Taking Care of Someones Cows "Cost Per Head Per Day"
- Thread starter AJH
- Start date
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Ms Ray
Well-known member
What are you feeding? and how much does that cost?
AAOK
Well-known member
An hourly fee, plus expenses.
Bradenh
Well-known member
ive heard people charging 6 bucks per head per day, on taking care of showsteers while a family was on vacation or whatever. sounds reasonable to me
Show stopper 95 said:
$6 per head per day is much to high to take care of cows, that makes a yearly cost of $2200 not including the initial investment. The owner would have to average over $2500 on the calves to make any money.
As others have asked are you paying expenses or are you just charging a yardage fee? If you are paying for everything you may want to do some sort of share agreement (70/30 is common). The yardage for fat cattle is usually .35 to .40 cents so I don't think .50 would be that far out of line for cows in a small operation. If you have 10 cows from someone else that would be close to $2000 a year, if you are taking care of your own cows anyway that would be a nice little bonus to help average down your costs.
rkmn
Well-known member
The arrangement I currently have with a couple who manage my cattle is between $500 and $600 a year for females 2 yrs old and older. This does not include special vet expenses and AI costs. They also run their own cattle and have a sale in the fall. I will help with sale costs and provide labor when asked for bigger projects such as weaning and vaccinations. We always sit down at the end of the year to make sure everyone is comfortable with the arrangement. They do a wonderful job and I would not own show cattle if they were not in the picture.
Chap
Well-known member
with increasing feed and machinery expense, i think you should expect $2/hd/day in a commercial environment. IE, no special treatment/feed. I figure if they just get grass in the summer and hay in the winter, you already have $1/hd/day, add in mineral ($85/year), vaccine, preg check, etc then figure something for labor, fence, machinery, utilities, etc and $2 starts to sound like a decent deal. This is based on midwest prices paid for hay and pasture. there are of course, economies of scale.
J
JTM
Guest
With the cost of hay these days I would say you are looking at anywhere from $1.25-$2.50 per head/day. The difference between the two is how much work you have to put in, how expensive the feed is, size of cows, and how many cows.
