Lmonty,

Thanks for the link to the Dexter dairy. I've emailed them to see about buying some of their cheese.

I keep my cattle and goats together. They each benefit from the arrangement. Each of them have worm parasites, but they're not the same ones. When the goats eat the cattle worms, it kills the worms. Same thing the other way. That reduces the worm pressure on each species.

The cattle won't eat around their own manure piles. That's why the grass grows so tall there. The goats don't mind. My pastures don't have the tall clumps you usually see in a cow pasture.

I also keep Muscovy ducks. They readily scatter manure piles looking for something to eat. This dries out the manure and the flies don't hatch as much. I save the labor of dragging the pasture to spread the manure. You can't find any piles to spread. Cattlemen who visit are amazed by this.

Pigs will do the same job as the Muscovy ducks, but I chose the ducks because the pigs are destructive to the pasture.

The idea is to keep the animals that will do the work for me, instead of me doing the work for them.

I chose Dexter cattle for their easy keeping abilities and have been very pleased with the results. All births have been unassisted.

My goats are fainters, brush goats and crosses between the two. Both are among the hardiest of goats, but the cross between them is supposed to be hardier. They've been trouble-free, just like the Dexters.

I had a heart attack a year ago and if the animals hadn't been so low-maintenance, I wouldn't have been able to keep them.

Genebo
Paradise Farm
Church Road, VA

Mark T,

I think if I were your neighbor, ...I think I'd move :rolleyes:

thanks gene! I'm going for the same synergy-and if it saves me from having to buy a tractor for pasture management- all the better! and If I dont need it to keep the pastures in shape- then maybe I dont need one at all....evin if I had to buy all my hay, I wonder if it would still be big savings compared to buying a tractor and doing my own since I have such a small acreage to hay.

I quit trying to bale my own pasture a few years back when I was charged a buck a bale, but I could buy the guys better quality bales for $2 bucks. Plus, he took out part of my fence when he was turning his tractor and equipt. around. I'm a lot better off now. Plus he needs my barn loft space, so we work out great deals now!

Hey, I posted the Dexter daiy link back in post #44 (part of being evenhanded).

Slev,

I'm not sure why you are so angry at me personally - it seems your problem is with the math. Don't kill the messanger.

Note that I've always said that everyone is entitled to their opinion.

No one is entitled to their own facts - and that is where we seem to have the disagreement.

LMonty,

Bonnie is an Ayrshire. I was looking for grass-based genetics and the Ayrshires aren't as bred for grain consumption as Holsteins. I got her for $250 as a week-old calf. I put three bags of milk replacer ($150) (and a lot of labor) into her, so my cost was $400 and labor. When I was looking for her, a dairyman would have sold me a day-old Holstein heifer for $500. Considering the risks of raising a bottle-calf, I took the lower risk and got a lower producer (which was fine for my system). I also looked at Dexters - they were only available at weaning for $800 for a four month old heifer. I thought about it - the weaned calf would be more likely to survive, but the Dexter her owner did not dehorn - and I have kids. Dehorning at 4 months is a messy business. I also was concerned about the small size of the beef side of things.

So, long story short, I went with the Ayrhsire. The dairyman warned me that she was not top of the line genetics - her mother was 14 (Bonnie was her 12th calf) and so we were about 5 generations behind in the AI breeding progress. But I went with her anyway because I didn't need high production (I was getting about 4 gallons at peak plus what the calf took) and I figured that it was five generations less of being bred for grain. Plus, I figured that if she had survived in a profit-driven commercial herd for 12 lactations, she must be a pretty solid animal - plus quick at breedback.

