Average feed/vet cost per cow

Bellaforte · #1 10/16/12, 03:22 PM

I'm still in the grad school/research stage for my home, and one of the intentions is a small herd (~3-4 cows?).

I've had horses, but never at a stage at which I had to be the one paying for them... so my question is, for relatively healthy animals on a mostly pastured diet, supplemented with feed and doing most vaccs and worming myself, what is the average cost per head, per year, that you folks have run into?

Also, approximately how many do your family (mine will be 5ppl) eat, per year?

The books can speculate, but I'd like to see your real-life average numbers...

kycrawler · #2 10/16/12, 07:35 PM

family of 7 2 adults 3 teens 10 and 5 yo we butcher 2 fat steers 6-7 hogs about 80-100 chickens and 5-6 deer per year we eat out very little

Cant help much on the vet bills 3-4 head shouldnt be much i start a couple hundred bucket calves a year and have 80-90 300+ lb calves on feed and i spent about $1100 at the vet last year 1 100 ml bottle of draxxin is about $325 i only had the vet out 1 time in 2 years to help investigate some odd scours problems i had in a batch of calves . I do all of my own castration dehoring and ai some of my cows

opportunity · #3 10/17/12, 09:56 AM

We are a family of 3 and the toddler doesn't eat much yet. We have eaten almost our entire bull in the last year (hanging weight was almost 1000 pounds) We butcher a steer at least once a year but more like every 9-10 months.

It cost about 500 a year to feed here but we have a long cold winter and I have to lease pasture in the summer. My vet bills are failry low as we do everything we leagaly can ourselfs. I'm guessing it's about $30 a year on average for all the stuff once I had the band and vaccination equipment bough. We have 19 cows 4 heifers and are retaining 4-5 heifers calfs for next year. We have been trying to keep the herd at 25 the last couple years but I started with 3 cows, price per animal was higher then as the vaccines usually come in a large container that is then waisted

Bellaforte · #4 10/17/12, 02:25 PM

Thank you!

My girlfriend seems to think that the idea of setting up to be self-sufficient is impractical, but she's also only ever discussed this with exes who want the *idea* but aren't willing to do the work themselves.

Callieslamb · #5 10/17/12, 04:32 PM

So much in animal costs depend on your location. How much grass do you have available? How much grass will determine how much acreage for that many cows. Will you have to buy hay? Do you even have enough of a winter to need hay? Hay is $8 a small square bale here this winter (that's up $3 a bale since last year). I figure on my 2 steers eating about a bale a day. I feed a gallon of grain a day together. Next summer I will increase that to get them up to butcher size by late fall. Graining them also helps keep them close to the barn. A 50 lb bag of grain for me is $15. They need shelter in the winter. It will take 18 months to get them big enough to butcher. I buy the calves for $10-50 each. Each one will take 1 50-lb bag of milk replacer at $60 each bag. I try to time them so I have the least amount of winter feed to provide. A vet visit in $75 if I'm the only one in my town that needs him that day. $45 if he sees someone else near by. I haven't vaccinated one yet - or wormed one. The vet charges each $40 to band and dehorn. I usually band them myself and use dehorning paste. DS raises 2 each year to sell as feeder steers (weaned from milk) and we are raising 2 - hopefully selling one ready to butcher will help pay for the other one.

Sparkie · #6 10/17/12, 07:02 PM

Agree the costs are variable. Cost for us to raise a steer for ourselves? Land is paid for but do I include land costs somehow? We cut our own hay and the equipment is paid for but do I somehow try to figure that out too - along with labor, fuel and maintenance? I'm not enough of a math or accounting person to care to get into figuring all that stuff out. Maybe someone else will have an idea.

It really doesn't cost us anything these days to raise a steer to butcher as far as $$ output. We feed grass/hay, no grain. A few bucks for mineral is about it. But it does cost us what we'd get at the sale barn for that cow, so these days we hunt deer and sell the cows generally. It's just the two of us and we don't eat that much meat anymore.

Bellaforte · #7 10/18/12, 11:36 AM

Callie, we're in north Georgia so we have maybe 4mos where we need to supplement with hay. As they'll be out with the horses we'll probably just get 2-3 round bales per winter, maybe a few for summer if it's dry.

I'm mostly looking at vet & feed/grain costs on average... it's been a while since I had to buy sweet feed, much less any other kind