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Texas | We currently have a group of 12 replace quality heifers averaging about 700# each. The heifers are a combination of home raised and purchased. We are unsure if it is smartest to breed them, feed them out, or sell them.
Here are the pros and cons that I see to each option.
The pros to breeding the heifers are: Puts one or two of our underworked low birth weight heifer bulls to work, gives us a longer time frame in which to market them, and hopefully increases sale price. The cons of breeding the heifers are: We are not currently set up to calve heifers and would either need to get outside help, change our setup, or sell them before they calve; it is unlikely all of them would breed, so we would be left with a few that did not breed and were then too old to sell well into a feeder market, and breeding them would require us to maintain an additional cattle program.
The pros to feeding the heifers are: Gives us market price when sold for slaughter, and gives us time for possible market improvement. The cons of feeding the heifers are: We would have to buy more heifers to have enough to make a pen so that the feedlot would feed them out for us, and purchasing more heifers requires diverting equity away from other cattle programs for several months.
The pros to selling the heifers are: Decreasing the number of cattle programs we have, and freeing up the pasture they are in, and freeing up the equity invested in them for other cattle programs. The cons to selling the heifers are: Selling into a low market; and based on when some of the non-home raised heifers were purchased, it is likely that we would be taking a loss on those; and losing the opportunity for price improvement.
So, what pros and cons am I not considering, and do you think it would be the smartest for us to breed them, feed them, or sell them?
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- Breed, Feed, or Sell? - Funacres Daughter : 10/25/2016 19:29
- RE: Breed, Feed, or Sell? - LKM : 10/25/2016 19:54
- RE: Breed, Feed, or Sell? - MU1979 : 10/25/2016 22:31
- RE: Breed, Feed, or Sell? - eight : 10/25/2016 22:42
- RE: Breed, Feed, or Sell? - puff33m : 10/26/2016 06:39
- RE: Breed, Feed, or Sell? - Funacres Daughter : 10/26/2016 16:41
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Breed, Feed, or Sell?
