Have to admit @Warren Allison has a point. I'm still a bit of a newb, but from what I could tell, corriente scrubs at 250 to 300 each bred back to angus is one of the few ways still available to make money in the cattle business if you are not going to sell expensive-to-maintain genetics or way overpay to get started.
Not even with the damndest, high falootingest registered Simm, Charloalis, or whatever purebrd herd in the world, selling calves in Production sales at your farm where you cater caviar and champagne to the bidders, will you EVER make the money you will with these corrs bred to angus ( we use Brangus and Ultrablack) . 120 head costs about $30k. Last year we sold 112 calves, 6 mos old, for $621 to $827. Probably averaged $700 or more per calf. About $78,000. No way can you buy $30k worth of ANY other cattle, and sell $98k worth if calves at 6 mos old, with NO feed, no vetting, no worming, no parasite control or fly control, no fertilizer, lime or weed killer on the pasture, no labor in tagging and vaccinating the calves.. no labor in bushogging the pastures, no cutting, baling and getting up hay. Or buying hay. Zero money or labor inputs.
After all, the business side is all about what you get for what you pay, and a viable way is to 'lose face' because you take the 'scrubs' and let others turn their noses up at your low-quality, back-pasture stock. But low cost/input with decent returns is often higher profit than high cost/input with higher returns (that have labor-intensive marketing). And cattle science says that smaller framed, efficient-calf-raising cows that breed back faster every year (i.e. corriente) are actually consistently the best mone
But I'm too old to deal with a whole herd of them. Not too easy to handle, and can be hard on the fences if they so choose.
Also why I don't have a herd of F1 Braford. Same deal. Moneymakers, but hard on the health on the docility side of things.
I don't find them any harder to handle than any other breed, maybe easier than some Brahmas or Brahma crosses that people don't know how to handle. I never get in any pen, pasture or corral with any cow on foot, though. I do everything from horseback. These 120 cows were on 200+ acres that is our quail and rabbit hunting paradise. Across the road and down about a mile my partner has 450+ acres of fenced in row crop land. We plant our dove field for the pay shoot there every year on about 50-60 acres, and the rest he usually puts in corn, beans, peanuts and cotton. After the first dove season, sometime in October, we would round this herd up and drive them horseback down to the dove field, and turn them on it. Then, as each crop was harvested, he'd open the gates to that field and let them have them, too. About the end of January we'd drive them back to the Kudzu field, They calved in February, and any that the black bulls missed got bred by our Corr cleanup bull for early March calves. In March, we'd round them up and cut the bull calves, by heeling them and getting down to work them on the ground, inside a huge corral that was one time an arena, and we have it divided into 3 sections. Next time anyone is ever over there, is end of April when we'd turn the black bulls out. Usually Memorial day weekend, we'd pick them up and turn the Corr bull in with them. We'd get him out 4th of July weekend. About a week before dove season opens, we'd round them up, load up the calves to go to the sale. This year he put the whole 450 acres across the road in cotton, except for the dove field, and that was a deciding factor in selling that herd last spring, too. Those 12 head we have over there will be alright with nothing but the dove field and 400 acres of picked cotton, but we would have had to feed them if we had kept the 120 head this year. Sometime in October I will go down there and we will drive those 11 over to the cotton field, and take the Corr bull to Scott's. So that's all the human contact they ever got, but we had no problems. Now, all of these cows had been worked on horseback all of their lives, and between me and Scott we have over 100 years experience handling cows with horses, but these cows are as docile as any other breed would be seeing humans only 3-4 times a year.
Another group member bought 20 2nd calf cows from us, not solids, at $600 each. We had one shot by a poacher, sold those 36 and had 83 left at the first of the year. I had gotten 12 Piney Woods and Fla Scrubs in a horse trading deal, and they were all bred Brangus to calve in March. I allowed the man $3k trade-in value, $250 a head, on a horse . We sold these 95 pairs for $96k., I think. It was less than $100k. The buyer should have sold the calves here lately, and if did as well in Mississippi with the calves we do, he should get about $700-$750 per calf. So he will have about $250- $300 in the cows.
