Cattle prices

Homesteading & Country Living Forum

Help Support Homesteading & Country Living Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
backlash

backlash

Awesome Friend
Neighbor
HCL Supporter
Joined
Dec 3, 2017
Messages
8,326
Location
Dry and sane side of Washington
I sent 3 Black Angus calves to the sale yesterday.
One was pregnant and weighed 985 she sold for $850.
Heffer weighed 895 and sold for $783.
Steer weighed 895 and sold for $805.
I paid $1.53 a pound and sold for @ $.90 a pound. That means I LOST around $500 this summer after all the other costs are factored in.
The main reason cattle prices around here is the availability and cost of hay.
I'll mow the pasture myself next year.
 
backlash said:
I sent 3 Black Angus calves to the sale yesterday.
One was pregnant and weighed 985 she sold for $850.
Heffer weighed 895 and sold for $783.
Steer weighed 895 and sold for $805.
I paid $1.53 a pound and sold for @ $.90 a pound. That means I LOST around $500 this summer after all the other costs are factored in.
The main reason cattle prices around here is the availability and cost of hay.
I'll mow the pasture myself next year.
Click to expand...
Should took 'em to the butcher shop. It would have been expensive beef, but at least you would have had good beef at home and probably could have sold the meat by the half and gotten some of the money back...
 
The big feed lots control the price. They make the most money on calves 350-700 pounds. With calves over 700lbs their cost is the same but the profit margin is much smaller. If you send beef to the sale over 700lbs they will knock the price down for each 20lbs over 700. Then again, if they are desperate for beef you might get top dollar but that is a big gamble.

Calves the size of yours... Slaughter them yourself or sell sides of beef to friends/neighbors etc. That means the cattle buyers aren't making anything. Any profit margin goes to you. Most importantly you get a freezer full of beef... and you know every med your calf got, everything it ate, don't get that knowledge or reassurance buying at the grocery store meat dept.

The difference between you and a farmer who produces beef... it's still a numbers game. If you squeeze say... $100 profit out of a calf you get the $100.

A farmer producing lots of beef is dealing with a small profit margin per calf. But he's selling 50/100 or 200 calves each year.

Also... this year farmers all across the southeast including parts of TX weren't able to grow the hay they need for the coming winter. Some have already started dumping cattle on the market... I would have sold back in August... just sayin'
 
Last edited:
I didn't expect the price to be 90 cents a pound. Last time I checked the price was close to what I paid. I was wrong.
I thought about having them butchered. The problem with that is all the butchers are booked up until September of 2022. I kid you not every place I called to get cutting and wrapping told me the same story and the slaughter guys will not kill if you don't have a butcher ready to accept the beef.
I'll just take my loss and move on.
 
Are you saying the total price you paid for calf "A" when it was small... Is the same as the total price you were paid when it sold?

Timing of a sale can mean a lot. We got burned one winter on a few calves dad decided to sell when he woke up that morning. He should have watched the news. On the way we heard a farm report about a big ice storm in the midwest.

Turns out it was bad enough for the big feed lots to have trouble receiving shipments. Live cattle shipments slowed way down. In about 36 hours the price per pound dropped 15 cents.
 
My dad was a commercial fisherman. I fished with him and on my own for a few years. Every time something goes wrong it is the food producers that take it in the shorts.
 
I lost money on all 3 calves. I paid $2600 for them and sold them for $2300 seven months later. They gained 1175 pounds in the 7 months
Figure in what I bought for them like minerals, salt lick, and fly spray, and the the cost of transporting them to the sale I lost around $700.
So much for becoming a cattle baron. :(
 
backlash said:
I bought 3 calves with a total weight of 1600 pounds.
Click to expand...

backlash said:
I lost money on all 3 calves. I paid $2600 for them and sold them for $2300 seven months later. They gained 1175 pounds in the 7 months

I lost around $700.
So much for becoming a cattle baron. :(
Click to expand...

Okay, now I understand the problem. The calves were 500+lbs when you bought them. Sad to say but you were never going to a make real profit buying calves that large. You were just "finishing" the calves.

