Starting Background Operation (Could use a little help)

[BC]

Not familiar with the Carolina's, but are there any cattle companies that have multiple buyers working a bigger territory? They can put the cattle together quicker so you can get them home and start straightening them out sooner. I know here in East Texas, there are companies that have buyers making 5 to 8 sales a day. I have a few local customers that want to buy 12 to 20 head to run on ryegrass through the winter and spring and it takes 2 to 3 sales to fill the order at the price they want to pay.

 

[SBMF 2015]

Buying cattle in numbers involves a lot of time and travel commitment. There is also the knowledge and ability to pick the right cattle. The solution for someone starting out is getting a good honest buyer to buy for you. Which is a whole other issue....... finding a good honest buyer who will work for you. The OP is on the other side of the country. If he were in this area I could introduce him to some good ones and also point out ones to avoid. I didn't learn the who to trust and who not to in a week or two. I go to 2 sale nearly every week. I bought my first cattle at a sale in 1967. The education I have received over the years hasn't always been cheap.

I was just having a conversation with my wife’s son about this last weekend. He had sold his calves the week before and was surprised at the short amount of time it took the auctioneer to go from the starting price to the selling price. ( He didn’t top the sale, but was definitely in the top 15% for their weight class)
His calves had sold later in the sale and I told him the auctioneer probably “set them in” he hadn’t heard that term before so I explained that they went so fast because the auctioneer probably didn’t have a real bid until close to the very end when someone bid and he got off the hook.

Working in a sale barn all those years I learned how to pick out a lot of tricks. Now when I go to a sale I enjoy figuring out how everyone is playing the game as much as I do actually watching the cattle sell.

 

[Dave]

This time of the year both sale will be running 2,000-3,000 head. Even selling 25-50 head at a time it takes a while to sell them all. I live about an hour away from both sales. I often don't get home 10:00. I know approximately where some of those order buyers live. Their drive home is 2, 3, up to 4 hours longer than mine.

I have a few local customers that want to buy 12 to 20 head to run on ryegrass through the winter and spring and it takes 2 to 3 sales to fill the order at the price they want to pay.

It takes me about 3 months every year to get 60 bred cows bought. That is at 2 and sometimes 3 sales every week. I will come home empty or with just one or two. Then one week the cows are there and the competition isn't there. I get 12 or 20 of the right kind for the right price.

 

[Dave]

One time I went to a bred cow special sale. 300 bred cows and about 40 buyers. I got one over priced cow bought all day. The next week someone brought in about 100 bred cows. Where they came from it is doubtful they had ever seen a man on foot. It was me, a trader, and the sale manager. I got 43 bought for $200 a head under budget. Passed on anything acting snotty or had horns. A few of them might have been a touch over protective of their new calves. But nothing we couldn't deal with.

 

[littletom]

I have talked with several people who do this on smaller scale like me. Alot of people have a little niche of some type. One guy has access to cheap by product feeds. Some work at stock yard. One has acsess to trucking better rates. Couple are retired more time to deal with it. My wife is a vet better med pricing.
Alot of money can be made backgrounding calves. Its just not as simple as one would think that has only dealt with cow calf and keeping there raisied calves 90 days after weaning. Alot of it is taking others people calves that were half ass weaned. And fixing all those problems mixed together. And making a correct 50k# package. The time is probley what i like the least. I'm full time tobacco farmer. When i go down there have to pull 5 or 6 sometimes messes up whole day. And with these prices ties up alot of money. But when it all works almost nothing like return wise.
If you get it going one piece of advice I will give is. PI test every single one pretty quick when you get them. Some people don't and won't. I promise it's worth the couple bucks. If and when you get a positive get them out of the group quick. And, don't do this back grounding thing nose to nose with your momma cows.
It's amazing how much you learn about cattle. When you start buying high risk bawling calves to comingle. I had been around beef cattle my whole life. This was very eye opening.

