Do you raise cattle for niche market?

[lexa]

I have some questions for you than

How many are you able to sell a year and how long did it take you to find your market? What breed? And how much land do you have?

[opportunity]

I sell 4-5 a year right now I started with just 1-2 a year in 2007 and have added a few people who will buy. I keep highlands and jersey cross steers to feed out I made more money selling my angus at the salebarn at weaning then I could feeding them out. I have 14 irrigated acres, but rent/lease 30-50 irrigated acres and 250 dryland each year to keep 25 head (I have a very mixed heard of angus, herford, jersey, highland, and lowline cows and an angus and a highland bull)

[lexa]

Was it more profitable to sell angus at weaning instead of feeding thyem out or instead of feeding out jerseys and highlanders, I am sorry it is just not clear to me.

[lakeportfarms]

We have a herd of approximately 50 Dexters and 15 Scottish Highlands, about 40-50 breeding animals and the balance are either replacement heifers or some young bulls that we are evaluating as future replacements or for sale, and then 6-10 steers. It's pretty consistent through the year as we calve year round.

We sell quite a few registered Dexter calves each year to others who are interested in raising their own, and 10 or so Scottish Highland calves, so we're mainly a cow/calf operation. We also sell some weaned steers to people who want to raise them to butcher. My wife is a teacher and she has a long list of people waiting for us to have a steer available for them (of either breed) to put in their freezer, on average we have 6-8/year. It took very little time for us to develop a base of customers. We have been growing very quickly and now need to purchase some additional land that is available behind us to make room for the additional animals, right now we have 40 acres, and we're going to be adding another 40-60 acres shortly.

We do managed intensive grazing and feed hay from mid-October to mid-May, but do very little feeding of hay through the grazing season. I suppose if we had fewer animals we could extend our grazing season a little but the snow makes it tough to really go much more than we already do. The reason we'll purchase more property is so we have a bit more of a buffer for drought conditions, and eventually we'll take a first cutting of hay off the areas that the cattle haven't made it to because of the managed grazing. We currently purchase all of our hay that we require.

Although our cow/acre seems high to some, remember these are mostly Dexters that weigh on average 600-700 lbs, so the inputs are lower than most other cattle. We also move the cows 2x/day in strips during the grazing season and this year we had about a 30 day rest period for the pastures between grazing, thus the reason for getting more land as it was also a good year for grass. Both the water and minerals are mobile and so we do not need a lane back to either. Last year with 50 head we had to feed hay for a month starting mid-August due to the hot dry conditions. They were back on the pasture in mid-September until mid-October.