One of the reasons I was struggling to make a profit with cows was winter feed costs. I’ve found that, in a lower priced cattle market, stockers provide a lot more opportunities to make a profit than cows do, at least in my area. The calves I was selling off my own cows were barely bringing in enough to pay the cost of keeping the cows up all year. I have now sold all of my brood cows, most of the equipment that I had left, and am running all stocker cattle. The following fall, I sold the heifers, planted the place in winter annuals, and used the money from selling the hay equipment to buy some steers to carry over the winter.įast forward a few years to today. I put some replacement heifers on this farm over the summer after selling my hay equipment. I had one farm that I was just using to make hay on, mostly winter annuals in the spring and volunteer warm season grasses in the summer. In the spring of 2017 I quit making my own hay and I sold all of my hay equipment. However, there was always some reason why it wasn’t a good time to actually go for it, mainly that my pastures were full of cows and I had no room for any additional cattle.
I had run the numbers on stockers several times over the years, and on paper it always seemed like they would provide a pretty good return. I had kept brood cows on several different farms around my part of central North Carolina for over 10 years, and I was ready to try something new.
About three years ago, I decided I would try my hand at raising some purchased stocker calves.
0 kommentar(er)
