while I am on a roll

[Texican]

with questions.

A little more background.

I have roughly 11 acres fenced in. I'm in a bit of a mental jam. I'm looking for a profitable, or at least lose the least amount of money, method to raise, and run a few head of cows. I have plans on improving the pasture for both spring/summer, and fall/winter grazing, and cross fencing. I am new to owning cows, but have been in the country my whole life, and as long as you don't ask my wife, I do have some common sense.

please feel free to add any suggestions, or comments.

I feel with my limited space, I really only have 3 options.

option 1.
buy calves, in early spring, raise through summer, and sell. Leave a month off on the pasture to prep for fall winter, then buy more calves and sell late winter, repeat. Now this process may be better served on a year and a half plan. Such as buy one spring, keep through til following spring, then sell prep pasture, and buy in fall, then sell the following fall, and repeat.
I like this plan, since it will allow me more than just two cows. I dislike this plan, since to me, you do not get to build a herd history of good cows. I'm not sure why that is important to me, but it is.

option 2
run baby cows.
no big description on this one, because this is my least favorite option, for obvious reasons.

option 3
raise show cows/steers.
I could purchase a couple of cows, have them AI'd.
this option would give me a little chance at history, as well as giving my kids a chance to raise their own animals for shows.
I kind of like this option, but feel with my current experience level, this would take the longest to get operational.

if those of you in the know, have any better suggestions, or if some of my assumptions are way off base, then by all means correct me, or throw new suggestions out there.

 

[lineman-up]

texican, i am by no means a cattle guru, but iam in the same situatuion as you. i have eight acres, i bought calves in the fall so they were smaller when i had no pasture. then when spring comes and they are bigger they will get kicked out in to the rest of the pasture. i bought some holsteins cuz they were cheap in case they died. good luck

 

[gerardplauche]

Considering the circumstances, I believe running a feedlot is your best bet. Good luck, hold on to you :cowboy: r wallet!

 

[skyline]

On a small scale basis, I'm not sure how you make a stocker operation profitable, unless you hit a rising market just right. You gain a pound or two a day, say $30 to $60 per month in gain per calf. But as they gain, the price per pound drops. If you are in a falling market, the price really drops.

If you're doing this in the winter, you'll have hay and protein supplement costs. You can overseed with ryegrass or some other cool season grass or grain, but it's going to take at least a few months from germination to grazing (with no grazing during that period).

Ideally, you would buy calves as your grass greens up in the spring and sell as the grass begins to lose protein value in the fall, which should give you the least expensive grazing. But this seems to be buying high and selling low from what I have seen of the market cycle.

Unless you're doing this on a very large scale (reducing your overhead cost per calf), I haven't figured out how you do it profitably. But I'm probably missing something... If someone has an idea of how to do stockers profitably on a small scale, please share as I would like to figure this out.

 

[msscamp]

The first thing I would do is call all of the salebarns in the area, and find out what sells when for the best price. Then I would do everything I could to take advantage of that. The 2nd thing I would do is talk to neighbors, other people who run cattle, vets, people at the salebarn, etc., and see if anyone needed a little free help. That way I could get some hands on experience with cattle, recognizing illness, how to handle them, how those people are set-up, how well it works, etc. With 11 acres, you don't have the capacity to run very many head of anything without supplementing pretty heavily with hay. I personally would stay away from the show cattle simply because, as a newbie, you don't have the reputation to back you up, and show cattle are going to get pretty expensive, pretty quickly. If I had no experience with cattle, I would also stay away from calves because they tend to require the knowledge/experience to be able to diagnose illness and know how to treat those illnesses. If you don't have that ability, you tend to lose a bunch of them. You actually have a 4th option - 3 in 1's. I would go with 4 year olds or older. That way your potential losses are less than with 2 or 3 year olds, the cows are proven, and it makes for a better situation for you. Although you won't be able to run enough to make that much of a difference finacially, they will provide some cash flow and you might be able to do it in such a way that it would make it a bit easier to expand your operation to where you could run enough to make a difference financially.

 

[Jogeephus]

Considering the circumstances, I believe running a feedlot is your best bet. Good luck, hold on to you :cowboy: r wallet!

This would be my choice too since you could purchase 6 weight calves at salebarn for say $550 then straighten them out and put another 4-5 hundred pounds on them but with the heavier weight the feed requirements would not be dictated by pasture size. Rather than purchasing from the salebarn, you could also purchase backgrounded calves if you are concerned about health issues of salebarn calves. It will cost you a little more but you won't get any surprise funk on your place.

