I remember there was a journal 10 years ago from someone affiliated with him residing in the Virgin Islands. It was a pretty good journal.
I think I want to get into the Feeder Cattle (cash) business. I'll just buy the calves and send them over to the Feeders. Feed prices aren't too speculative with the dollar being strong. Not being a farm boy, I'm worried I'll get taken to the cleaners. Anybody got a primer on buying calves?
Lol it depends on how young of calves you are talking. If you mean going and buying some holstein calves for dirt cheap...good luck. It takes a lot of time and effort to succeed with that. I have definitely learned that one the hard way. If you are serious, how do you intend to go about the whole process, as in where would you buy the calves etc?
Some feeders offer soup-to-nuts. From calf purchase to marketing the cattle. They expect an upfront capital contribution and a choice between financing your feed, getting a monthly bill, or taking it out from your final sales price. Getting my own calves will be the challenge, otherwise they'll give me the runts that can't fatten up easily.
Ah I see, wasn't sure how you were wanting to go about it all. Probably best bet would be to get somebody you know who knows about cattle to help you. Other option is to buy a significant amount at a time. Find somewhere selling 100 calves for example, and you buy half. Go and see them all and make sure they look ok. Then you might get some that aren't as good but overall you should be okay. If you are buying enough, most of the time they are relatively straight forward and will just give you whichever ones they can get on the trailer first. Or at least that has been my experience. We bought 30 of 60 one time. As a whole the 60 looked good, so we told them we wanted half. First 30 in the trailer were the ones we took and overall everything worked out just fine. Best advice is make friends with somebody who knows what they are doing.
Your advice is very true, unfortunately. The feeders (JR Simplot, I think, wanted 75 head minimum. Calves run around $250-$400 from a outside sources but you get your pick. There is additional worry from commodities reports that say that they constantly have negative margins. However, things look promising from my virtual farmhouse. I've made some Army buddies who grew up in Farms. I still find it hard to believe that a hay farmer Oklahoma/Arkansas can make 50% return by growing hay. 35 bails an acre with 3-4 cuttings a year? Several have confirmed it (not farmers but children of farmers who left their homes before pop ever showed them the books) The tractor cost will kill you if your not a mechanic who bring to life a 1930s tractor. A new one with bailer is $100,000+. And I guess that 3-4 cuttings a year has an irrigation system or a land blessed with a limitless water source. It's either that or a bagel stand in NY. I think I am more qualified for the latter.
Btw, my profit target was hit for some reason though I thought I had a few days left on the move. But the May/Sep differential has moved to an even more extreme Aug/Sep. Wierd reversal/continuation day for the spreads. db is really quiet. I suspect he is very short on the underlying.
The only way to farm without being on a very large scale is buying the equipment used. I don't know any serious farmer who buys brand new equipment unless it is a major operation where he can justify it. My dad always got everything used at auction which I know helped significantly. I believe our tractor is from the 80's but it has held up just fine for quite awhile. It is 4wd and runs great apart from the parking brake not holding lol. He got it for somewhere around $10k. If you have good hay you can make quite a bit off of it though. If you fertilize well you can make even more. We doubled our hay production one year just by fertilizing and having decent weather. No watering or anything like that, but we are in TN so it isn't really dry here usually anyways. We also used to let somebody else bail for us and he just got to keep a portion of the hay in return. Never sold much though, mainly used it for ourselves. An old retired guy that lives near me made a small fortune on hay over about a 5 year span. He had a couple hundred acres, then worked out a deal to lease several hundred more. He put a lot into it to get started, seeded it, fertilizer, weed spray etc, but he managed to get 5 cuttings a year and sold hay to everybody with a pulse. It was very good quality so he made a pretty good bit off of it. He used old beat up tractors for everything and did all the work himself.
I bought 22 holstein calves like 3 years ago for dirt cheap. Probably our hottest summer in a very long time in TN and the guy lied to me about the calves age and them being off the bottle. They were dropping like flies in no time....luckily the remaining ones bulked up enough to cover my costs, so I broke even basically when ignoring the time spent.