Knowing what I know now, I would go with the Holstein if I had it to do over - for the reasons mentioned in other posts. I can use as much milk as I can get - I raise bottle calves, pigs, and chickens, so milk is pure profit on the hoof. Additionally, since I don't plan on becoming a major herd, I will be selling heifers at some time and Holsteins bring high prices with ZERO marketing. I'll have to find buyers for Bonnie's heifers, but now that I am part of a dairy grazing group, I should be able to make sales to some of the guys who are going for grass genetics and cross-breeding. I like experimenting with crosses - I'll use Montbeliarde semen this year - but if I had a Holstein and wanted to have a pure Holstein for resale, the huge amount of semen out there means I could correct any flaws the cow had. For instance, Bonnie has short teats. Diary semen has data on the effect a bull will have on his daughter's teats, but there are only a few Ayrshire bulls that throw longer teats - and they might not have other qualities I want. Within the Holstein breed I could "fix" a flaw without sacrificing other elements simply because the range of semen is so great.

Did I make a mistake going with the Ayrshire? Maybe. But now that she is a 1000 pound pet (1100 at end of the grass flush), I'll have her for twenty years.

Oh, someone mentioned the impact of a cow stepping on your foot - It hurts like hell no matter whether it is 700 or 1300 pounds. The pain is equal, but I don't think either one will break bones. You will bruise up like heck. It has happened to me once in four years, so I'm not sure how big a consideration it would be. Leading happens more often, but a 700 cow leads because it wants to be led - if it wants to go, you will be no better able to control her than a 1700 pound Charlais.

Actually, the toe-stepping was entirely my fault - Bonnie loves attention so much that I have to put her in another paddock when I am messing with fence. I had a quick repair so I didn't bother, but she leaned in and pinned me against the fence and was stepping on my fence. I hollered at her, but she kept asking for love. The pain drove me to open-hand slap her on the side of the head - the only time I've ever hit her. She held a grudge too - the next few times I milked her she didn't want attention - she'd just stand there pouting. It is possible for your animals to be too tame.

LMonty,

You wrote:

I guess I'm just looking at it from a different perspective. I dont like milking all that much, and dont have a market for it. I just want a bit extra for a pig and to drink for two, not enough to bathe in! My main product is going to be meat- beef, pork and chicken. I know the available milk reduces the feed costs of the other animals, but I dont see that figured in. Does it reduce it so dramatically that the higher production is the only cost effective way to go?

If you don't like milking that much, the traditional breed with a calf on her is the way to go - you can cut your milking in half and milk once a day. I haven't figured in the extra milk in any of my calculations in response to the Dexterphiles insistance that some people don't want the extra milk and, as you recall, all of my calculations gave the Dexters the best possible chance. If we do add in the extra milk, it does make a huge deal to the bottom line. If you aren't going to throw the extra milk away, the extra milk can be very profitable.

Milk can seriously cut feed costs for chickens and pigs.

We can put a definite dollar figure if we are doing bottle calves. Milk replacer in my area costs about $50 and will last 30 days or so. When the replacer is mixed with water, the calves drink a gallon a day. If you have four extra gallons a day, that saves $200 per month - which is a huge hit. Additionally, you won't get scours like you do with replacer. The calves will grow faster. And since the milk is essentially free for your labor, you are much more likely to let them drink longer - resulting in faster weight gains and greatly reduced grain consumption (if you use grain). Commercial dairies wean at around 28 days. With free milk, you might let them have milk for four months and then get another set of bottle calves. Even better is if you can get the calves to foster - they harvest the milk and your labor is zero. There is a dairyman up the road from me who does this. His kids had a 4-H pet cow that he is not allowed to cull now that she has fallen below his culling threshold of sixty pounds of milk a day. So he keeps her penned with eight calves at a time. They foster on to her and he and has excellent calf growth (caveat: most cows won't put up with this without a huge amount of labor on your part).