 

[mwj]

I have talked with several people who do this on smaller scale like me. Alot of people have a little niche of some type. One guy has access to cheap by product feeds. Some work at stock yard. One has acsess to trucking better rates. Couple are retired more time to deal with it. My wife is a vet better med pricing.
Alot of money can be made backgrounding calves. Its just not as simple as one would think that has only dealt with cow calf and keeping there raisied calves 90 days after weaning. Alot of it is taking others people calves that were half ass weaned. And fixing all those problems mixed together. And making a correct 50k# package. The time is probley what i like the least. I'm full time tobacco farmer. When i go down there have to pull 5 or 6 sometimes messes up whole day. And with these prices ties up alot of money. But when it all works almost nothing like return wise.
If you get it going one piece of advice I will give is. PI test every single one pretty quick when you get them. Some people don't and won't. I promise it's worth the couple bucks. If and when you get a positive get them out of the group quick. And, don't do this back grounding thing nose to nose with your momma cows.
It's amazing how much you learn about cattle. When you start buying high risk bawling calves to comingle. I had been around beef cattle my whole life. This was very eye opening.

Experience is one of the few things you can not buy. If you could find it for sale it would be out of our price range!

 

[Travlr]

I recently just bought 140 acres (110 cleared) in the piedmont of North Carolina. My plan is to plant Forage Sorghum and attempt to get 2 cuts (around 20 TNs) through summer and then plant some annuals for the fall and spring. I’m planning on chopping and putting in a ag bunk for silage.

The goal would be to background around 200 head (3-4 weights) - twice a year. The first herd I’d graze in the fall and then bunk feed the Sorghum Forage in the winter on a 70/30 mix utiltiing Soy Hulls for the 30%. The second herd, I’d bring in during the spring to graze and then bunk feed during the summer harvest.

Ideally I’m keeping both herd 5+/- months and trying to add 2-2.5 pounds per day.

A couple of questions- Does anything about this seem like unreasonable assumptions? And I’m having a very difficult time figuring out what broker /order buyer or whomever to contact to try and create a relationship to buy the calves by the truckload - any help?

Thanks

So what are you thinking? Any updates on how you are seeing your backgrounding?

 

[Dave]

I have done real well with a smaller scale backgrounding operation of 30-40 head. Just never had the facilities and equipment where I felt comfortable getting bigger. I know a man who does this with 1,000 head at a time. He told me he gives every calf a shot of Draxxin on arrival. That basically increases the incoming cost by $5 per hundred (generic Draxxin reduces that some) but he said it made a huge difference in the number of calves he had to pull.

 

[Buddybacker]

So what are you thinking? Any updates on how you are seeing your backgrounding?

I still feel good about it, i think the main thing im trying to figure out is if i do it with a confinement barn or if i do a pasture / hybrid where i overstock the pastures (2-3 per acre) but just run TMR or creep feeders around the clock? I saw some videos of the Lazy T ranch in Canada and they background thousands of stockers per year but pack them tight into pastures and also feeed a TMR… curious how quick my pastures would turn into mud lots as well or if i paddock it off and provide plenty of TMR could i keep them from destroying the ground

 

[StrojanHerefords]

I would worry too much about making the pastures a mess, you're growing annuals. If things get to be a mess just take a chisel plow out before the next planting. What is more important is to ensure that your getting maximum utilization of the forage you have standing. My suggestion would be to not mess with the silage and instead stockpile standing feed of some sort. A few years ago, I planted some sorghum sudan after silage corn and did quite well. I planted it in the beginning of August, gave it two shots of water and then on 6 acres I had enough feed to run 20 heifers for 55 days from late September through early November. I moved hotwire every day giving them enough that they would clean things up. We did get a 5 inches of rain downpour but only what they grazed on the day of the rain and the day after got pugged.

 

[SBMF 2015]

I still feel good about it, i think the main thing im trying to figure out is if i do it with a confinement barn or if i do a pasture / hybrid where i overstock the pastures (2-3 per acre) but just run TMR or creep feeders around the clock? I saw some videos of the Lazy T ranch in Canada and they background thousands of stockers per year but pack them tight into pastures and also feeed a TMR… curious how quick my pastures would turn into mud lots as well or if i paddock it off and provide plenty of TMR could i keep them from destroying the ground

TMR yes, creep feeders NO. One of the best ways to read cattle is if they are hungry when you show up and line up at the bunk. Study heads as you drive by with TMR. See an ear tipped down? Walk pens slowly after you feed. Are there individuals that are lining up but not actually eating?
A creep feeder gives them the ability to eat or not any time they want. When you walk pens you don’t know if they are laying down because they are sick or because they are just enjoying the sunshine.
Cattle like all prey animals are extremely good at hiding when they are weak or sick.

