perceptions

http://www.cattletoday.com/forum/about33340.html


and not a word about PHA, whew.

I think it is a case of a lady bragging at work and more than slightly over exaggerating her sales.  Very few...I cann't think of any really, more elite breeders of maines get $20,000 per calf on average.  If that was the case Red would be a rich woman! lol

LOl, my goal is to break the $5000 mark! I'd love it if my babies brought even close to that.

(lol)

Red

Saying you did something and actually having done it are two very different things.  I imagine a whole lot of PB Maine breeders (as in ALL) would love to have a $20K average.  I bet practically all would do backflips to truly average $5K.  Unless I'm more ignorant than I even think, most calves (PB or not - even from the "big boys") still wind up at the feedlot. 

That's actually a good question.  What percentage of your calf crop truly ends up being shown as show cattle or kept as breeding stock?  We wean maybe 10% of our steers to sell as show calves and actually sell maybe half of those.  We probably keep/sell about 50% of our heifers as replacements.  We rarely mess with keeping bull calves.

chambero said:

Saying you did something and actually having done it are two very different things.  I imagine a whole lot of PB Maine breeders (as in ALL) would love to have a $20K average.  I bet practically all would do backflips to truly average $5K.  Unless I'm more ignorant than I even think, most calves (PB or not - even from the "big boys") still wind up at the feedlot. 

That's actually a good question.  What percentage of your calf crop truly ends up being shown as show cattle or kept as breeding stock?   We wean maybe 10% of our steers to sell as show calves and actually sell maybe half of those.  We probably keep/sell about 50% of our heifers as replacements.  We rarely mess with keeping bull calves.

Click to expand...

we probalby sell 1/2 our heifers as show cattle. We sell all our bulls as breeding stock. The farm however either sells the heifers or keeps them for replacements. The ones that aren't as good or have bad traits like personalities go into the feedlot. Same w/ the steers, they go to our feedlot.

Red

I haven't jumped in too much here just yet, but I'll bite on this one.  Jirl Buck leads the Maine Breeders in average as far as advertised sales go.  I didn't bother to look up anything, but my memory won't be off too far.  I would say that the past two years, his sales have averaged $6-7K.  That's mighty gooood!! 

On the other question; I haven't taken a calf to the sale barn in probably 10 years.  I have retained a very few heifers, and have also sold a very few as replacements to others, but 80% at least, are sold as Show Heifers.  Every once in a while, I sell a Show Steer, but all the other Bulls are sold as Breeding Bulls.  Sometimes I might have to keep one around 'til 16-18 months, but they eventullay sell.  My average the last two years is a whopping $1900. 

If I were in this for the money, I would have quit a long, long time ago. 

Thanks Dan! Missed you!

Red