Z&J Cattle
Well-known member
Hello all. Here is my dilema. I have a group of heifers weighing around 650#. We bought them in the fall at around 450-500# at what we thought would be a good price with the hopes that the market would climb by spring. Without getting too deep into all the numbers, we have between $500-$520/hd. in them right now with all the feed/mecicine/etc... costs. Given the current market and based on results from one paticular sale that occured today, these calves should bring around .80/lb which translates to $520/hd. SO, if we are LUCKY, about all we can hope for is to basically break even. A good friend of mine personally talked to the owner of a very large regional sale barn today that sells on Tuesday (tomorrow) and he told him that if you have anything that you are even considering selling, dump them now, because it is only going to get worse in the forseeable future. My concern is that if I wait and try to ride it out, these calves will be well up over 700# when the market comes back up in which case I will really take a hit in price per pound. "Big" calves have been high for the last two years around here because of the cost of feed, and I guess now that feed is backing down, and given the overall economic state, they are going down the crapper fast. So, the bottom line is, do I sell them tomorrow and hope to break even and be glad that I didn't lose too much, or do I hold on to them and take my chances? I know that nobody has a crystal ball and I'm sure that lots of you are faced with very similar situations. So, what would YOU do? The most disheartening part of it is that when we bought these calves, EVERYONE that I know in the cattle business told me that we should really do well given the current market, what we bought them for, and what they expected the market to do this spring. But, I guess what one EXPECTS can be thrown out the window at this point. A friend of mine said that he would like to go back and look at the last 10 years and see what the prices have tradionally done at this time of year and I told him, it makes no difference. We are in a whole other world now than what most of us have ever seen, in the cattle business and otherwise. Any advice or input would be greatly appreciated as always.
Zach
Zach