 

[Ky hills]

I have done real well with a smaller scale backgrounding operation of 30-40 head. Just never had the facilities and equipment where I felt comfortable getting bigger. I know a man who does this with 1,000 head at a time. He told me he gives every calf a shot of Draxxin on arrival. That basically increases the incoming cost by $5 per hundred (generic Draxxin reduces that some) but he said it made a huge difference in the number of calves he had to pull.

When I used to buy calves like that, it must have been a pretty standard part of the vets protocol to give them a dose of Draxxin. The vets at the stockyards would ask if I wanted that given to the calves when I’d get them worked at the stockyards before bringing them in.

 

[kenny thomas]

Im of a different opinion on this. I never give an antibiotic unless I'm fighting a sickness. I try my very best to prevent the sickness and I suppose to many vets giving the Draxin is part of that prevention. Right or wrong it's just not something I do.

 

[littletom]

Like mention before i would forgo the creep feeder. The ones that don't come to bunk need to be gotten up and treated.

 

[littletom]

Try it some people love it. It would not be for everyone. I had the itch for years. Several years ago we bought a farm few miles away from home farm. It was a old dairy had lot of barns and concrete. I bought it for the crop ground. But had a lot of facilities they needed used for something. I'm sure you have seen them lot of spread sheets where you plug your numbers in and will give you some projections.

 

[chevytaHOE5674]

Im of a different opinion on this. I never give an antibiotic unless I'm fighting a sickness. I try my very best to prevent the sickness and I suppose to many vets giving the Draxin is part of that prevention. Right or wrong it's just not something I do.

Overuse of antibiotics reduces there effectiveness. Few years from now guys will be complaining how Draxxin doesn't work anymore.

Any Vet who would recommend giving abx to a symptom-less animal is questionable in my book.

 

[littletom]

It doesn't work now in feeder calves very good at all. Alot of that is because works so well in dart guns. It is just so widley used no doubt a resistance is there now. And in generic form a cheaper option.

 

[Ky hills]

Im of a different opinion on this. I never give an antibiotic unless I'm fighting a sickness. I try my very best to prevent the sickness and I suppose to many vets giving the Draxin is part of that prevention. Right or wrong it's just not something I do.

I’ve done it both ways. I got away from giving them Draxxin at purchase. It was probably around 15 years ago when they were doing that. I stopped when I started buying calves myself and bringing them in and us working them at home.
I’m pretty sure our vet that we work with the most, would be on the side of not treating with an antibiotic unless needed.

 

[Ky hills]

Overuse of antibiotics reduces there effectiveness. Few years from now guys will be complaining how Draxxin doesn't work anymore.

Any Vet who would recommend giving abx to a symptom-less animal is questionable in my book.

That was about 15 years ago that it was being done when I had feeders bought and worked at the stockyards.
We stopped doing when I started buying calves myself self and working them when we got home. I was getting some supplies to work calves at the local vets at the time, and I asked what he thought about doing it, if it really helped. He shrugged his shoulders and said probably 6 of one half a dozen of the other. So I took that to mean that he thought it probably not real beneficial, so that just helped me think I was right in not doing it.
I’m pretty sure, almost positive that the vet we work with the most would not recommend antibiotics unless there was a present need.

 

[farmerjan]

We do not give any antibiotic, especially Draxxin, when an animal comes to the farm either... Wait and watch...
If they are not sick, they don't need it, if they are sick, it might NOT be the best one to give them anyway.
We use Draxxin in the dart gun for pinkeye if we cannot get them in at pasture... If working through the chute it is the "last resort" drug so that we do not build up a resistant "germ" population.