starting out

[Anonymous]

what advice would you give someone starting out as far as number of acers per cow ,breed of cow and amount of money needed to start also what is the qaverage income and work ratio for someone starting out i am landscape/maitance provider and want to start a farm consisting of crops and livestock any info would be very usefull thank you in advance

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[Anonymous]

> deep pockets,and spend a lot of time reaDING THE BACKLOG OF REPLIES ON THIS SITE.

 

[Anonymous]

The amount of cows per acre depends on your area. I would suggest starting out with just a couple cows to make sure it is truly what you want to do. If you don't like it or realize it takes more time than you thought, or for whatever you want to get out you can without risking too much capital. I would also find a mentor to help you get started. A local ag teacher or someone that lives near. You are going to come upon things that you need to call someone about. My wife and I started with 2 heifers and a bull. We found we enjoyed it and now have many cows. A friend tried it and hated it. It ate up too much of his time. He was able to get out w/o losing too much money. Good luck!

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[Anonymous]

Gene makes a great point. We started out in the spring of 2001 with a weanling heifer and a weanling bull. We loved it so much that we had 12 cows by the end of the summer. We are now at about 20. We run registered longhorns and love them. However, I am amazed at the amount of time my 20 cows take and sometimes the amount of money (I notice this is a trend with registered stock compared to the beef market producer). Start slow and grow as you have the time, desire, and money. Brian.



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[Anonymous]

Stay away from the longhorns and get you a set of good northern origin angus heifers breed them to a good low birth weight angus bull. You might as well get 10 or so as it is hard to sell one or two calves and not get docked money. Besides it takes about as much time to feed 2 animals as it does to feed 10 or 15.

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[Anonymous]

Agree. We breed and raise registered Longhorns too. Chasing some of the top pedigrees in our herd and will be doing some A.I. later this year or in 2004. Also, think that us "registered" people probably do spend more time caring for our critters than the non-registered people do...more invested per animal. And, as breeders, we want to help Mother Nature and her genetic influences, not cut her short. We keep extensive records on each of our stock and monitor them at least 2X a day as well as move females about ready to calf to one of our "calving pen areas" -- sorta private birthing place...lol. To date we've had no problems with dams or new calves and all have turned out very healthy.