We just put a bottle calf in the freezer. I thought I'd post a few pics, comments, and numbers for posterity's sake. This might be useful info for others who are either shopping for beef, or are considering raising their own, or have some ready to sell.
This particular bottle calf was not our own. DD bought him back in April 2012 for $300. He was really lost and rejected without a cow when we put him out with the herd. Therefore, we named him Knucklehead. He was just off the bottle and onto grass when we got him at two months old. Any guess on the breed? I originally thought Holstein, but the dairy he supposedly came from did Jersey X Brown Swiss. It isn't a hard fact, becuase DD got the info 3rd hand. His black turned to brown as he got older, so I'm thinking brown swiss. But I am a terrible guesser. A note on the 2012 price: @$300, we had "sucker" on our forehead. Today, not so much. Mind you, this was someone else's bottle calf. So DD technically bought an early weaned calf, not a bottle calf. For those considering purchasing a true just-born bottle calf, I'll include some numbers on what I think it would have cost ME to get that calf from birth to weaning.
Finishing Cost
Knucklehead was grass raised and finished. This isn't a anti GMO/ConAgra/BigAg/Feedlot religious issue for me. I am quite able to knowingly eat a storebought, corn fed, hormone blasted, unloved steak and still enjoy doing so. I happen to prefer the taste, and mostly the process of raising, grass finished beef. It is a simple philosophy. Stay on the sidelines unless they need help, watch em grow, and eat them when they are ready, and don't worry about what you don't know.
I do have good accounting of costs on the farm, but in 2012 & 2013, I didn't properly allocate variable costs to the various animal groups. Therefore, I can't look at my hay and mineral bill and tell how much went into the beef herd, and thus into Knucklehead. I am doing things differently this year, but that doesn't help for this exercise. According to my farm diary, he was on hay for roughly 150 days. I had expensive hay one of those years, cheap the next. He was small the first year, big the next. I am going to use $1/day for hay, assuming the bales to be 1000 lbs and his consumption 25 lbs/day. Both are conservative. My total mineral bill over the period of his life was about $2500. I am going to allocate $50 to him--a total swag. I am not going to attempt to factor in the other real costs in raising even a single head of livestock: time, insurance, energy, land & improvements depreciation, repairs, the mental cost of winter and drought, etc. One day I will sit down and figure a cost on those things, whether it be a chicken, goat, lamb, horse, or cow. So even if not fair or not true or worthy of neglect, I am going to use a big fat $0 for all of that. Let's face it. Most of those costs are merely the cost of existence. Breathing fresh country air isn't free. Even if I did know the number, if you asked, I'd answer "Ancient Chinese Secret." So $0.
The only other missing cost element is the veternary bill. On this particular animal, he was only given a single shot of NuFlor back when he 6 months old and was on death's door--$15. I don't happen to preventavely worm or vaccinate any of the beef herd that are earmarked for my (or anyone I sell to) freezer. But if I did, that cost would be $20 for 2 years, based on the real bill for the whole herd. Calf vaccines cost differently than cow vaccines, and I can't remember how much each is. I just have the total seared into memory, and I'm being a bit sloppy here since I didn't apply any to Knucklehead.
So the total cost of to get this weaned animal to finishing is: $300 + $150 + $50 + $15 + $0* = $515.
Bottle Feeding Cost
Just for a side distraction, if I had to bottle feed a newborn from my own dairy cow, I'd use the following math. I am just now weaning 2016's freezer calf (Bubba). I was generous and let him go for 4 months. I don't have the exact progression of milk consumption, but I can safely say that I poured 300 gallons of fresh milk down his gullet. Using revenue-avoidance as my model, Bubba hits the grass tomorrow costing me $1500. Sure, it is not a fair way of looking at it. If anyone asks how much he cost, I'll still say "Free". There are so many ways to slice and dice this. Needless to say, your mileage will vary. It certainly is easy to see why some people wean at 8 weeks. Given the cost of milk replacer (even in the form of milk), I see buying a bottle calf in today's market to be prohibative. At 150 gallons X $3.50 / gallon Costco milk, I could have gotten him onto grass for $525. Time to finish on grass would be much, much longer, and impacting the finished product, though.
Finish Strong
On a cool Sunday evening 3 weeks ago, probably right past the 30 month cutoff, the farm-kill guy showed up. I was still a bit apprehensive about the steer's small frame, but that rattling echo in the freezer needed to be hushed. It was good to see someone skilled with both gun and knife work so fast.
