Grow your own or buy?

[EasTex]

With cattle prices being where they are now, is it better to retain your own heifers to increase/replace your herd or buy them? It seems like quite a long time to realize ROI if you keep your own, but the price of heifers is so high right now.

 

[coachg]

We raise our own . If you have good cows and top bull I think it represents your program and I think I can raise them for the same money or cheaper than I can buy .

 

[ClinchValley86]

Technically. You'd be money ahead to sell the heifer calf and buy a young bred cow. That's here in East TN. They're still less than $1300 here. I imagine it's a dang good bred to being $1300 here.

I still kept 3 good heifers last year. A questionable decision. But I liked em.

Smart play would have been my first paragraph...for me.

 

[Brute 23]

Can you buy the same animal, or better, apples to apples, for less than you can raise it?

If the answer is yes, buy them.

If the answer is no, raise them.

No one can answer that question on here for your specific opwration with out evaluating you herd and comparing it to the market.

Higher calf prices mean higher replacement prices. It's all relative.

The best you can hope for is to time your cow in-flow and out-go with market cycles no matter which you do.

 

[kenny thomas]

Keep and raise heifers when prices are down. Heifers kept now will be productive in the low price part of the cattle cycle and old enough to cull by the next high part of the cycle. Heifers kept during the low part of cycle will be most productive during the high price part of cycle.

 

[SBMF 2015]

I'm a pretty firm believer in raising your own replacements. Not because they're the best. I could buy a lot of cows better than mine. But it's the little things that no one has mentioned that add up to big things. My home raised hfrs already know what silage is. There are a lot of producers that don't feed silage. My hfrs have immunity to strains of diseases that are in my area and have been vaccinated against those diseases. My hfrs are hot wire trained, already know where the water is, And are used to how I sort.

 

[coachg]

Technically. You'd be money ahead to sell the heifer calf and buy a young bred cow. That's here in East TN. They're still less than $1300 here. I imagine it's a dang good bred to being $1300 here.

I still kept 3 good heifers last year. A questionable decision. But I liked em.

Smart play would have been my first paragraph...for me.

I like what Clinch said , if and I mean if you can buy them that cheap .

 

[Travlr]

With cattle prices being where they are now, is it better to retain your own heifers to increase/replace your herd or buy them? It seems like quite a long time to realize ROI if you keep your own, but the price of heifers is so high right now.

I've done both but that was early in my newly independent ranching experiences...

Once I found out how economical old cows were, being culled for age and nothing more and long bred, I started buying them instead of raising heifers for my own replacements. Of course that also led to me finding out that the guys I bought the old cows from were willing to pay a lot more for the heifers I could raise off the old cows, so I did raise replacement heifers but only to be sold.

 

[Warren Allison]

With cattle prices being where they are now, is it better to retain your own heifers to increase/replace your herd or buy them? It seems like quite a long time to realize ROI if you keep your own, but the price of heifers is so high right now.

Yep. You are looking at 30 months or so before you get a calf to sell off a retained heifer. Plus, you have to keep changing bulls. Sell your heifers while they are high, but don't buy heifers back. Buy cows that have had one or more calves. Even first calf heifer pairs are better than buying young open heifers.

 

[moses388]

I see $1.70 heifers in the "Sold steers and heifers" thread. I will be shopping for those in the spring. Normally I raise my own replacements, so it will be my first time buying at a sale barn. A bred cow might be okay, but not bred heifers. You never know what cow-killing bull did the breeding.

I weaned calves and sold cows this fall, knowing I did not have the hay because of drought. I will be selling more cows next year. My cows are fat. I have a group of 17 cows and 1 bull that are eating themselves out of a home. A 5x6 roll hardly lasts 2 days; they seem to devour everything. So livestock will be sold in hopes of buying replacements in the spring.

Gains from the forced sale of breeding livestock can be deferred (if you qualify):
IRS - forced livestock sales {click here}

 

[Travlr]

I see $1.70 heifers in the "Sold steers and heifers" thread. I will be shopping for those in the spring. Normally I raise my own replacements, so it will be my first time buying at a sale barn. A bred cow might be okay, but not bred heifers. You never know what cow-killing bull did the breeding.

I weaned calves and sold cows this fall, knowing I did not have the hay because of drought. I will be selling more cows next year. My cows are fat. I have a group of 17 cows and 1 bull that are eating themselves out of a home. A 5x6 roll hardly lasts 2 days; they seem to devour everything. So livestock will be sold in hopes of buying replacements in the spring.

Gains from the forced sale of breeding livestock can be deferred (if you qualify):
IRS - forced livestock sales {click here}

There are people that specialize in selling replacement heifers. They are very likely to have good animals producing their product, use exceptional bulls which are always calving ease on a heifer, and will have documented several things that would be important to you. You can buy cheaper animals, but I doubt you could buy better. In the end the cheap ones are false economy and will end up costing you more... and the more expensive ones will make you more money.

