cheaper to maintain during the good times as well as the hard times like drought. Genetics play a big part rather the cattle are Red or Black.

With good grass and good genetics it is hard to go wrong.

That is a very true statement, but the breed by numbers people have spent millions on research to try and prove that bit of peasant wisdom wrong. You not only need good genetics, but the right kind of genetics with the right kind of phenotype to have those easy keeping ability.

That is something that JUST EPDs or EBVs won't tell you. I am not saying to disregard EPDs, but see it in context in the bigger picture and use it as the tool it was intended to be to aid in decision making not to replace stockmanship.

I think this thread has some very good information for any beginner, it also shows that you still need to manage your operation according to your situation, if the beginners learn just that from this thread they have already learnt a lot.

 

[Caustic Burno]

First to address your land statement I am not in the land business, I am in the cattle business. If you think you are going to go out and buy 100 acres somewhere build fence buy the equipment to run and maintain the cattle you are never going to get a return on your money with todays land prices.
The days of 200 dollar an acre land is gone and that was for good land. Today here the same land is 4000 an acre in impoved pasture. You are better off to take your 400,000 dollars and put it in the bank.

That was the first thing you said in this string that I disagree strongly with. $400,000 in the bank at 5% interest (and most of the last 10 years you couldn't get that) is only a pathetic $20,000 per year return and after you pay federal and state income taxes on that it is only a $12,000 return. I would much rather have my $400,000 parked in land (even if it is not in cattle). The hunting rights lease will MORE THAN pay the property taxes. Land appreciates just about every year and you pay nothing on that appreciation. We have a paper dollar that is backed by NOTHING other than people's faith that it has some value. When oil, corn, beef, land, gold, steel, stocks, and foreign paper currencies all go up at the same time versus the dollar that is NOT prices rising; that is simply the paper dollar losing some of it's value. I would much rather have my assetts sitting in good ground no matter how much paper it is supposedly worth. 9 times out of 10 even at the absurd price of $4000 an acre it will be worth more next year than it was this year. Now people BORROWING money to buy land is an investment strategy I will not endorse; but I don't buy stocks on margin either. Land speculation is an entirely different business than cattle. I certainly don't expect the cows to actually pay for the land. They should be able to return their purchase price, the equipment needed to maintain the herd and the property, their inputs, return something on the labor and management needed to care for them, and return more on the land than raising pine trees, leasing the property for corn, or running a hunting club would yield. Land is the longterm play. You CAN pay too much for it; but on the whole the fundamentals still look strong to me. The American population has doubled since 1950. http://www.census.gov/popest/archives/1 ... ockest.txt

and is actually trailing the growth in the world as a whole
http://www.census.gov/main/www/rss/popclocks.xml

I am certain that Congress will figure out how to import more foreign workers (either legally or illegally) and I fully expect to see America easily hit 350 million people in my lifetime. All those folks need ground to live on. They need ground to work and play on. They need board lumber for the house they will live in. They need meat on their plate, bread in their belly, and increasingly they will need corn ethanol to run their little cars around. The American landowner will provide them with what they will need and will make a profit doing it. I am very bullish on land, timber, and cattle. If I were somebody like Bill Gates (with revenue streams out the wazzoo to invest), I would be purchasing tens of thousands of acres of cattle ground out west (preferably WITH mineral rights), Mississippi timberland, rice ground in Arkansas, and own 200,000 plus acres of the best ground I could purchase in Brazil and be cherry picking farms and forests 20-60 miles out of the fastest growing American population centers.

I agree with most of what you say except the land, I guess I am just older than you. I have seen land go bust and people couldn't give it away due to the prices they paid and the banks end back up with it. This country has been a super economy for a long time there will be another drought. You can get money loaned on anything today and any amount it doesn't matter if your one paycheck away from being flat broke.

 

[Caustic Burno]

$20 a Ton I would feed it also.

Seems pretty simple to me, the Cows eat grass, some people SUPPLEMENT the grass. The better your grass the less the Supplement. The less the Supplement then less your cost are.