There is a couple outside of Harrisonburg who keep - for genetic diversity reasons - eight milking Pinzgauer cows (An Austrian breed not used in commercial milk factories but now being used as grass-only dairy cows somewhat experimentally). They buy bob calves, feed them for three months, then sell them back at the market an bring a new set of bob calves home. At the time when I talked to them, bob Holstein calves were about $60. They bought 40 at a time, then sold them at three months when they had reached 200 pounds with very little input. The market didn't pay as well as it does for black calves, but they could get 90 cents/pound. So the calves they bought for $2400 could then sell for $7200 (actually a little less because with bottle calves there is mortality - though they did much better than the 10-20% typical of calves on milk replacer). There were some additonal expenses - milking supplies, a milking machine, calf hutches (to avoid disease spreading from sale barn stock), some hay for the calves, a taste of grain, and the hay for the cows, but this was quite the little profit for them for work that took three hours a day of labor. They did three sets of this per year - so probably made around $12000 annually with their cottage operation. I'm not sure what last year's surge in Valley calf prices did to their business - day old Holstein steers were going for $250 because a new veal operation had jacked up demand. The weaning prices improved, but I doubt that the improvement was enough to allow them to make profit anymore.

My initial foray into selling beef was somewhat based on this model - my first couple of years I bought bottle calves on the day after New Year's, bottle-fed them for three months, and then weaned them onto the Spring flush. My costs were $60 per calf, $150 for milk replacer, and about $10 for equipment. Getting the calf set for pasture cost me $220 (plus about a hundred and fifty hours of labor spread over six calves and three months). This was much cheaper than buying a weaned animal or buying and overwintering a beef cow.

These boys grazed grass until November and went into the freezer as organic, petit beef - I sold out each year. At $2.90 a pound liveweight for animals in the 500 pound range, this was a sale of $6000 for an start-up cost of a little over $1300. Now, that's not pure profit - crossfencing my land for intensive rotational grazing was expensive - but labor requirements declined rapidly once they got on pasture - down to about one hour of pleasant labor a day for two moves, water top-offs, and manure kicking (poor man's manure spreader). There were some weekend hours to fix mistakes, but again, this was pleasurable work. The workload went to zero for November and December and there was no hay cost at all to speak of (just a little while they were calves).

I saw that by far my biggest expense was milk replacer - if I could drop that, I could actually be profitable. This allowed me to justify getting a family milk cow. My estimate for an Ayrshire was that she could raise three calves. The calves would still cost the same (her calf would have AI fees), but three calves would save $450 of milk replacer - more than enough to pay for Bonnie's annual feed bill. I initially thought I would rotate three sets of calves a year, doing what the Pinzgauer folks did. I eventually abandoned that because I decided I didn't want the hassle of messing with bob calves every three months and wanted them to be on grass at the right time for their development. What I didn't expect was the huge jump in growth having continual access to milk would provide - Bonnie's first calf tipped the scales at 708 pounds when we harvested it.

My model was also thrown out the window by the jump in calf prices - but they have now dropped again, so if I can convince my wife to let me go back to January twice-a-day feedings, I may do that again next year.

A Holstein's extra milk would have even greater returns.

LMonty,

Sorry I took a bit to get back to your earlier note - I had decided to walk away, but I am enjoying the thoughtfullness of your quotes. So here's my thoughts on something else you wrote:

"Anothe rfactor is the sales of bereeding quality registered stock. "Gen'rally" costs as much to keep a registered animal as it does a grade- but sales of progeny can produce much more,. Your economic arguement relies eavily on slaughter prices for grade animls that are less desireable than holstein or holstein croses. Private breed specific sales of breeding stock seem much more lucrative (And as a researching soon to be buyer, I can verify that!). Private treaty custom meat sales of organicly grown animals (even uncertified) again are much more lucrative than running them in the auction ring."

You are correct - registered stock can return a better return. Breeding stock can be very valuable. I'll come back to that, but let me first hit the easier question of beef sale prices. You are correct that I relied heavily on auction ring prices in my calculation. This was to give, once again, the Dexter the benefit of the doubt. If we go to organic marketing, like I do, then you can command higher prices. My 5-700 pound animals (we'll call it an average of 600) after a year will gross $1200 per. A two year old Dexter steer is probably about the same size as the year-old Ayrshire, so call it $1200 for that - but has the added expense of winter feeding and the associated labor. The Dexter's smaller pasture advantage goes away too - it might eat less grass, but eats it for two years and in the second year is eating alongside that year's calf. You also have twice as long for an accidental mortality to occur.

One of the problems of marketing a 600 pound animal is that people are used to larger cuts. I can highlight the petit, more tender aspect of the meat to offset the smaller size, since the tenderness of meat is most influenced by the age of the animal (as an veal or venison eater can tell you). One of the biggest complaints against grass-fed beef is that it is tougher - because it takes much longer to get an animal to traditional slaughter size without grain. I can get an animal to 5-700 pounds on intensively managed pasture and zero grain. I wish more graziers were content to slaughter their animals at the one year market - my job marketing would be easier if I didn't have to overcome the "grassfed is tough" perception of the public.

I think you'd have a really hard time selling the half-sized Dexter at a year - who wants a three hundred pound non-veal animal? If you are a genius marketer who thinks you can do that, great, but remember that you are grossing $600 when I am grossing $1200. You may have slightly lower winter hay costs and might use some marginal pasture with the Dexter, but your initial investment was higher per pound sold. You probably also had to pay more for breeding due to availability of semen - or, as many Dexter folks seem to do, keep a bull - which has some serious costs.

So direct selling your meat is a huge advantage for the traditional dairy side of the ledger.

Going back to the other issue about breeding stock. The high cost of calves that is unrelated to their actual nuts-and-bolts economic value can be an advantage if you find buyers.

The problem is, the disconnect between meat/production value and Dexter prices is dangerous. When choosing to get a lower amount for beef or to sell an animal as breeding stock, human nature is going to push people into trying to find buyers for the breeding stock. This doesn't bode well for the Dexter breed - too many animals that ought to be culled, particularly bulls, are being allowed to breed. The failure to rigorously cull substandard animals can be directly seen in the continued prevalence of the bulldog gene.

See here:

http://homesteadingtoday.com/showthread.php?t=158650

Note that many Dexter breeders actually defend breeding animals that carry this bad gene. In the real commercial world, such an animal would be culled - no ifs, ands, or butts. If such an astonishing awful gene persists, one wonders how much other poor genetic material is being sold as breeding stock. In my analysis - to give the benefit of the doubt to the Dexter folks, I have used claims of two gallons a day profligacy. I seriously doubt that many such animals exist - I imagine the actual average of a run-of-the-mill Dexter is much less.

Regardless of whether it is justified or leads one to allow poor animals to stay in the genetic mix, your point about high dollar sales is one to consider. If economic factors enter into your decision process, you should consider this.

First of all, if one is going to sell breeding quality stock, it should only be from the top twenty percent of your herd - keeping the best for reproduction. If you plan on selling all of your animals for breeding stock, you should be comfortable wih a caveat emptor mentality - if the buyer doesn't realize that buying an animal from your 50th percentile is a bad move, well, let him pay the fool's tax.

Let's assume that you are fine with that - it is a business world after all. The higher prices will only hold until the market for hobby cows is filled - and then the price will fall to reflect the real economic value - which may be even less because of the failure to cull the poor quality animals. This has happened before - think of the ratite craze. I'd also advise against buying $5,000 alpacas.

LMonty, you say that you have been shopping for Dexters. What prices are you being quoted for a springing heifer or cow? I used one figure that was advanced on this thread in my analyses - but would be interested in what the number is.

Secondly, do the folks you are buying beef any animals? Are they selling you stock from the top 20% of their herd, or are they offering animals from the other proportion. How do they explain why they are selling breeding quality stock - are they "out of room" or overstocked? Do they explain why they aren't culling their lower-quality animals so they can keep the best? This is a serious question.

If you wanted to go registered breeding stock with a traditional breed, the path is much harder. I think we have someone on Homesteading Today who is trying this (UpNorth?) Selling cows as foundation animals in the dairy world is difficult because there are rigorous quality controls in place. There is a rigorous DHIA testing system that is much more transparent then "oh, she's got a pretty udder" you see with non-commercial breeds. If the cow isn't well-above milk and solids averages, she's not going to bring breeding dollars. And the world of creating AI bulls is beyond the means of a homesteader. It's a multi-million dollar investment and years of testing - not, oh, I can make more money selling the little guy as a herd bull to some yokel than I could selling him for beef.

Any seedstock producers out there who care to comment?

Have you heard about the discovery of a protein in commercial dairy cow's milk that has been linked to diabetes?

Over the years, the commercial dairy breeds were outcrossed and AI'ed to a small number of heavy producers in order to up their milk production. Along the way, a protein appeared in the milk of the major milk producing breeds. This protein is now linked to diabetes. It was first discovered in New Zealand, by a group that then formed a company to produce milk without this protein, the "A1" protein. They call the milk without it "A2" milk.

The bad protein was found in up to 90% of all the dairy cattle they tested with the DNA test they perfected. They are trying to locate and breed a new herd from those few dairy cattle they can find that were not affected.

I contacted the New Zealand compny to have my cattle DNA tested for the protein but they refused. Only one herd has been granted permission to be tested in this country. It is a very good possibility that the most primitive breeds, those that have not been outcrossed to improve milk production, will have escaped the introduction of this new protein. It's probably a given that most beef cattle will not be affected, unless they were crossed with a dairy breed in the last 40 years.

I feel that the odds are in my favor not to have the bad A1 protein in Dexter milk, since I can trace the pedigrees of my Dexters back to beyond the time when the protein got into the dairy herds. You could probably say the same about any other breed that didn't allow outcrossing in it's registered animals. So many of them do, though.

Both of the US Dexter associations forbid registration of outcrossed animals, so hooray for them. We probably dodged a bullet, there.

Genebo
Paradise Farm
Church Road, VA

Mark- good info and I need time to digest it. Prices Ive been quoted run from 600 to 1200 for open cows and heifers, but I'm only going by a few Ive talked to. I wouldnt call that firm.

My plan is to use the Dexters to produce Percentage Lowlines. They sell better and are well suited to being "beefed" Theres even a (small but allegedly growing) market for percentage lowline bulls for traditional producers wanting to decrease birth weights. That I need to look into further, to determine how firm that is.

1/2 lowlines sell prety well, the demand exceeds supply (so I am hearing) Heres figures from January big sale
12 ½ blood females grossed $24,050 to average $2,004

I anticipate that to soften as supply increases- but the production in my area is fairly limited. There may be a benefit to that.

So Dexters seem a good "other half" to start with- I get fairly decent milk prodcution for size- good for all the reasons you mention, besides my own use! and still produce a "beefy" animal. If I get one or two heifers a year the first few years that will sell well at those types of prices- yipee! Yea, most I'll keep the first few years to breed up to 3/4 and 7/8. Some I'll eat and sell for beef. Thats my plan - to be able to produce a dozen beef calves a year in about 5 yrs time.

I need to do some consideration about buying newborns for fostering and feeding out for sale. That I hadnt considered. Higher production definitely favors that model. I need to think that one through- and do a lot more research. But is a good idea I need to look into further. Looks doable and may give me another potential income stream (small but still, every little bit helps!) I hadnt considered.

Well, I do have more thoughts and questions, but Im nodding over the keyboard. Brain fried. I'll try again tomorrow. :)

LMonty,

Two of my neighbors collaborated on a Lowline project last year. One bought 7 embryos @ $500 each. The other provided 9 Angus and Charolais heifers. The vet did the prep work to bring the heifers ready, picked the 7 best prospects and then an AI technician implanted the fetuses. Three took. That's about the claimed success rate of 40%. One of the fetuses aborted and two heifers were born without complications.

The vet bill was $600 and the AI guy was $300. Total cost was $4400, plus feed.

Now they have two fullblood heifers which are just reaching breeding age. They are considering flushing the heifers, doing "in-vitro" fertilization, and implanting a number of cows with these embryos, to get more fullblood Lowlines. I've suggested that they try some Dexter mothers this time, since Dexters have such easy births and will provide more milk than an Angus or Charolais.

