Help with question please

[SCF]

Should a person be able to make it with 340 acres and 150 cows and not need to work in town? Just inherited this and was wondering.  Thanks

 

[OKshorthorn]

Is is everything paid off? I would figure everything conservatively and see if your projected income will be enough for you. You're hoping for 150 calves a year, figure a 10% death rate, $5,000 for a vet bill (shots, wormer and what not) and selling them at 450 pounds to make $500 a calf. So your looking at a $67,500 gross income selling 135 calves a year. Not including the vet bill, hay or cost of having someone cut and bale your hay... I'm sure there are a lot of other little things but I would think you could make it work.

 

[Bradenh]

its possible, but we have a little over 600 and my dad still has a day job, you just wont be living high class if you are soley in the cattle business. always better to have another something on the side to be safe

 

[steer-guy]

That would only be a little over 2 acres per cow. I'm not sure how that could be done.

 

[Bradenh]

true you should have a lot more land than that, unless you feed the cows regularly. but that would cut into your money

 

[GoWyo]

Here in Wyoming, 340 acres of good quality range would support 10 or 20 cows with supplemental purchased hay.  What is your balance of crop acres, grazing, etc.?  Has this land sustained all of these cattle before?  What about availability of leasing crop aftermath?  Lots of details needed to even start figuring this one out.

 

[steer-guy]

I realize there are many types of land and such. Just in my area of Texas, it's pretty much to 10 acres per head and that's for pretty good land. This would really only require winter hay and just a little cubbing every once in a while.

 

[CAB]

Should a person be able to make it with 340 acres and 150 cows and not need to work in town? Just inherited this and was wondering.   Thanks

What part of the country do you live in? Makes a huge difference in how many cows per acre that you can run and what things are worth.

 

[firesweepranch]

That brings up an interesting side topic, how many acres it takes to support cattle in different areas. Here where we are (South Missouri), it is about an acre and a half per cow/calf pair. We have lots of grass (fescue is a love-hate thing around here). We are looking at buying some stocker cattle this spring because we have too much grass and too many bales of hay! Not enough mouths to eat all the grass when it comes on strong, so buy in the spring and sell early fall so it gives some time to stockpile for winter! Still trying to think out the details...

 

[texas111]

Parts of east tx have stocking rates of 1 unit per2-5 acres.  This is good grazing land.  If you manage the land correctly it will work.  during winter and drout you will need to hay your cows.  In tx there is always a drout waiting around the corner.  You can make it on that many head of cattle if everything goes your way.  just know that it will not always go your way.  Good luck.  A day job is a great fall back to have. I would say you need to figure a 2% death loss as opposed to 10%.  I also believe your vacination and worming cost will be higher than 5k. 

 

[OKshorthorn]

Parts of east tx have stocking rates of 1 unit per2-5 acres.  This is good grazing land.  If you manage the land correctly it will work.  during winter and drout you will need to hay your cows.  In tx there is always a drout waiting around the corner.  You can make it on that many head of cattle if everything goes your way.  just know that it will not always go your way.  Good luck.  A day job is a great fall back to have. I would say you need to figure a 2% death loss as opposed to 10%.  I also believe your vacination and worming cost will be higher than 5k. 

You may be right on the vacination and worming costs...I just did a rough estimate of $35/head. Only losing 2 calves out of a 100 would be doing good. I also think that 10% is high, hopefully really high. But if im figuring if I can make it as my only income, I want to make sure that im good to go with a 10% loss, rather than need to have a 2% death rate to stay afloat.

 

[kanshow]

I agree with the others..  is this cropland? is there rented pasture?  Can you hold onto that pasture lease?    What about your equipment, do you have enough to do the job.  How are you set for your initial capital outlay for expenses til the first $$ start coming in?

 

[kfacres]

In IL.. we figure one cow AND her calf per acre..  That is, as long as we put on some (a little) fertilizer. 

To me it makes far more sense to feed the land, rather than feed the cows!

 

[Bradenh]

we run 10 acres per cow

 

[MCC]

That brings up an interesting side topic, how many acres it takes to support cattle in different areas. Here where we are (South Missouri), it is about an acre and a half per cow/calf pair. We have lots of grass (fescue is a love-hate thing around here). We are looking at buying some stocker cattle this spring because we have too much grass and too many bales of hay! Not enough mouths to eat all the grass when it comes on strong, so buy in the spring and sell early fall so it gives some time to stockpile for winter! Still trying to think out the details...

I can help you out firesweep how many of my cows can I send you to take care of?  (lol) Around here we figure 20 to 25 acres per pair.

 

[firesweepranch]

That brings up an interesting side topic, how many acres it takes to support cattle in different areas. Here where we are (South Missouri), it is about an acre and a half per cow/calf pair. We have lots of grass (fescue is a love-hate thing around here). We are looking at buying some stocker cattle this spring because we have too much grass and too many bales of hay! Not enough mouths to eat all the grass when it comes on strong, so buy in the spring and sell early fall so it gives some time to stockpile for winter! Still trying to think out the details...

I can help you out firesweep how many of my cows can I send you to take care of?  (lol) Around here we figure 20 to 25 acres per pair.

(clapping) Maybe I could get a good club steer out of it for my kids to show??? We both benefit!  But really, we baled this year in July, and had our hay tested about a month ago. It was 14% protein and 58 TDN. Not bad for a fescue clover mix. We only baled once, and are running the cattle on stockpiled fescue that grew after the cutting. We will probably graze until the grass starts to grow again in late March, without feeding hay to the main herd (we bring up the ones due to calf about 10 days before they are due and feed hay to those to keep them near the house. I am going to have a large stock of hay left over this year, and we learned in our hay class that you lose money when you sell your hay because the amount of nutrients that are removed and how much it cost to replace those nutrients.... so if we buy feeders and let them graze the nutrients stay on the property and hopefully we can make a little money selling them (the feeder cattle) at a profit when the grass slows down??? Anyone have experience with this?

 

[SCF]

Forgot to mention there is 80 acres that is rented for pasture at $15/acre

 

[Bradenh]

Is this additional land or a part of the original land you spoke of