Processing Costs
On farm kill: $80. Strictly financially speaking, the $80 farm kill is a push for me because of the distance to the processor. It saved me two hours of driving with a trailer, almost all of the $40 offal charge, and kept the cost of a few of the tidbits that normally go into the .52/lb hanging weight off the scale because I took them home that night. I don't think my processor charges directly by weight for the liver, heart, tongue, etc. I believe it goes into the offal disposal charge, even if I get it back from them. If they do charge .52/lb for them, then I definately came out ahead cost wise by doing on-farm-kill.
Slaughter: $280. 520 lbs hanging @ .52 + $10 offal (bones?) disposal.
Finished & Wrapped Packages.
I submitted two cut sheets as halves, even though we were the sole consumer--because I wanted to have my cake and eat it too. On the processors cut sheet, they give options called "Better Steaks vs. More Steaks" and do the same for roasts. One one side I opted for better steaks, on the other, more steaks. I did the same for roasts, not knowing if they were mutually exclusive choices. They got the idea and I was very happy with what I ended up with. I opted for 3/4 inch steaks wrapped in pairs. Rib steaks were bone-in, which is my preference. I wrote in bold caps "WANT SHORT RIBS". If I could get the whole thing in short ribs, I would. The only item I opted out of was stew meat. I'd just as soon do that myself. I also asked for "less round steaks". The whole family likes them, but those big cow rear ends make too many. The 1 lb burger packages are my preference, because I gift away quite a lot of the beef. Because I anticipated a bit of stringy mouth texture, I asked for 3 weeks in the hanger before cutting. They went 23 days.
Using the bathroom scale, we weighed the 8 boxes and measured 354.4 pounds of meat in 240 packages. It includes 150 lbs of ground, 60 T-Bone & Rib steaks, and 12 roasts. Not to mention all of the slow/moist cooked meats that I enjoy more than anything else in the rest of the carcass--short rib, brisket, round steak, arm steaks, etc. At this point, before I add it all up, let me tell you that I am extremely satisfied for having gone through the process like this--when comparing cost of home raised vs. store purchased. I say that prior to putting knife and fork to the first bite. I reserve the right to change my mind. But previous instances have all be spectacular. This is my first non-beef breed, though.
Adding It Up
Finishing Cost: $515
Processing Cost: $360
Cost per lb: $875 / 354.4 = $2.47/lb. Again, YMMV. *And let's not kid ourself about that big fat goose egg that I put in for the "cost of farming".
An Alternate Accounting
Had I sold this animal (or been on the buying side of the transaction), here is how this animal would have gone down. Using a handful of CL ads from the KC market, I'd pencil in $3.25/lb X hanging weight. Repace the finishing cost above with
520 lbs * $3.25 = $1690. Add just the processing fee (I wouldn't assume the on-farm-kill), $280.
$1970 / 354.4 = $5.56/lb. Man, that is almost the price of ground lean at the store. I can sell real beef all day long in that zone.
The Impact of the Current Crazy Market
The KC freezer market is lagging the on-the-hoof market. The model shown in the "Alternate Accounting" paragraph above is a very common method of marketing freezer beef in private sale around here. Just a week before Knucklehead's big day, I had a very nice angus steer that I had gotten to the low side of finishing weight. He was 900-ish lbs. I was pondering placing a CL add and selling him for $3.50 X hanging weight. Conservatively, that would have grossed about $1750 (500 lbs x $3.50). The current market report for my local auction house was showing $180/cwt for 900 lb steers. My mutt collection usually doesn't yield the equivelent "black steer" price, but this one was black and perfect. Absolutely not the one you want to eat yourself. Even if I didn't quite get the $1620, the risk+effort was low relative to selling him hanging on the private market. I'd probably need 2-4 buyers. So I decided to load him up and sell him that week. He was 920 lbs and I got $192. $192 was the high listed in that week's weight range for 900 pounders.
I smiled all the way to the bank. Or in this case, to my neighbor to buy his hay. Based on the prices I see in current CL ads, I just don't see that the seller's marketing and order fulfillment effort are priced high enough to cover the opportunity that can easily be had at the sale barn. If it were another Knucklehead (aka dairy X with horns), I would have been robbed at the sale barn and would certainly go the CL route. If I were a buyer, I would probably be agressively shopping for a side or whole now, before the freezer market catches up to reality.
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