Another thing I have noticed with my cows is the ones that do good on grass only are the easy keepers in general. If a cow can stay fat on grass, hay and mineral then it will be cheaper to maintain during the good times as well as the hard times like drought. Genetics play a big part rather the cattle are Red or Black.

With good grass and good genetics it is hard to go wrong.

Twenty dollar a ton feed is not a realistic picture of the industry unless your feeding chicken crap and has not been for years. More like 200 a ton is a realistic number. So if I read what SL wrote he would be out of business if he had to operate with the normal feed cost or on grass.

 

[novatech]

Caustic, I pretty well practice what you are saying about the grass and what type to grow. Planting permanent grass is a long term payout, and you will fight bahia all the way. I have also found that cattle prefer it when grazeing.
Most people I know feel that I am undergrazeing. I do not beleive in stocking over 75% of capacity for average rainfall. This gives me plenty of allowance for makeing hay, buying stockers, or leaving the extra grass in the fall for standing forage. It is also a good buffer for the next drought.
When you stated that you only had 2 months of feeding hay, you also told me you manage your pastures well.
It seems as though may people feel that to make more money they need more machines(cows). They just don,t understand you first must have the raw material to feed into the machine (cow).
Then we get into to the machine (cow). What machine is the best for ones individual operation. I beleive that subject has been covered buy you guys very well.

 

[Gate Opener]

Where we just came from land was selling anywhere from $18K-$40K per acre!!!! I'm not talking about small pieces either. One person I know sold 1100 acres. Probably bought in years ago at much less than 1K per acre. Another sold off some big tracts don't know how much they got but probably more than the other person. They are now going to surrounding areas (where the population is expected to grow) and buying up land and putting their cows on it. I will say that this much of an increase in price is not normal but it sure worked for these people.

I have seen it the other way also where someone buys land improves it and doesn't get much more than what they paid for it back. However, they did get the use of it all those years.

It all goes back to the location, location, location rule.

 

[Brandonm2]

Land is like stocks. The value can be highly volatile month to month. I did not recommend buying either on credit. Land is even less liquid than stocks. IF you let yourself get in a situation where you MUST sell NOW or the bank is foreclosing you can almost bet that you will be in one of those temporary market corrections that shake out the little investors. That said the value of raw land over time has risen exponentially since World War II. As more of America is gobbled up by development in coming decades and demand for agricultural goods and recreational opportunities continues to increase I expect (OVER TIME) that today's prices will seem CHEAP in future decades, especially measured against the value of the future paper dollar.

 

[aplusmnt]

Land is like stocks. The value can be highly volatile month to month. .

One problem we have around here is much of the land in 80 acre plots or bigger is getting bought up by Big city boys in state and out of state for hunting land or so they can get automatic deer tags.

They have artificially pushed the price up and it might be a big gamble to pay them prices, a lot less unstable than if people were buying it for Homes.

 

[Caustic Burno]

Land is like stocks. The value can be highly volatile month to month. I did not recommend buying either on credit. Land is even less liquid than stocks. IF you let yourself get in a situation where you MUST sell NOW or the bank is foreclosing you can almost bet that you will be in one of those temporary market corrections that shake out the little investors. That said the value of raw land over time has risen exponentially since World War II. As more of America is gobbled up by development in coming decades and demand for agricultural goods and recreational opportunities continues to increase I expect (OVER TIME) that today's prices will seem CHEAP in future decades, especially measured against the value of the future paper dollar.

You must know people with a lot more money than I pulling enough frog hides out to pay cash for a 100 acres isn't your average Joe.

 

[Dave]

I agree with CB in that you have to be a grass farmer first and most everything else he stated. One additional thing. Everyone has an unfair advantage. Figure out what it is and capitalize on it. It might be cheap land, mild climate, a good market, or cheap feed. A person needs to figure out what it is locally that gives you an advantage over everyone else. I know of some big feedlots here in the Northwest that are located near potato processing plants. All that waste from making french fries makes cheap cattle feed. That is their unfair advantage.
In my case I am close to a very large layer farm and several large dairies. I can fertilize with chicken and cow manure for a fraction of the cost of commercial fertilizer. That gives me an advantage.