Whats left of a cheap herd

[houstoncutter]

Ok, somehow i manage to get some cell phone pics into the members gallaries, but danged if I can get them here on the board. They are under the tag of Houston Cutter. Help by one of you smarter types would greatly be appreaciated. So if they make it on here, the red is a fullblood out of Colorado 150, the black bull is one that I bred and raised out of KRMC 265H. The cow is a LimiXBrangus cross she is out of a Southern Cross son that I purchased many years ago from Kemi Limousin. Michelle used to be on this board a lot in its early years. So there they are fellas tear em up....I know some of u have been waiting to get at em. They are wormy, last wormed In Dec of 09, they have received no hay or supplement this winter, also no ryegrass was planted this winter. What you see in front of them is what they lived on this winter.

 

[user1]

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[Kingfisher]

They deserve to have better pictures taken.............they must be wild!

 

[ALACOWMAN]

what their running on now,, supported your 3 hundred plus head at one time???

 

[Jeanne - Simme Valley]

Houston - my cows would think that was a smorgesboard (sp?) they would be stripping those bushes/trees as high as they could reach them. Anything green is fair game. NOTHING is green around here in winter except evergreens - and YES, they eat them too. Strip them as high as that ole tongue will reach.
But, if you don't hay in the winter, surely you have something more than that for as many cows your used to have - or tons of acres.

 

[houstoncutter]

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Thankyou User1 for getting the pics over here to this board... As for the pics themselves they were taken with a cell phone...The cows are not wild nor are they overly tame. They are pretty much indifferent to my being there. The other two bulls are not in the pictures, but the bulls that you do see, would be a fair repensentation of what is left. The bulls are 4 to 7 years old. The red bull is 7 years with the black bull being 4 years old...The cow is 19 years old, she was not sold because she was calving the day we hauled the herd in 09. She would have a calf beside her now, but it was taken by a poacher in Jan. this year.

Jeannie I dont hay much, if its wet and cold I will put hay out. This year they got nothing, because six animals were running in a 200 acre pasture.. Their was plenty of standing grass for them to eat. With the standing grass we had this year it truly was more like standing hay.....it was a very dry winter which makes for a easy winter.

 

[KNERSIE]

Why did you sell out?

 

[piedmontese]

why do u have 4 bulls for 2 cows?

 

[TexasBred]

Houston you need to get the grubbin' hoe out and go to work on those thistles. :lol2:

 

[houstoncutter]

Piedmontese, I kept 5 bulls with the hope that i might get back in. These were bulls that I knew had a lotta hustle in them. I have sold one bull to a fella wanting old time Limousin gentics, will probably sell the rest shortly, unless we have a dramtic change in pricing. Buy low and sell high, works in real estate and it works in cattle.

Knersie, as for reason for selling the herd it was a perfect storm, namely Hurricane Ike. I like some of you ,I have land that I own and land that I lease. The lease land was on the coast. We had patched up many of the fences we lost in 2005 to Hurricane Rita both on the lease land and here at home. My land here at home is surrounded by subdivisions, so as any of you that get to deal with all these homeowners know they dont want to have nothing to do with repair our common fences. Most of these lease land the owners also didnt think they had an responsibility towards repairing fence...It was all MINE to take care of . So we patched some and some I went to electric fencing on.

So it was a little hiccup in life and on we went...Then Hurricane Ike came roaring ashore.. I was lucky in that I had not yet moved my spring calving group of cows to the coast. Otherwise I would have been really torn a new one..like many of my friends along the coast were... Let me say at this time .. Thankyou to all you that sent hay, fencing materials, money, and some of you even your time... You helped a lot of folks that needed it and were not about to ask for a dime...Thankyou again...most all of the land I had leased along the marsh got about 2 to 6 foot of saltwater and the fences were wiped out. That took care of my leasing days....it will be years or maybe a decade before those pastures will be productive again....

That spring I had purchased a large amout of hay, about 5 times more than I normally used. It was good hay and I got it dirt cheap. So I hayed all winter long and into the spring. I had decided that I was going to sell my fall calving herd and stick to the spring calving herd. Then the drought of 09 hit here in Texas, I was lucky in that we were getting rain, but ever bale of hay was going outa here as fast as they could put em on a 18 wheeler... That was the final straw, because I was not going to pay $60 a roll for 4x5 bales of hay that would only test out at 8% protein at best. So I fed out all of the hay, except some I kept for the bulls and the old cow in the pictures

 

[houstoncutter]

Houston you need to get the grubbin' hoe out and go to work on those thistles. :lol2:

You know for some reason a lot of us have all these thistles weeds, we have always had a few, but this year its terrible

 

[Lon]

Houston you need to get the grubbin' hoe out and go to work on those thistles. :lol2:

:clap: :clap: :clap:

 

[Lon]

Houston you need to get the grubbin' hoe out and go to work on those thistles. :lol2:

You know for some reason a lot of us have all these thistles weeds, we have always had a few, but this year its terrible

better get to work on them then or thats all you will have is thistle.
by the way your cows aint bad sure dont look skinny or hurting for anything but if ya own quit a bit of land they shouldnt even if its dry since there aint many. i got a question though. what are you doing with the land. i am assuming you own a bit since you had 300 hd at one time. do you lease it out? surely to let it just sist would cost money. also on the buy high sell low part. tell me if my thinking is wrong cause im just pondering here. but if it is due to dry year and a huricane than wouldnt alot of people be selling as well pushing the market down therefor poking a hole in that or was it based on primaryaly the tax benifit? i know around here at times you look into wyoming and or one time even montana and they were real dry and i remembering guys going that far to buy cows and trucking them home because of how cheap they were. also why didnt you just sell off eveything except your 3yr olds or hiefers or something keeping your #s low. this way you would still have more than enough feed? (could rent any extra out to someone else as real short term lease cause if it is dry enough theyll take whatever they could get) reason for doing this is than buy know you could have had your numbers built back up to some extent and they are high again sell off the most part keeping just a few again and building from there. this way you would still have the type or cattle you worked to create that were working for you instead of having to start over and build that type of cow again. or is my way of thinking on this not correct at all and would be a bad ownership decision?

