priceing baby calves

[showcattlegal]

I have never priced calves until I wean them, But I have a nice heifer this guy really really wants. Shes a Habenaro X full draft here are some pictures of her. Anybody have and good price for her? in the first pic she is the one on the left.

 

[OH Breeder]

How old is she? Who is buying her for what reason? Are they experienced cattle person? Is she started on feed?

 

[showcattlegal]

she is 2 1/2 months old (feb 4).  they do have creep feed. He wants to show her then breed her. He knows a lot about commerical cattle they haven't been showing very long.

 

[cowz]

I had a trader come through last week that offered me $3500 for a good heatwave steer who is only 2 months old.  (To be weaned and picked up in August.)  It is all relative.  The market is only as good as what people will offer.  What do Drager's get for heifers in their sales in NM?  You must be able to get what it would cost you to replace the genetics and the phenotype.  I would see what other breeders in the sw are getting.  Just my 2 cents.

 

[red]

I had a trader come through last week that offered me $3500 for a good heatwave steer who is only 2 months old.  (To be weaned and picked up in August.)  It is all relative.  The market is only as good as what people will offer.  What do Drager's get for heifers in their sales in NM?  You must be able to get what it would cost you to replace the genetics and the phenotype.  I would see what other breeders in the sw are getting.  Just my 2 cents.

that's what I was thinking Cowz. I'm not sure what prices are going for in NM? Do some checking around Lacey. If you go to that sale this weekend, you might be able to do some asking around. A good home & family helps out on making a decision to me.

Red

 

[jason]

I had a trader come through last week that offered me $3500 for a good heatwave steer who is only 2 months old.  (To be weaned and picked up in August.)  It is all relative.  The market is only as good as what people will offer.  What do Drager's get for heifers in their sales in NM?  You must be able to get what it would cost you to replace the genetics and the phenotype.  I would see what other breeders in the sw are getting.  Just my 2 cents.

Exactly. 

 

[DL]

scg -couple of questions---
1) do you want to sell her?
2) if no, would you sell her if the price was right?
3) if yes what would be the right price?
4) if she is worth 5000 to you then they would need to give you 5K to get her bought
5) you can never go up but you can always go down
6) nice heifer
7) dl

 

[chambero]

Heifers are hard to pry away from my father-in-law.  If he liked you, he'd nearly let me give away steers.  On heifers, its worse than pulling hair for me to permanently transfer ownership of one from him to his grandson for show. 

He probably has the right attitude about it for someone in the cow/calf business.  On heifers, it takes al ot more to buy one from us than what we'd give for the same animal.  The way we figure it, a good heifer (for breeding purposes) is going to cost you around $2K in real money.  You might sell one and take that money and go buy a replacement - but you don't know as much about what you are getting as what you sold.  So, we pretty much double it.  It takes around $5K to "top" our herd for a good heifer calf.  We don't get many takers, but we don't care if sell them or not.

We might sell that same animal for $2K with a calf on its side a year and a half later, but we like to hang onto them young.

 

[OH Breeder]

I have never priced calves until I wean them, But I have a nice heifer this guy really really wants. Shes a Habenaro X full draft here are some pictures of her. Anybody have and good price for her? in the first pic she is the one on the left.

She really is a nice looking heifer. I am with DL. If you think she has it, why not $5K or $3500. As others said, could you buy her for that. good lines. She looks like she is going to make a nice one.

 

[Joe Boy]

I think you have been given good advice by everyone here.

I want to keep my heifers.  I view it as improving my herd. 

I have the same problem right now with my little red bull out of Lifeline.  Two people want me to price him.  I was thinking about showing him.  One told me to keep 1/2 of him and let him have the other half, just price him...  I can't....  I love him.....

What would it cost to improve you herd with one like her?  My guess is between 2 and 4K....

Your market could be different ...  When I asked a neighbor about one for my kids to show several years ago he said 5K and never batted an eye.  She was good enought to win Houston but didn't.  Today, I wished I had bought her.

 

[Jill]

You can't keep them all, but when we have ones that we really want to keep we price them high (at least what we feel we would have to spend at auction to get one of equal value) and we don't back down.  If we sell them, that's great, if not we go ahead and show them.  This has worked really well for us, we have several we ended up showing and have always sold them for what we wanted out of them, and in some cases ALOT more.

 

[red]

Only worked out bad for us once. Had a heifer that won all her shows as a calf. Was told to price her at10K if we sold her. Was told not to sell her but put her in a donor line-up.
Got steery looking & is a PHAC. Glad I didn't sell her to the kid, but boy it would have been nice to have seen a check for that amount!

The luck of Red!

 

[showcattlegal]

Thank for all the information. The dragers run there won cattle up at sales so i don't know what they actually get on there own. Theres not a lot of heifer showers in NM. That's why i asked. I really don't want to sale her, but with feed so high and i don't have a summer pasture anymore I can't keep to many more heifers.

thanks for the help
Lacey