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West Central Iowa | Robert,
Was out to O'Neill to look at a piece of machinery last week. Had intended to contact you too see if we could maybe meet but never got around to it......maybe next time : )
Got talking to some of the sales people at the dealership and they asked what land was bringing here in Iowa. Then I asked the same question in return. Of course crop ground is sky high, but then we got talking about pasture. Their general comments were that pasture ground would range from around $1200-$1500/acre and it took about 5 acres to run a pair. That means that today, to purchase enough ground for one pair it would cost btw $6000-$7500. If one were to rotationally graze in Iowa, a guy could get down around a pair to every 1-1.25 acres and that ground would not need to be the best of the best. So if a guy was to find some "middle of the road" property (decent soil types without all the topsoil washed away) and pay around $6500, to purchase enough ground for one pair it would cost btw $6500-8125. Looking at those two scenarios, the cost/pair is closer than I would have guessed.
I know that doesn't answer your question about yearling development, but here a VERY small percentage of pasture acres are used for that purpose. Maybe other parts of Iowa are different but here that is darn hard to find! With an abundance of crop acres, and readily available higher quality feeds, most everything above 600 lbs goes to a feedlot and even most 400-600lb cattle through the barn have the same destiny. You might come across a few semi-retired or retired guys that buy btw 5-20, and put them on a small patch of grass near their place for something to keep them busy, but that is definitely the minority. Don't know of any large scaled backgrounding operations that buy cattle to run on grass.....but then again that doesn't mean there aren't a few out there locally.
Edited by RCD 2/19/2012 22:05
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another angle for lack of grazing?
