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I believe the added activity is showing up in my yields. Dad's side of the road lays fallow all winter. We almost exclusively no till. As Rydero said above, makes me want to cover more acres with more cows. I may buy some stockers to run on stalks on a few fields to accomplish this. If I could get double duty out of more acres, that's the same as renting more without the expense, plus adding fertility for the crops.

I could also buy first/second stage cows in Nov and sell them as third stage or pairs early spring. Not many people looking to feed them through the winter, so possibly some money to be made there with good management.

Any thoughts on any of this? I know many of you don't row crop, but nearly everyone does here. Only one full time cattleman in our area. None of it will make me rich, but unfortunately I was bitten by the farming bug at a young age, and have been afflicted nearly my whole life.
You will need to supplement stockers on corn stalks. There is Nebraska data out there about using DDG. Obviously you will be adding N to the soil via the DDG protein.

Over wintering cows on stalks is more common, and requires less management and less feeding. Running cows on row crop aftermath can be attractive.

In either case - - you are potentially selling and buying over a fairly short period so your marketing skills are key. Custom grazing someone else's cows may be a home run.
 
You will need to supplement stockers on corn stalks. There is Nebraska data out there about using DDG. Obviously you will be adding N to the soil via the DDG protein.

Over wintering cows on stalks is more common, and requires less management and less feeding. Running cows on row crop aftermath can be attractive.

In either case - - you are potentially selling and buying over a fairly short period so your marketing skills are key. Custom grazing someone else's cows may be a home run.
Either way I would start small for a couple years to get my feet wet on the short sell. I've been wanting to set up to handle truck loads of feed for some time, cheapens it up considerably. We're a 1 hour back haul from a crusher so soy hull pellets are very reasonable in a semi load, not so much through the feed mill.
 
Also an ethanol plant same town, I've never checked prices out of there but I'm sure they would be good.
 
Either way I would start small for a couple years to get my feet wet on the short sell.
Since you would only have one turn per year you will not have a great fit with the increasingly popular sell buy marketing method.

Many stocker operators and cow traders spend a lot of time hanging out in the sales barn. If you don't, then you need one or two trustworthy buyers.

You would be fairly safe opening an operating line of credit to play the seasonal price trends. This seems to work about 10 years out of 13. You can look up some historical prices to get an immediate feel for gross margins.
 

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