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Columbia City, Indiana | I'm thinking in my geography I might be better off buying feeder calves for my freezer beef business than raising them myself. Right now it's about even, or maybe a little advantage to raising them since feeders are so high, but when feeders go back down it would swing the other way quickly.
Say I was to buy 20 500# calves for 1.45 per pound, which is what I've read they're bringing. Good black ones, anyway. That's $14,500 for the calves, plus probably at least $200 trucking and say $5 per calf on meds when I got them in. (I have no idea on the meds, that's just a guess.) Total cost to get those calves of $14,800.
People have argued here and other places what it costs to feed a brood cow, and I try to be a lower cost producer in this regard. I graze crop residue when possible, and feed about all baled cornstalks and grass hay when they're not grazing. For about 3 months before calving I use Rural King lick tubs which cost about .29 cents per day. During fly season I have used Moormans IGR blocks which cost about the same. The rest of the time it's just a trace mineral salt block. I've heard people say it costs as much as $3 per day to feed that cow, but I don't think it costs me that much. Last winter my costs were just a little over $1, and that included the cost of replacing the nutrients in the baled cornstalks. So to feed 20 brood cows and a bull for a year is $9851.25 at $1.25 per day. I'm not wanting to start a lick tub/block vs loose mineral war in this thread.
If I sold the cows I could bring about 20 acres into crop production, the rest would not be tillable. Say I could net $200 per acre, that would be $4,000 in income I'm not getting now. So if you add that 4,000 to the 9851.25, plus say 1,000 for a little creep feed, that makes my total cost to do it the way I am now about 14851.25. I realize that figures nothing for my labor. But excercise has to be worth something... not to mention I like doing it.
I guess in fairness I would need to figure getting nothing off the ground I couldn't farm unless I grazed stockers on it or something. Not sure how to quantify that amount.
I'm not trying to figure beyond the point of the 500# calf, I figure I can make good money on that end selling freezer beef. I've never had enough, people always call for more after I'm sold out. I'm just wondering what is the best way to get that 500 pound calf, buying him or raising him. | |
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Buying feeders vs. raising them
