Hard life?

[kpb]

kato and grassfarmer, I don't want to tell anyone what to do regarding shipping pairs but I would like to relate to you our experience. Every year for the past 12 years we have sent at least five liner loads (42 pairs per liner) and sometimes up to eight liner loads on a five and one half hour trip to our northern ranch. We begin calving on March 25 and most of our calves are born in April and May.

Most years our pasture up north is ready in mid-May. This year the fellow who looks after our northern ranch just phoned yesterday to tell us to send a load. The minimum age for the pairs we send is two weeks but we have made mistakes and sent them as young as one week old. We have never, not once, lost a calf on the ride up there and never to my knowledge lost a calf in the days following the trip. Mostly we do not lose many calves on pasture and generally the few we do to bears or injury.

We use Westland Trucking and have for many years--they have conscientious drivers and they all, without exception, straw the area in their trucks where the calves are riding. If a new driver comes without straw we give him some bales and ask him to straw the calf area and they are always willing.

The calves are hungry when they come off after their five and half hour ride but this is good since it means they mother up right away. We keep them on one quarter for a few days until we are sure they are paired up, then they are put on the big pasture.

kato, I know you have your own system and what works for one doesn't always work for everyone. Just wanted to let you know that you can calve in April and still feel confident about sending the calves on a long trip soon after birth.

kpb

[cowman]

grassfarmer: I totally agree that cutting costs and surviving is where it is at right now...and probably will be in the foreseeable future. I was pointing out how at one time it really was best to have "high management cattle" and a high management system for my area.
I don't ever see a return to those big exotic crossbreds or the old calve them early and sell that big calf in the fall sort of scenario.
I've never heard of this lung/pneumonia thing and certainly never experienced it. But then our newborns were born inside and never went outside until it was minimum minus twenty(we had a lot of room). I suspect a winter calf does not put on the weight a spring calf does, however when winter calving you feed fairly well, which we never really thought all that much about as we raised our own feed! I would think by buying all your own feed you would have a more realistic view of actual winter feed costs? And I would suggest that is a good thing?
I do wonder though if grass production is really any cheaper than feeding hay/silage/straw/grain? Around here the standard non supervised pasture is $30/month with quite a few prices higher! The economics of owning any land in central Alberta basically demand it? Decent grainland calls for a rental rate of around $60/acre with some higher(heard of a half section that rented this year for $82/acre). If on your standard non fertilized pasture land it takes 2.5 acres to run a cow then we are into that $50/acre at $30/AUM?
My neighbor sends 25 cows to a community pasture every year. By the time he pays the trucking and bull debenture he figures it costs him $21/AUM. However last year he only got 22 calves back! If you figure the calves were each $600 then it cost another $14 AUM for a total of $35/AUM!
I would suspect he could seed down some of his poorer grainland and come out better off?

[grassfarmer]

Cowman, I question your terminology of "high management cattle" and a "high management system".
To my mind winter calving cows is a high work, low management system particularily if it is combined with a low or zero management grazing period.
I run a "management intensive grazing" system which is high management, low work system. Management is where the money is at - you spend a relatively short period of time doing $100/hour work versus spend all day every day doing $5 an hour work. This is typically operating machinery to bed cows, haul manure, seed crops, harvest crops, put up hay, haul feed etc.

Feeding cows this last winter has certainly shown that it can be cheaper than renting pasture. Your grazing production estimates would be about right, I reckon we could get 100 AUDs per acre here with good conditions allowing us to run cows for 8 months on 2.5 acres/cow which gives us three "free" months grazing over the typical 5 month grazing season you used in your example.
Remember the value of manure/urine you were telling us about recently in a swathgrazing topic? was it 37 cents per day/per cow? that's one reason I don't send cattle off the place in summer. Ultimately it might reduce our fertiliser bills to zero when used in conjunction with more legumes.

[cowman]

grassfarmer: The "high management" label was a common meaning that all the government experts used to denote big exotic cattle being fed a heavy ration to max out production. They referred to smaller British type cattle running on forage as "low management" cattle.
Yea, the guy(Grant Lukusta(sp?)) said 37 cents a day and I agree with you that it is a good idea to try to put more back in than you take out. Therfore I also agree with you that buying in feed actually gets you an added bonus in soil nutrients!
Oh and by the way if you will come and feed my cows for $5/ hour I will be very happy to spend the winter in Arizona! LOL

[cswilson]

The cost of rented grass is getting too high up here too-that and the fact that the management skills of the guys renting it are pretty sketchy-our yearlings are gonna be drylotted at home-where I can be sure they are getting a decent gain and where they are handy to get at to sell if there;'s a market rally-first time we haven't went to grass with them ever.

[kpb]

I think running pairs on a high managment system that involves using high cost land, feeding over the winter using feed that can also be high cost and straining the resources of that land to carry the absolute most pairs possible is eventually a doubtful competitive proposition.

I was recently looking at a ranch on the internet in the Cypress Hills of south Saskatchewan where because of the Chinooks and open terrain, the average feeding days in winter is 10 days. I don't know how a feeding program structured in Central or Northern Alberta can hope to compete with that or with pairs produced in the southern hemisphere.

I think central and northern Alberta are more suited to feeding calves, backgrounding and grassing yearlings. That's where you get the bigger bang for the buck anyways and you can use your grainland more effectively and be better rewarded for your management skills.

grassfarmer, I think you read Allan Nation. In one of his books he points out that the most profitable form of ranching is low cost, low management, low input, extensive ranches where the pairs are basically turned loose on a large pasture. In a high managment system ranchers are better off with yearlings so that they get directly rewarded for their management skills in running an intensive pasture well.

Just my thoughts.

kpb

[kpb]

Anyone contemplating drylotting their cattle in AB., should check on the AOPA Legislation because confining any number over 199 requires approval under the legislation.

[cswilson]

There is more to story than feeding days-what is your total land investment per cow etc. A lot of times the winter feeding savings are just bid into the price of the land. It is your cost of production subtracted from your revenue that determmines profitability-what comprises those costs can be very different from one outfit to the next. Allan Nation preaches paradims but one he hasn't quite got figured out is that 'grass is always cheaper'-it is my prefered way of doing things but if it doesn't pencil out-it doesn't pencil out.

[cowman]

I agree, the bottom line is always the best thing to go with.
In a way high cost land is sort of a non issue if that land is paid for? Sure you aren't getting a decent return on $2,000/acre land if you pasture cows, but you probably are building in a decent return on the appreciation? You are in fact, just delaying the day you realize your profit?
The land in certain areas is very expensive...too expensive to buy for agriculture! But most of this land was bought a long time ago and is paid for? It is like money in the bank!
Also this "old land" was in fact probably the best land...where the original settlers came to roost? So even though it cannot pay for itself today it still yields more than some of this cheap land?
Our $1500/acre land has come pretty close to doubling in value in the last ten years and I doubt we'll see that rate decrease in the near future! So even though we get a miserable cash return on that land through agriculture, we have gotten a decent return on actual value of the asset?
Consider this: The guy who buys $6,000/acre land really close to Red Deer Alberta(or Calgary or Edmonton or anywhere in the corrider) can continously lose money farming it for ten years and come out way ahead at the end of the ten years, than all this $500/acre land in the boondocks!

[cowman]

several folks in our community sold land near Airdrie and west of Highway 2 near Olds and bought good sized well set up cattle operations up here....and still had a bunch of money left over !