 

[KNERSIE]

Piedmontese, I kept 5 bulls with the hope that i might get back in. These were bulls that I knew had a lotta hustle in them. I have sold one bull to a fella wanting old time Limousin gentics, will probably sell the rest shortly, unless we have a dramtic change in pricing. Buy low and sell high, works in real estate and it works in cattle.

Knersie, as for reason for selling the herd it was a perfect storm, namely Hurricane Ike. I like some of you ,I have land that I own and land that I lease. The lease land was on the coast. We had patched up many of the fences we lost in 2005 to Hurricane Rita both on the lease land and here at home. My land here at home is surrounded by subdivisions, so as any of you that get to deal with all these homeowners know they dont want to have nothing to do with repair our common fences. Most of these lease land the owners also didnt think they had an responsibility towards repairing fence...It was all MINE to take care of . So we patched some and some I went to electric fencing on.

So it was a little hiccup in life and on we went...Then Hurricane Ike came roaring ashore.. I was lucky in that I had not yet moved my spring calving group of cows to the coast. Otherwise I would have been really torn a new one..like many of my friends along the coast were... Let me say at this time .. Thankyou to all you that sent hay, fencing materials, money, and some of you even your time... You helped a lot of folks that needed it and were not about to ask for a dime...Thankyou again...most all of the land I had leased along the marsh got about 2 to 6 foot of saltwater and the fences were wiped out. That took care of my leasing days....it will be years or maybe a decade before those pastures will be productive again....

That spring I had purchased a large amout of hay, about 5 times more than I normally used. It was good hay and I got it dirt cheap. So I hayed all winter long and into the spring. I had decided that I was going to sell my fall calving herd and stick to the spring calving herd. Then the drought of 09 hit here in Texas, I was lucky in that we were getting rain, but ever bale of hay was going outa here as fast as they could put em on a 18 wheeler... That was the final straw, because I was not going to pay $60 a roll for 4x5 bales of hay that would only test out at 8% protein at best. So I fed out all of the hay, except some I kept for the bulls and the old cow in the pictures

That is tough on the stomach, hope things change for the better for you soon.

 

[houstoncutter]

Houston you need to get the grubbin' hoe out and go to work on those thistles. :lol2:

You know for some reason a lot of us have all these thistles weeds, we have always had a few, but this year its terrible

better get to work on them then or thats all you will have is thistle.
by the way your cows aint bad sure dont look skinny or hurting for anything but if ya own quit a bit of land they shouldnt even if its dry since there aint many. i got a question though. what are you doing with the land. i am assuming you own a bit since you had 300 hd at one time. do you lease it out? surely to let it just sist would cost money. also on the buy high sell low part. tell me if my thinking is wrong cause im just pondering here. but if it is due to dry year and a huricane than wouldnt alot of people be selling as well pushing the market down therefor poking a hole in that or was it based on primaryaly the tax benifit? i know around here at times you look into wyoming and or one time even montana and they were real dry and i remembering guys going that far to buy cows and trucking them home because of how cheap they were. also why didnt you just sell off eveything except your 3yr olds or hiefers or something keeping your #s low. this way you would still have more than enough feed? (could rent any extra out to someone else as real short term lease cause if it is dry enough theyll take whatever they could get) reason for doing this is than buy know you could have had your numbers built back up to some extent and they are high again sell off the most part keeping just a few again and building from there. this way you would still have the type or cattle you worked to create that were working for you instead of having to start over and build that type of cow again. or is my way of thinking on this not correct at all and would be a bad ownership decision?

Lon the way it was explained to me by my cpa, their are certain guidelines that have to be followed to take advantage of tax advantages that are avaiable in areas that have been declared natural disaster areas, be it a drought or a hurricane or in our case both. One of those rules is complete sell out. Which I did, as for the few animals I have left,I bought em back...Your area has to declared a natural disaster area, these rules were put in place to help ranchers in the mountain states somes years back when they had all those years of severe drought..

My herd was old, most of the animals were, in two age groups 10 years old and 15 years old... Also most of the animals were F-1's, not something I would wish to raise replacement heifers out of. as for bringing animals into our area.. Will not work, our area is brutul on animals that have not been born here. They have to put up with the heat, humidy and bugs and the most damming not having enough gut capacity..Animals here have to consume a lot more grass to survive than what they would in areas west or north of here. Our grass is of poor quality compared to most areas. We have a lots of it, but It doesnt have a lot of protein value to it.. I have been looking for cattle along the Texas coastline and into Louisiana. As of now, my owned land is vacant, I will be able to get away for maybe a couple of years more. I am redoing fences and pastures, so the tax appraisal district will leave me alone. As for the leased land, after Hurricane Rita all leases I signed had a out clauses, where i could walk away from them. Needless to say I did... Hated to loose some of those places, marsh grasses pack a powerful punch in protein. It will be a long time before those pastures will be viable again.

 

[houstoncutter]

Knersie, It was a tough pill to swallow ,but I came out ok and actually I sold out at the right time.. many of my friends took a real bloodbath. I worry about many of my fellow cattlemen here in Texas now, its really dry here statewide and way to early in the year. Most of the cattlemen here have gone to improved pasture grasse here, and those can be real moneymakers if you have the right moisture. In a drought they have a tough time and thats when those old native grass pastures shine.