 

[farmerjan]

@moses388 ; Since we figure approx 20 cows to a roll of hay per day, I don't think your cows are that far off... If you roll it out and they don't pull it out of the roll and tromp on some of it, we can figure 25 cows to a roll per day...
@Silver , I know from pictures you roll out your hay with that neat machine... what do you figure for consumption??? and what was the name of that hay feeder that put it out in windrows so it was narrower than flat rolled and they seemed to eat it more than walk across it???

 

[Silver]

Since we figure approx 20 cows to a roll of hay per day, I don't think your cows are that far off... If you roll it out and they don't pull it out of the roll and tromp on some of it, we can figure 25 cows to a roll per day...
@Silver , I know from pictures you roll out your hay with that neat machine... what do you figure for consumption??? and what was the name of that hay feeder that put it out in windrows so it was narrower than flat rolled and they seemed to eat it more than walk across it???

At this time of year I feed between 35 and 40 lbs a day, so figure about 40 head per bale. I'm feeding 2.5 silage bales to every dry bale. The per head numbers are a bit subjective because silage bales are heavy but the dry matter likely isn't as much as a big dry hay bale. However, 40 head per bale is doing the trick, will increase due to temperatures and as we approach full term. Just starting third trimester now.
I use a Tubeline bale feeder to unroll the bales. I think it has paid for itself several times over in saved hay versus using a three point unroller.

 

[farmerjan]

We will raise our own heifers 90% of the time... but we do buy cows... either bred to calve in our window, or cow/calf pairs that can be bred when we want... and some one and dones just for the turnover. If the bought ones have nice heifer calves then sometimes we will keep them. Have been burnt twice on buying bred heifers, and it isn't worth it with the price they are bringing now... $1300 won't touch a decent bred heifer around here... $18-2200 is more like it.

 

[Ky hills]

Wife and I are having the same conversation right now,with some fall calves we've usually kept back our own heifers.
Kept 10 spring heifers from last year, 9 were bred and due this spring, culled the open last week.
Heifers are a long program and not for everybody. I will say though that I'd rather deal with heifers than to bring in a bunch of old set in their ways cows.
I agree with @SBMF 2015 your raised heifers know you and the routine, that's worth a lot in itself.
I've also found that buying in heifers around 500 pounds or so they learn pretty fast if you keep them up close for a little while and feed and spend some time around them. I've have pretty good success with that aspect too.
Sometimes even older heifers are set in their ways and hard to deal with.

 

[farmerjan]

At this time of year I feed between 35 and 40 lbs a day, so figure about 40 head per bale. I'm feeding 2.5 silage bales to every dry bale. The per head numbers are a bit subjective because silage bales are heavy but the dry matter likely isn't as much as a big dry hay bale. However, 40 head per bale is doing the trick, will increase due to temperatures and as we approach full term. Just starting third trimester now.
I use a Tubeline bale feeder to unroll the bales. I think it has paid for itself several times over in saved hay versus using a three point unroller.

Thank you. Approx what do your rolls of dry hay weigh? 5x6 ?

 

[Silver]

Thank you. Approx what do your rolls of dry hay weigh? 5x6 ?

5x6 weigh roughly 1800 lbs. silage varies widely but are only 5x5.
So because they get far more silage bales than dry bales it makes the math a bit trickier. If I was feeding straight dry 5x6 bales I would figure on at least 45 cows per bale in good weather at this point in their pregnancy.

 

[gcreekrch]

At this time of year I feed between 35 and 40 lbs a day, so figure about 40 head per bale. I'm feeding 2.5 silage bales to every dry bale. The per head numbers are a bit subjective because silage bales are heavy but the dry matter likely isn't as much as a big dry hay bale. However, 40 head per bale is doing the trick, will increase due to temperatures and as we approach full term. Just starting third trimester now.
I use a Tubeline bale feeder to unroll the bales. I think it has paid for itself several times over in saved hay versus using a three point unroller.

1600 lb bales and 1600 lb cows? Our mature cows will average 1300 and we feed 32 to 35 lbs. Or 26 hay and 6 lbs of screenings pellets.
Our little heifers are hard put to eat 18 in hay with 6 lbs of pellets.

Self feeding in a bale ring is the most expensive way to feed a cow unless you are able to time limit feeding length per day.

You corrected me while I was typing…

 

[gcreekrch]

With cattle prices being where they are now, is it better to retain your own heifers to increase/replace your herd or buy them? It seems like quite a long time to realize ROI if you keep your own, but the price of heifers is so high right now.

Yes

 

[Caustic Burno]

With cattle prices being where they are now, is it better to retain your own heifers to increase/replace your herd or buy them? It seems like quite a long time to realize ROI if you keep your own, but the price of heifers is so high right now.

There are actually some great deals in our area right now if you can carry them.
People are out of grass and hay. I just bought some for 1100 bucks. I can't raise them for this. I don't have my final figures but right now it looks like two dollars a day to carry a cow.
That puts a retained heifer at over 3K in inputs before she produces a penny. Her dam contributed nothing to your operation for two years and the retained heifer as well. That's nearly 3K in cost to get her to production
This is from a commercial standpoint as there is no genetic benefits in retaining a crossbreed heifer over a bought one.