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Would you recommend cattle?
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<blockquote data-quote="Dega Moo" data-source="post: 1025611" data-attributes="member: 19930"><p>I think getting an Agriculture degree, either in agronomy or large animal science is a very solid bet for future employment on or off the farm. Owning or operating a cattle operation might be a whole nother story. Most of the people I listen to think the future will see either hobby beef farms (say 40 or fewer head) surviving since ownership generally has an outside income and doesn't figure labor into their profit and loss sheet and large operations of say over 500 head making profit and surviving while the medium sized operations for the most part fail and virtually disappear in the United States. </p><p></p><p>I'm not belittling hobby operations but if someone likes beef cattle and want to raise them as a hobby and maybe supplement their income then a recommendation is kind of meaningless. By all means if it's a lifestyle choice then that's more than cool. Go for it! But if you're talking about making a living .......</p><p></p><p>Bez or CB like to throw out something like an average $500 a year cost to feed and care for a cow. Personally, I think that's a bit low but using that number anyway, if I sell an 800 pound steer at say $140 cwt then I receive $1120 for every calving cow. If I raised my own cows from new born calves then I've likely spent $1000 raising the heifer without any income. If we "depreciate" this girl over 5 years, she costs me another $200 a year for those 5 years at that $1000 value. </p><p></p><p>In small herds we can get 100% fertility and birth rates, but if we have 100, 300 or 800 cows, that's just not going to happen. A stretch KPI for preg, calving, weaning and live sale would be 90% per year. I think it would be a big stretch in fact. So instead of getting $1120 per cow we can figure on getting $1008 per cow on average and after we deduct our $500 and $200 expenses we're looking at a possible profit of $308 per cow. In order to make $60000 a year (in a very optimistic scenario) this farm would need 200 head of cows and if they could pasture a pair on 2 acres of grass they'd need 400 acres of great forage. I suspect with current land prices, that kind of land is going to sell today for no less than $5000 an acre so the investment in land alone would be $2,000,000. Toss in some equipment and trucks, supplies, vet and med bills and oh yeah, don't forget social security taxes on that income. Almost forgot, UofMisery ( :lol2: ) expects bred heifers to sell for something like 1.8 to 2.0 times the value of a 550# steer and they recently figured that steer at $140 cwt giving a cost of something like $1540 (off something like $600 the last few years). So we could say, no bull ;-) , those 200 cows were another $300,000 investment.</p><p></p><p>I really hate being so negative, such a downer, but I just don't see it. I think the future is large corporate cattle operations, hobby cattle ops and maybe some niche market players. I'd love to be convinced otherwise.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Dega Moo, post: 1025611, member: 19930"] I think getting an Agriculture degree, either in agronomy or large animal science is a very solid bet for future employment on or off the farm. Owning or operating a cattle operation might be a whole nother story. Most of the people I listen to think the future will see either hobby beef farms (say 40 or fewer head) surviving since ownership generally has an outside income and doesn't figure labor into their profit and loss sheet and large operations of say over 500 head making profit and surviving while the medium sized operations for the most part fail and virtually disappear in the United States. I'm not belittling hobby operations but if someone likes beef cattle and want to raise them as a hobby and maybe supplement their income then a recommendation is kind of meaningless. By all means if it's a lifestyle choice then that's more than cool. Go for it! But if you're talking about making a living ....... Bez or CB like to throw out something like an average $500 a year cost to feed and care for a cow. Personally, I think that's a bit low but using that number anyway, if I sell an 800 pound steer at say $140 cwt then I receive $1120 for every calving cow. If I raised my own cows from new born calves then I've likely spent $1000 raising the heifer without any income. If we "depreciate" this girl over 5 years, she costs me another $200 a year for those 5 years at that $1000 value. In small herds we can get 100% fertility and birth rates, but if we have 100, 300 or 800 cows, that's just not going to happen. A stretch KPI for preg, calving, weaning and live sale would be 90% per year. I think it would be a big stretch in fact. So instead of getting $1120 per cow we can figure on getting $1008 per cow on average and after we deduct our $500 and $200 expenses we're looking at a possible profit of $308 per cow. In order to make $60000 a year (in a very optimistic scenario) this farm would need 200 head of cows and if they could pasture a pair on 2 acres of grass they'd need 400 acres of great forage. I suspect with current land prices, that kind of land is going to sell today for no less than $5000 an acre so the investment in land alone would be $2,000,000. Toss in some equipment and trucks, supplies, vet and med bills and oh yeah, don't forget social security taxes on that income. Almost forgot, UofMisery ( :lol2: ) expects bred heifers to sell for something like 1.8 to 2.0 times the value of a 550# steer and they recently figured that steer at $140 cwt giving a cost of something like $1540 (off something like $600 the last few years). So we could say, no bull ;-) , those 200 cows were another $300,000 investment. I really hate being so negative, such a downer, but I just don't see it. I think the future is large corporate cattle operations, hobby cattle ops and maybe some niche market players. I'd love to be convinced otherwise. [/QUOTE]
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