Hows the livestock selling for you?

[RiverPines]

Its scary around here.
Before the economy tanked, you could only get sale barn grade Boers for $150. Now that is what I am seeing for the registered, tested, quality animals going for. Same with the pedigree dairy breeds! Does, bucks, young, prime going for insanely low prices.

Sheep, 2 years ago you couldnt touch anything, not even junk for under 100 or under. Now, you can get some nice quality sheep for 100 and less!

Before, good horses broke to ride were never under 3k and usually a lot more. Now, there are more and more going for 1,500 and often less.

Highlander cattle, you couldnt touch one not to long ago for 1,500, more like 3k, and now its easy to find them so cheap, even young ones, not just bulls either! I have seen many beautiful, young, animals going for 500, 600, and about. Thats was once considered insane!

I find this really unsettling especially since I am selling this year because DH has had his hours cut and we have to cut back. I am wondering if we will sell anything, even cheap. We can only put so much in the freezer. I dont think I could get 1 dollar per pound live weight in these times!

Also, this is sad. A lot of time and money goes into a lot of these animals.
I have seen a lot of entire herds being sold out for whatever people can get.

Gosh, tested, registered, pedigree animals, in prime, going for a fraction of what they should be. Its just really sad.

[sellis]

i agree i just bought a registerd highland cow bred and a bull , she was show quality and a bull was to he came with her for just under 700.00 for the both , its good for those buying but very bad for those selling the lady said she just couldnt afford the hay for even her best cows..scott

[travlnusa]

Good 2-3 yr old beef cows are bringing $600-1200 bred.

Dairy that were $2500 18 mos ago can be had for low teens

Feeders are bringing 75-90 per hundred.

[Bearfootfarm]

Up until last year, I couldnt raise enough lambs to meet the demand, but now it seems no one is interested. I've had lots of people ask about them, but no buyers, other than an occasional meat lamb.
Normally by this time of year, I would have sold over half my lambs, but now I still have a few from last year, plus 30 that were born this year

[Danaus29]

Muscovy ducks are selling ok. $15 each, drake or hen. Just can't sell the 2 pretty white drakes at $20. Even so, I have 10 more drakes than I need. If no one buys them soon I'll be eating them.

[PhilJohnson]

Been seeing some really low prices. Makes it easy for a cheapskate like myself to get into livestock but I know a lot of folks are hurtin' because bad market. There is a farmer guy I know who instead of selling off his old milk cows for slaughter decided they were worth more in his freezer. He figured by the time he spent the money he would be making like 10 bucks on the deal. Better off eating the cow himself than making next to nothing.

[AnnaS]

Milk prices are so bad that a lot of cows are going for hamburger. The California drought is hurting a lot of big dairy herds- there are supposedly truckloads of slaughter Holsteins coming into MN from CA because the slaughterhouses in between are full.

Bull calves were literally being given away this winter. Two years ago they were $200.

Horse prices are unbelievable. There's a big horse auction here. Last year you could get broke, registered, sound and sane riding horses for $400, reg. QH or Paint weanlings for $10. The loose horses that were going to kill brought better prices since there were so many horses, the kill buyers would stop bidding if a private party put up a bid.

Although I haven't heard anything, I would think that goat cheese demand has gone down- it is a "luxury" food- and the base price for dairy does with it.

Slaughter goats are still good here. The market for them is mostly foreign-born medical professionals, who are not hurting.

[Yvonne's hubby]

I just checked on the local markets in last nights paper. Beef cattle are higher than I have ever sold them. I am seriously thinking its time for me to get off my duff and get my feeders loaded up and sent off to market next tuesday. $115 to $120 per hundred for 300 pounders is good enough for me. 5-6 hundred pounders are bringing $100-$105

[ozark_jewels]

Calves are selling well. Even the bull calves have all gone pretty fast. Dairy goats are selling just fine. Meat goats are not selling as fast this year.
I will be eating more Boers this year, and we will be putting a couple cull cows in the freezer.

[Ross]

Good time to buy in and get set up!! Ag prices spike and plummet all the time, it only bothers me when i see good people getting out because they won't be back, and fewer new people are taking up the task. Bigger and bigger farms means eventually we'll not control where our food comes from at all.

[Wayne02]

For those of you who are electing to put more in the freezer instead of sell at a lose or keep the critters, is it pretty easy to end up with too much in the freezer? I know it depends on your situation and all but with just the two of us here it doesn't take much to have years worth of meat in the freezers and of course each freezer cost $$$ to run.

How long do you keep the meat frozen and still consider it "good"?

[ErinP]

So long as it's packed well (our local packer does triple wrapping), we've had meat that lasted three years in our freezer.
So far as space, there's always a locker.

[julieq]

We were fortunate to sell our extra dairy goats (buck, doe and doeling) to one family who traveled here from California to purchase. They stated they couldn't find any quality Nubians locally, that breeders were selling out very quickly. However, a friend in Washington got into a few sheep last year and also has dwarf dairy goats and stated recently that sheep prices there are really low now and the goats aren't selling. I think we were just really blessed to make a sale on our extra goats this year. Right now I wouldn't want a large herd of sheep, goats or cows. Feed prices are just too high and buyers seem to be few and far between.

[postroad]

There will be a spike in prices when the excess breeding animals have been slaughtered.

It takes time to bring those numbers back up once they have fallen to the point where market demand can not be met.

This is true for beef cattle more than for pigs or poultry.

[ozark_jewels]

With 9 people eating meat here, its hard for us to end up with too much meat. Even though we aren't huge meat-eaters, its pretty scary how fast we go through a beef.
We have had 3 year old beef that was still fine. As long as it is wrapped fine.

[Terri]

Riverpines, a co-worker used to have a good racket going. She would sell her few head by the side or by the quarter at supermarket prices. You buy it, and she would, for your convenience, have it butchered for you.

In other words, they got beef that was nearly organic at ordinary beef prices, and it was delivered to them in little white packets.

I no longer work with her and so I do not know if the economy has hurt her any, but she was selling 4 head a year by word of mouth.

[FoghornLeghorn]

I conveniently have our cows butchered too for the people who wish to buy a half or a quarter of a cow. We just sold 2 cows that way AND we raised the price this year. They still sold. The people that are buying them say that they would rather pay my price than buy from the grocery store.

[Joshie]

Beef seems to be going for $1 to $1.50/pound here.

[firegirl969]

Old hens are still $10 each and young hens are still $14. Somebody really likes chicken! (ha-ha)

[Qvrfullmidwife]

In our area dairy goats are fetching a pretty good price.