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| This kind of for Farmerkuk and Coochief but others as well. Yes at those prices I don't like feeding them as well. On the cow/calf side those weaners take a lot of feed for a 45 day wean. But there is no way we could gather and sort cattle in one day to sell off the cow, we did it once that was before the days of pre-vac them. It was a major pain to try and get cattle work, let alone the shrink we took before those cattle get weighed.
I kind of laugh, guys shake their head at us because we sell at a coupe of weight classes on calves. Well we found a system that works for us instead of selling at one avg. weight. Coochief made note that our heavy steers only brought 47 dollars a head more than our light steers a 100 lbs. lighter. I've always said the only difference between a good calf and a bad calf is $50. Of course that was said in a jokingly manner those light calves are good calves just in a smaller package. The key to the whole deal is we market those lighter calves to a different market, they go to a grazing winter grazing program say like Calf. for winter, then truck to Oregon or Montana for the summer before hitting feedlot. There is no way you could come out on those lights going straight to the feed bunk that early.
Also it is tough for say as small or medium size cow/calf person to have enough numbers to sell several truck loads of cattle on different weights. They are limited to selling at one weight for say all steers. This the problem I have with my operation the biggest constraint is the my number one factor of feed type and range conditions. My calves will vary from 450 lbs. to the extreme of 750 lbs. on the steers. It is the same genetics, different range conditions. I run for elevations at 4,500 ft. to 7,000 ft. that is a wide extreme is weighing conditions on calves.
So that is the reason why we pool our calves so we can realize better pricing for our cattle. If you take the avg. prices for weaned calves in my area on the last Superior sale the weaned 550 lbs. steers did $1.62 avg. Well we sold ours at $1.69 for 550 lbs. and a $1.96 for the 450 lbs. We roughly figure a 50/50 split on heavy and lights calves in our herds when sorting them. So here are the numbers:
100 hd. @ $1.62 for 550 lbs. steers is $891 hd., total dollars of $89,100
50 hd. @ $1.96 for 450 lbs. steers is $882 hd., total dollars of $44,100
50 hd. @ $1.69 for 550 lbs. steers is $ 929.50 hd., total dollars of $ 46,475
So these calves that we sort make a total of $90,575 per 100 of calves.
The group sold as one weight brings a total of $89,100 per 100 of calves.
That clears me $1,475 total more profit for just sorting a heavy/light calf as they come down an alley. I will sort those calves any day to make that kind of money. The key is to have the facilities to do it in. If you don't have the alleys or corrals you can eat into those profits really fast. Also we provide a more uniform set of calves for the buyer when we sort them. We will bring those calves in on target base weight within a pound or two most times. Instead of having a 20-30 pound difference in the group. So that is why I feel the repeat buyers give a little higher price than selling a whole pen avg. of calves.
Also one other we do is like when we sell age and source verification we will do all our calves on the program, it is costing me $2 for the tags per head. But I might only sell 50% as age/source. It is a lot easier to give tags to all cattle as we vac them coming down the chute as opposed to taking the time to sort 50% of them to tag. Also if a calf had to be pulled from age/source group it could be replaced with another one from my total herd. That there makes me money by doing all the calves and not having to pay help to continually sort cattle before sale day. You can eat up a $50 dollars saving on tags per 100 head of calves real fast if you have to sort a couple hundred head of cattle in afternoon, let alone the cost of beer and lunches. This year we didn't do any age and source.
Any way this is kind of long winded explanation why we pool and sort our calves. Also like I said it also allows producer with like cattle to sell a smaller number of animals on a good contract, vs. taking them to the sale barn and getting picked over.
There is three things I feel that will make a cow/calf guy more clear money and that is a forward contract, implants, spending the money on good genetics. However that is one thing I don't do is implant for the real reason it is more work at branding time which is rather hectic the way we brand on the range. I used to feel we got a slight premium for having non-implanted calves. What is your guys that feed cattle thoughts on that, will you pay a little more for a non implanted calf vs. one that the producer got the first gains on the implant. I was always told the best gain was the first implant, is that right or wrong? | |
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Thanks guy on the nice comments on cattle and pricing.....