This put you in a position of competing directly with the big feed lots on the cost to put one pound of meat on a calf. They are feeding (finishing) a few hundred thousand calves for pennies on the dollar of what it would cost you to finish them. They buy grains/feed by the train load. You cant buy feed that cheap. If you had 10 acres of belly deep clover that was free you might have made a couple bucks.

When you posted about buying them last April I assumed you were going to slaughter them yourself, process the meat etc. Consuming them yourself would mean you get top quality beef at a few bucks cheaper than the grocery store. But you can never compete with feed lots when finishing calves for profit. Sorry...
 
Last edited:
Raising your own beef calf is a good thing. You end up with great beef (assuming you know what you're doing) and at a cheaper price than the grocery store. As long as you are competing with a store you'll save a little money. Around here there are breaks on land taxes if you are farming and other small benefits. The biggest benefit... if the store closes you can relax and cook burgers on the grill.

But try completing head to head against the feed lots on production costs per pound and you'll lose every time.
 
I guess it really depends where you are, our calf prices are down compared to last year, but we don't have the huge price per pound spread that we used to
15 cents on steers 500 to 700 , and even on heifers, last week , but as peanut said competing with feed lots doesn't work, but if you have pasture and can manage it right there is almost always room in the grass finish market, but that takes work as in pasture rotation and keeping them gaining right up to butcher day, weight gain makes tender beef,
 
If you were in the southeast I'd have a suggestion or two for a way to go forward. Just curious, how much grass do you actually have? An acre? 1.5 or 2? More?

Never mind. I know nothing about raising cattle in dry country. Water is not an issue here and water changes everything.
 
Peanut said:
Raising your own beef calf is a good thing. You end up with great beef (assuming you know what you're doing) and at a cheaper price than the grocery store. As long as you are competing with a store you'll save a little money. Around here there are breaks on land taxes if you are farming and other small benefits. The biggest benefit... if the store closes you can relax and cook burgers on the grill.

But try completing head to head against the feed lots on production costs per pound and you'll lose every time.
Click to expand...
In my area, you can't get anywhere close to grocery store price unless you are set up to butcher and finish the cow yourself. Not very many people have the tools, facilities, or skills to do that anymore. Butcher shop beef is way more expensive than grocery store beef here...
 
Spikedriver said:
unless you are set up to butcher and finish the cow yourself.
Click to expand...

Those were my thoughts, even here the only way to beat the store is from start to finish. I know a couple people who do it. They have a cow with good blood lines like a Charolais. They have enough grass for 3 head, another small patch for hay and access to a bull. The first calf takes almost 2 years, pregnancy and then feed out the calf. There after they raise a calf every year and process the animal themselves, start to finish. None of which works with out water and enough grass.

One guy I know buys an orphan calf every year. He bottle feeds it and has plenty of grass, processes the meat himself. Sometimes cattle producers don't have time for an orphan. They would rather count the loss of the cow and more forward. This guy knows every cattle producer within 60 miles and stays on the phone until he gets a calf. He might have to wait a few months but there is almost always a calf in his pasture.
 
backlash said:
There will be cattle in my pasture next Spring. They will belong to someone other than me and I'll get $1 a head per month or they can pay my water bill. They take care of everything.
Click to expand...
That's one way to do it. After my pops got out of cattle in the early 90s he rented out the 5 acre bottom ground pasture to a neighbor who had show horses. The fences weren't very good though and pops wasn't going to put money into them so eventually the horseman pulled out...
 
I haven't read the whole thread, but Hubby just read an article yesterday that cattlemen have formed a $300M fund to open a private packing plant. I think (it said, but I can't remember) there are 4 major packing facilities in the US - all bowing to Brandon. If I can find the article I will add it, but it's all related. I'm hitting the hay - since I'm in this thread (yea, I know.)
 
this whole nightmare started years ago, and it is all intertwined, most of the small meat processors on this side of the border packed it in when the mad cow fakery was pulled , yet another divide and concur tactic
 
From what all of you have said, this does not sound like a game I want to play. Reminds me a a story a friend told me many years ago. Missouri had just legalized its version of gambling. A friend asked his father what he thought about gambling being legal. The father replied " I been a wheat farmer in Western Kansas my whole life. All I ever did was gamble. I don't need no casino."
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest posts

Back
Top