OK, I will state right off the bat that the $250 figure does not include the initial expense of buying the calf. However, it does allow for you to buy one calf to replace the one you had before it. However, if you just figure on buying the calf, feeding and selling it without buying a new one, the figure would stay the same. These figures are based on what I have done in past years and try to allow for some higher prices in feed and hay. Over a calf's lifetime, I figure that it will eat about 85% grain and 15% hay on the average. Say a calf goes in the lot at 700 pounds. His target weight is 1200#. That means he has to put on 500 pounds of weight. Saying that the calf converts feed at 8 pounds of feed to one pound of gain, he will have to eat 4000 pounds of FEED. This means about 85%, or 3400 pounds of grain and 600 pounds of hay. Grain I get is sold at about $155 to $160 per 1000 pounds. This means the calf will eat 3.4 loads or $544 of grain at the $160 per 1000 pounds figure. Eating hay at about $135 per ton will mean he eats 0.3 tons, or $40.50 worth of unground hay. This brings his feed up to $584.50. If you gave $700 for him to start with, you have, without vet, fuel, ect., $1284.50 in costs. Now here is where I do better than most as a small feeder. I can get away with almost no fuel costs, and very little on the vet costs. Plus, the steers I sell bring $1.25 live weight. If you figure that for a 1200# steer, you have a gross profit of $1500. That's $215.50 net the way I see it. Of course, you don't have much left over for the next steer. Hope that everyone can see how I do it. This, of course, probably wouldn't work as well on a very large scale do to the high live weight price. But, you could still make $95.50 a head on a steer that brings $1.15 a pound. Also, my feed prices are probably a little higher than most, too. So this might be a fairly accurate average. If anyone has any questions, concerns, or different figures, feel free to post away. :compute:
