Thanks for the advice. I am very excited and ready to get started. I am sure I will make some mistakes but I figure I should get better with experience and I have to start somewhere. I spent a lot of money going to college and earning a degree in a unrelated field. The way I figure , a college degree cost money and so will a few mistakes in a cattle operation. Im not scared of blood, needles or hard work . I will keep you updated.
Goat,
We dont have enough room to run cattle but we are near a lot of big ranches. I think the only thing I would add is to make sure you dont overgraze. During fall and early winter we frequently have to saddle up and push cattle back after they walk through fences looking for better feed.
Pat, "Some fun, some interesting, and some neither."
Best answer I have ever heard related to cattle.....or life for that matter.
Mark
This is the thread I've been waiting for. I want to do the same thing and I want to do it right. The question I always wanted to ask the pros is if you were starting from scratch what would be the smartest first step. I have about 40 acers of good grass and about 20 of not so good. I've got good fence and would like to start a small herd. I've always heard that cow / calf pairs were the way to go but maybe stockers are a possiblity.
It all depends on how labor intensive you want to make the effort. Your maximum use of your pasture is going to be a rotational grazing system. This requires moving cattle every couple of days though. Your benefits are going to be nearly 100% as opposed to 50% pasture utilization, better growth, better weed and erosion control, and the list goes on and on. Then you need to be reseeding every few years, fertilizer, etc. All this just depends on your soil and what grass you already have. Within two miles of my property I treat each place completely different. One place is pretty much black soil and the other place is sandy clay. I grow one pasture mix on one and another mix on the other one. My grazing times are also very different.
With regard to cow/calf vs. feeder cattle to start out with I would no doubt go with feeder cattle. With feeder cattle you get them in early spring and sell in late fall. This way you don't have to worry about hay and feeding over the winter. YOu also reduce your losses due to disease. Also in the winter you are going to need more shelter, sacrifice areas to feed hay, etc. Then you have to worry about a bull. You also need to worry about getting all your cows pregnant and then you have calving in the spring. Now if you are experienced and know what's going on all of this is not an issue. But trying to learn cattle, learn breeding, learn calving, castrating, vaccinations, etc. If you buy feeder cattle you can buy preconditioned cattle and your mortality rates go down to near zero and your work also goes down to near zero unless you are rotational grazing. Do feeder cattle for a couple years and then if you can handle that ok move up to a cow/calf operation. Just realize you are going to have 10x the work and need to know 1000x the information.
Sounds like you are already commited on the land. What is the history of the pasture? Who had it leased before? What class of stock? how many? was it a long term deal or has it been used by several operators in the past few years? Talk to the neighbors.
Also, due to the economics of farming/ranching today, many young men with hands on experience don't have capital and make good help. Look at feed stores and auction barns(in the back, working the penning).
Or maybe, sub-lease the pasture to someone in exchange to get to help them for a year when they buy, sell, "work" their cattle.
If you think we're all telling you to go slow, you're right. Good luck and please stay posted. You are courageously attempting the dream of more folks than you know.
Dave
Count me in as #3 doing the same thing. The only advantage I have, however, is that my uncle (very experienced beef and dairy) and cousins (both doing dairy and have done beef) live about 10 miles from me. The only thing nobody can seem to help me on is my initial purchase. I had wanted to raise cow/calf using purebred black angus only, but wanted to buy bottle calves to start. Finding bottle calves seems to be a problem and everybody says I'll have to go with a cow/calf pair to start as well as a weaned bull. When my starters are 700-1000 lbs., it starts getting expensive. Anybody know where I could buy, for example, a v-small bull calf and maybe 2 heifer calves (pure black angus, but not necessarily registered)?? Wouldn't even mind the chore of bottle training and weaning. I'm on 62 acres of mediocre pasture/soil and plan on doing 'management intensive' grazing, so my herd will never exceed about 25 or so. It's not a living for me as I work full time and have a retirment check coming in as well, but I'd sure like it to pay more than it takes away. Also, if I may be allowed to hijack a little more, are vaccinations required in order to sell? Are they there to protect against herd mortality or to the end consumer? Thanks in advance.
You aren't going to find any black angus calves for sale unless it's a fluke. Maybe the mother died or something. But nobody that I know of is going to sell a calf before it's weaned and ready to go. That's where the profit is. You don't make money selling a newborn calf as a bottle feeder.
As far as vaccinations go it all depends on your herd. If you never have other animals on your property and feed out your cattle some of the sickness vaccines are not needed. But if you are going to sell as feeders you won't get near as good of a price as you would if they were vaccinated. Anytime there's even a chance of the cattle going off of your property it's a good idea to get the vaccinations done. If your cattle are certified pre-finished. Meaning you can show the vaccinations were done, they were fed accordingly, etc. you will get a premium for your cattle. We are in this program and while it takes more to get the cattle ready you more than get it back in the pricing.
Thanks for the quick back. To expand on the vaccination thing, ideally I'd like to market the steers direct (restaurant, organic grocer, direct customer, farmers market, etc.) so I'm less concerned about their sale barn value. I was wondering if any USDA requirements would mandate any vaccinations that were given to prevent consumer diseases. In the endless effort to label my product as 'natural' or maybe 'organic' (if I could ever get certification), one of the things I was targeting was no vaccinations (to go along with no petroleum based fertilizer, no hormones, blah blah the list goes on).
Vaccinations and growth hormones, questionable feed etc. are two different things. Vaccinations are certainly encouraged even with organic fed beef. What you have to be careful of is antibiotics. That will cause a red flag.
I don't want to burst your bubble but you will have an extremely hard time selling to restaurants or organic. It is quite a process to be certified organic. Restaurants usually go for the best of the best in beef. Not saying you couldn't raise good beef but they are very picky and you also have to have a constant supply. If they need three steers now and you don't have any ready for 2 months that will be the last time they call.
Your best route will be to go direct customer. I'm certainly not trying to discourage you but the other routes are going to be very tough to get into and you will have to do alot more than make it a hobby to get into those other arenas. Going farm market is an option but there's alot of time, insurance, and storage that goes into that aspect of it.
In an earlier post someone stated, gone are the days of the Texas Longhorn. Not entirely true. Longhorn cattle are becoming very popular once again. They are one of the easiest cattle to raise. Very very little birthing problems. Docile temperament. Beautiful to look at. An extremely hearty animal. Requires much less attention. As I was once told "Longhorns managed to live for hundreds of years in West Texas, with nothing to live on buy scenery" Now let me tell you if you have never been to West Texas.......There ain't much to look at. Longhorns are marketable to various areas, such as show cattle, roping cattle, pets, organic lawn mowers (a number of large corporation in Texas use Longhorn to graze excess land around their corporate campus).
If you are looking for a unique meat to market, grass fed/grazed Longhorn offers one of the healthiest selection of beef on the market. The wife went to a local "Central Market" last week, in the meat counter you could buy Longhorn ribeye steaks......for only......$19.98 per pound. Some internet prices are even higher. One internet link sell only Longhorn gound beef. If you haven't searched Longhorns out it may be worth a click/search of the computer.
Now there is always a down side to everything. A Longhorn that is being grazed will not grow as fast as soom other breeds on Cattle. The hanging weight of a Longhorn will only be somewhere around 60 to 65% of its hoof weight. This is in part however due to the fact that the Longhorn has very little fat in its cut of meat.
Any way that is just my two cents worth of thought for the day. I could go on, but for a first post.........I'll just leave having given my post a food for thought.
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