 

[novatech]

What ever you do start off small. You will no dought loose money while you are learning. As the saying goes; Only invest what you can afford to loose.
The number of calves you can raise is dependent on the forage you can produce. If it were me I would start with 3 or 4.
That equates to maybe $300 gross profit. It will take a few years just to pay for the fence. Then you will need a corral and trailer.
There are maney other ways you can use the land as far as cattle are concerned but you have to work within your skill level.

 

[hillrancher]

i would buy 3 or 4 good 4 or 5 year old cows keep them around for a few years. Learn or have AI. You may decide you want to run goats or what ever. By then you will have most of the answer to your questions.

 

[grannysoo]

What ever you do start off small. You will no dought loose money while you are learning. As the saying goes; Only invest what you can afford to loose.

Well stated.

 

[BC]

You didn't say what part of Texas you were from and that can make a world of difference in the type and amount of grass you have. With just 11 acres, you do not have enough land to run cows/calves unless you fertilize and then only 3 maybe 4.

What is your summer forage? Your first idea of running stocker calves might be your best bet to utilize your resources. If you are close enough to sell in the NETBIO sales at Sulphur Springs that gives you an outlet for straightened out cattle. You will need to follow their health program. It's advantage over a regular sale is that you get your cattle sorted into larger lot sizes (you get paid for how many pounds of calf you have in that pen) instead of selling them one at a time.

 

[sidney411]

Another option would be to buy old bred cows at the auction and calve them out then sell everything at weaning. I'm piddling with this in a very small scale right now. I've leased a little 18 acre pasture that is completely seperate from my main herd for this.

 

[Caustic Burno]

Another option would be to buy old bred cows at the auction and calve them out then sell everything at weaning. I'm piddling with this in a very small scale right now. I've leased a little 18 acre pasture that is completely seperate from my main herd for this.

Sid there is a fellow who has a place not far from me that does exactly that. Funny thing is he is a big business man in Houston with unlimited resourses.
He raises the calf to weaning sells the calf for more than he paid for the cow and she sells at can & cutter prices.

 

[sidney411]

Well that's good to know. I've started w/ one old cow I bought about a month ago. She was marked as being 6 mts bred and has already popped out a nice little rwf heifer. Paid $300 for her, so I can't see where I can lose $ on her if she and the calf make it to weaning. I plan on getting a few more as soon as I can sell some of my heifers. I really think that this would be a good idea for someone to try that is fairly new w/ cattle because old cows generally know what to do and you probably won't have as much problem w/ them as you would heifers or calves. The only downside is someone that doesn't know much about cattle getting a sick or crazy cow, which could also be the case w/ buying calves from the auction to feed out too. JMO.

 

[TheBullLady]

I have to agree.. you're not going to be able to do very much on 11 acres in Texas, unless you have irrigation. In central Texas it's safe to consider 3-5 acres per cow calf unit.

Sooo.. you can buy a few young calves, but I can't see that as being very profitable. I think the idea of buying older bred cows at the auction is a sound one. I also know someone that does very well doing that.

 

[Texican]

great info folks, thanks.

I never considered buying older bred cows, but it sounds like a good platform to start from, and maybe eventually be able to increase acreage, and then maybe start a small herd.

thanks again.

 

[Caustic Burno]

great info folks, thanks.

I never considered buying older bred cows, but it sounds like a good platform to start from, and maybe eventually be able to increase acreage, and then maybe start a small herd.

thanks again.

Buying older bred cows from the salebarn is not for begineers, you had better know what heck you are doing and you better have one sure enough rough cow handling facilities.

 

[redfornow]

great info folks, thanks.

I never considered buying older bred cows, but it sounds like a good platform to start from, and maybe eventually be able to increase acreage, and then maybe start a small herd.

thanks again.

Buying older bred cows from the salebarn is not for begineers, you had better know what heck you are doing and you better have one sure enough rough cow handling facilities.

Yep buyer older breds is a crash course in farming. :cowboy:

You will learn alot on the go, start small an make a go of it.

 

[Brute 23]

Keep you debt (overhead) low, if you don't owe money you don't have to make money. Especially right off the bat because the only way to learn is to mess up or get screwed a few good times. :lol2: