Prices

Allen W · #21 03/18/12, 10:46 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 65284

Sammy, with fats selling for around $130.00 per hundred a 1000 pound steer, using the .60% hanging weight and a .70% cut yield formula, should give him about 420# of salable meat. He would have about $3.10 per# in it, and that's before figuring anything for overhead or his labor.

If your local butcher is selling beef bundles of the same type of meat I am that contain burger, steaks, and roasts for $2.50 per pound he must be raising his cattle a lot cheaper than I can...........or rustling the steers he butchers.

The slaughter house sells the hide and offal also, which adds a fair amount of value to the total. A lot of organ meat we don't use here gets exported to other countries.

InvalidID · #22 03/18/12, 05:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MO_cows

The lowered supply of cattle puts the producers in the drivers seat instead of the packers for a change. These historic high prices are more likely to have producers cashing in on their culls rather than keeping heifers and hoping/speculating these prices will still be holding up in 3-4 years.

It's not just the inventory of beef cows that is down, there have been major dairy selloffs in recent history, too. Low cow inventory plus extreme drought in the number one beef producing state - who knows what will happen??

For the smaller producers who were cutting out the middlemen and marketing their own beef, there is less incentive now to do that. If they can just run them to the sale barn after weaning and cash in for a good profit, why keep them and have more cost into them by the time they are ready to harvest, do all the work of marketing, coordinating the multiple customers per animal, collecting their money from a bunch of individuals, the extra record keeping, etc?

It's gonna be interesting!

I'm in a similar spot right now. I'll likely run about 50 calves through here this year and most of them will go to the sale barn. While I can produce and market grass fed for about the same price as Wal Mart beef, why bother? I can raise em to about 500lbs and get 5-$600 a head right now at the barn. And that's for Holstein steer!

I'll still produce some for locals and friends, but by and large I don't see a reason to keep them through finishing with these prices.

ErinP · #23 03/19/12, 09:12 AM

Quote:

Selling them by the potload

Of course this is part of what made them high, btw. If you can sell large lots that'll fill pots, order buyers like you better. That's the way it's always been.

However, I clerk in a tiny sale barn in western Kansas. A big sale for us is 1000 head. But even we are seeing bred heifers bringing $11-1200, by the singles... A couple weeks ago we had feeder calves that were selling for over $200cwt!

spinandslide · #24 03/20/12, 10:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by InvalidID

I'll still produce some for locals and friends, but by and large I don't see a reason to keep them through finishing with these prices.

Exactly..