Quote:
Originally Posted by redrider_00
I am referring to the coops that pick up milk from all the dairies. Actually the DFA field rep stopped today just to see what was happening with our farm. Last summer we had someone that was interested in buying and were already dairy farmers. The DFA rep said it would probably take at least 20 cows for our 2000 gallon tank. I know one of you said just get 200 cows. Well 200 cows is just slightly out of the budget. Yes we did finance our place. We sold our last place and had alot of cash to put down. We ended up putting over 25 percent down and have payed it down quite a bit more. We are going to try and sell another acreage that we own this summer(yes own,not financed!) and maybe buy cows. We'll see!
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You have made some wise financial moves and I applaud you, sincerily.
You are sitting on a business right now. What you have is a very rare property and the even rarer ability to expand on it imediatly.
With the equity you have you could easily go to FSA or Production Credit and negotiate a farm loan for, let's say.. fifty head, hold onto the cash from the sale of your other property (don't tell the lender about it, they'll try and tie it into the farm loan as asset), or use it to rehab and update equipment. Then you'll have enough cows to use that huge tank, or put in a smaller one.
I'm glad you have this opportunity. You are fortunate the co-op will stop for twenty head. Will they continue to stop as your production goes down from your herd drying up? Will you replace your dry cows with fresh cows to keep in production? The trucking bill may become pretty hefty when you are only milking a few cows waiting for the rest to come fresh. If staying to your number of twenty producing head is priority do you intend on raising your own replacement calves/heifers or selling the calves and buying replacements? The latter will cost more capital, but save on time, money, feed, equipment, meds, etc to raise heifers. The former of the two will alow you to breed as you wish, hoping your AI sires throw heifer calves. If they throw bulls, with the exception of holding a few back for steered beef, that's more loss waiting for replacements to mature.
I bring these points up not because I'm looking for an answer from you, but rather these are things you should be considering now before buying a herd.
It hasn't been that long ago that I worked testing butterfat for dairies. I went to a different, small (from 30 to 150 cows) farm four days a week. There were a lot of family dariys in this part of the country. A lot of the Amish and Menonite families milked and supported their family, now they're all gone.
given the oppurtunity, a cow will always take the wrong gate...Baxter Black
