1wlimo":lv9kpicv said:
SteppedInIt":lv9kpicv said:
Something I read recently and kinda accidently did over the weekend has really got me thinking. One strategy is one could buy a set of bred heifers, calve them out, keep the calves, breed the heifers back and resale as second calf cow for more money. I assume he breeds the heifer calves he kept??? The point of the scenario is this guy feels he made more money selling the older stock vs keeping cows and selling calves. To me it makes sense to the point of consideration.
What I did this weekend, that somewhat follows this concept is... I bought a nice heavy bred cow a year ago, she calved a nice heifer that I am keeping. She is light bred back and I traded her for two nice bred heifers. There were of course some feed cost to maintain the cow, but I think I came out way ahead on the whole deal vs keeping the cow. I know how good this deal is really depends on how the new heifers perform.
Calving heifers is not quite the same as calving out cows. If you know where the heifers come from, and the bull that was used, and you have the time and attention to detail to do an A1 job there may be a margin there. Does not take very may issues and you have lost any slim margin there may have been.
From the original post I think running heifers can be a money maker. Here is my twist on it. I have mostly seedstock kind of cows. I got few guys running just my bulls. They don't like to AI, don't like heifers, etc.
I want to trade them a bred cow in the fall carrying a bull calf for 2 of their weanling heifers. I'll get them AI'd and only animal to ever leave the farm as a bred would be them carrying bull calves or cows that don't need to be replacement type cattle. Anyone see why that would or wouldn't work? I think I'd need to give them 2nd-4th calf cows. I would only do it with known genetics too.
I got all kinds of room with dairy cattle around for heifers, cow calf pairs is where I'm limited to renting pasture and some of them I can't run a bull on..........also couple of the guys calve about 2 months later than I do so any "late" bred cows could be marketed that way....