The calves will fare better in a herd of small cattle, too. The first pair had a hard time as calves. Their size always made them the last to get something to eat and they grazed on the outer edges of the herd.

Once they get a bull calf, they intend to start selling semen.

It's an ambitious program. There's a lot of start-up expense. Lets hope that the Lowline market holds up long enough for them to get their money back and maybe make a few bucks.

Genebo
Paradise Farm

Thanks gene. Yea, I considered the embryo thing- but what a risk! 40% effective at $500 a pop is a bit scary for me. Maybe later. I'm not sure. I need to figure out how well I can do with them in the area first, I think. And get some experience under my belt. They still ended up with two heifers at less than the going rate for fullblood lowlines, so I think they did well. BY the time i am ready to invest in something like that, evaluating the market would definitley be a must.

I'm waiting to hear back from the person who first turned me on to Dexters years back. I would dearly love to get some of her stock, she has good bloodlines, and I'd feel comfortable buying from her. But she is way up in NY so thats a consideration- if I can afford them, first off- and then transporting them. I was really hoping there would be a PM from her (nother board) when I got home from work- but not yet :(

I have a feeling my DH is going to go into sticker shock when I tell him the amount I need to get a herd started, and I may have to completely change my initial plans. Am seriously considering an ag loan for stock purchase if needed. We do have a few thousand to play with, but I might do better with a low interest rate loan that i pay off early for a variety of reasons. Still considering it.

I think I'd like to get a small jersey or jerseyX to play with, and see if that works for us. Putting a pencil to paper is one thing and very valuable- but actually doing a real comparison in real life with the same conditions for both might be more valuable for me. I dont htink theres much risk to it- small family milkers seem to sell very well just on this board- seems like supply doesnt meet demand yet. If I cant find one, but get the Dexters, it might be interesting to try mini jersey semen on one to see what we get.

In fact, there may be a good market for small docile milkers that are just freshened and are easy to milk. That I'd like to explore. Would be neat to find and fill that niche. Selling them bred back to a dexter or lowline so that the buyer would have a good beef calf to look forward to would be "added value". Again, just an idea, and I'd need t explre if the market I think is there can support a few of them a year, and if so, if its profitable to do so.

Does anyone know of any commercial dairies in the NW AR area? (say, within and hour or two of Harrison?) might be a good thing for me to know, I can check into it when I get a phone book, but if anyone has any expereince with them, I'd appreciate the input.

BTW_ I do feel kinda guilty for almost hijacking the thread with so many of my own questions and ideas. But it has been hugely valuable to me. Not just the opnions- but youve all really given me great ideas on not just what might work for us- but how to keep records, and how to think through the profit/loss/risks. Thats worth much more to me than you know. Its an education I couldnt get elsewhere, and will probably save me more money and aggrevation than I can foresee. Being allowed to contribute here, and all your sharing of info is very,very much appreciated.

LMonty,
if I can be of any help with Dexters in NY let me know.You can also check out the new region 11 site http://www.freewebs.com/region11dexters/ there is a For sale page, small but I only just got it started.

carol

Thanks, Carol. Long ride for me from AR! LOL But I'm a native NY'er, BTW! (Long Island) good place to be from :) Always liked "upstate" better.

I do appreciate getting info on animals for sale from you, or anyone. I just wish more people would post prices. Sure would help me figure my budget out. Even when I get email replies, the breeders that have bothered to contact me back (about half of thoes Ive emailed) most havent included prices. Funny way to do business, IMHO.

LMonty,

Olga Penka is down toward Russelville, about a hour and a half from you. She has some nice Dexters. Maybe she'll be able to help you. I think she milks hers.

By the way, I was born in Arkansas. That's where I was first exposed to raising cattle, so that I was able to go back to my roots after a long career in a technical field.

Have you read Carol K's piece about milking on the ADCA site member's page? It's worth reading.

Genebo
Paradise Farm
Church Road, VA