Farmerjan's journal - Weather

[Mike CHS]

We won't take any more stock to the sale barn until spring and if we have to cull anymore they will go into the freezer instead. The market here is like you posted and is at the bottom.

 

[greybeard]

The spring/summer market don't look much better either.......might pick up a little bit as warmer weather comes on and people begin getting out more.
I took a bunch to sale back last July...........kinda wish I had took them all.
It's never easy being a used cow salesman.

 

[farmerjan]

What doesn't make any real sense, although I do realize there is the shipping and all, is that markets out west are really seemingly to be up. But here they are absolutely horrible. The feeder calf market is limping along. Our retired vet friend said that he has started his buying for this year. He buys feeders 5-6 wts and sells them in the fall at 8 wts and up. Said he is averaging $100 head less for purchase prices than he did last year. I don't know exactly where we are going. We are cutting back, through attrition; some death loss and older ones that are open. Losing a couple of places will keep us from adding any.
But they are still costing us to feed and not being pregnant will cost us 6 months of downtime so to speak, that they are still eating. But to ship a young cow and get less than $200 salvage value is just a waste.
So my policy of if they are open, they leave is having to make a change for now. If they are old and open, they will leave in some form or manner. But if they are younger, they are going to get a second chance back with the bull. If nothing else, they will put some weight on with no calves on them. If all these dairies keep selling out, and there is a glut of cull cows on the market this spring and summer, maybe the demand will catch up with the oversupply and by fall the prices will look better. At least we have plenty of hay to feed.

We had already decided that we are going to make more square bales this year. We are going to put up anther "shed type pole barn" and be able to park more wagons inside with hay on them so we don't have to handle it so much. Had another person call looking for square bales the other day. A friend of a friend. No cold calls, just another referral. If we can't make it on the cattle, we will have to try to make it more on the square bales. We can always feed them to the cows, if we don't sell them. We have one barn we can stack square bales in, but lost another barn with the loss of the lease. So being able to leave them on the wagons will work. We have running gears for 3 more wagons, so they will get built and 2 more need extensive repair that we had acquired. We have also told a couple of these people that if they can get it right off the wagon in the field, that we knock a little off the price. There are 2 that did that this year. Only had to handle the hay one time. Gotta make it more profitable. And I told my son that there are no more "cheap" prices. He hates to go up, yet everything is costing us more. And the person that called said their hay guy has stopped making hay.... that's it in a nutshell. There are less and less making the hay around here. So we need to "make some money" on the hay and if the demand is there, then not making it is just dumb.

 

[farmerjan]

Looked at the weather map and we are probably not going to see much rain until after 10 pm or so. It was cloudy and grey and dreary again today. . It did warm up and my kitchen drain did thaw after 3 days of being frozen again. You just learn to roll with it... luckily only me to worry about dishes. Am going in to do a sink full now that I ate my big salad for dinner. Have some gallon glass jars that need washing, they had milk and were rinsed and all, but want to get them all washed and draining dry in the next 2 days while the weather is supposed to stay warmer.
It does look like we will get a pretty good lick, but I imagine some of it was rained out getting here. The ground is still hard under the top layer of thawing.... it will all run off. Oh well, can't do much about it.
Did some more errands today, went to 2 farms to do some computer jump drive exchanges with info from mine. Tomorrow or Friday, will go get some chicken feed, have to get the 2 new tires on my truck that were ordered and I said had to wait til this week and payday. Need a new one for the 4wd as the cords are separating, you can see the little bulge. I felt it in the wheel shaking a little, the other day. But that's okay as they have been on there awhile, and were all used tires that we put on it for no more than just going up in the fields to check cows and such. I seldom drive it over 5-7 miles to and from a field.... But I will replace this one as I don't need a flat. The others look good so that's not a big expense. The guy has the struts for the car, but didn't want to do them in the bitter cold.... HOPEFULLY soon.... at the rate I am going I won't need to put the snow tires on it...it'll be spring...

 

[greybeard]

What doesn't make any real sense, although I do realize there is the shipping and all, is that markets out west are really seemingly to be up. But here they are absolutely horrible. The feeder calf market is limping along. Our retired vet friend said that he has started his buying for this year. He buys feeders 5-6 wts and sells them in the fall at 8 wts and up. Said he is averaging $100 head less for purchase prices than he did last year. I don't know exactly where we are going. We are cutting back, through attrition; some death loss and older ones that are open. Losing a couple of places will keep us from adding any.
But they are still costing us to feed and not being pregnant will cost us 6 months of downtime so to speak, that they are still eating. But to ship a young cow and get less than $200 salvage value is just a waste.
So my policy of if they are open, they leave is having to make a change for now. If they are old and open, they will leave in some form or manner. But if they are younger, they are going to get a second chance back with the bull. If nothing else, they will put some weight on with no calves on them. If all these dairies keep selling out, and there is a glut of cull cows on the market this spring and summer, maybe the demand will catch up with the oversupply and by fall the prices will look better. At least we have plenty of hay to feed.

We had already decided that we are going to make more square bales this year. We are going to put up anther "shed type pole barn" and be able to park more wagons inside with hay on them so we don't have to handle it so much. Had another person call looking for square bales the other day. A friend of a friend. No cold calls, just another referral. If we can't make it on the cattle, we will have to try to make it more on the square bales. We can always feed them to the cows, if we don't sell them. We have one barn we can stack square bales in, but lost another barn with the loss of the lease. So being able to leave them on the wagons will work. We have running gears for 3 more wagons, so they will get built and 2 more need extensive repair that we had acquired. We have also told a couple of these people that if they can get it right off the wagon in the field, that we knock a little off the price. There are 2 that did that this year. Only had to handle the hay one time. Gotta make it more profitable. And I told my son that there are no more "cheap" prices. He hates to go up, yet everything is costing us more. And the person that called said their hay guy has stopped making hay.... that's it in a nutshell. There are less and less making the hay around here. So we need to "make some money" on the hay and if the demand is there, then not making it is just dumb.

I reckon you read this posted on the cow board..

"
OUTLOOK: Positive words on the cattle market and sunshine generally provide encouragement to the spirit of cattle producers, but neither of these has been present the past couple of weeks. Compared to last week’s Tennessee weekly auction averages, steer prices this week were steady to $5 lower while heifer prices were steady to $4 lower with a few as much as $8 lower. Similarly, slaughter cow prices were $2 to $3 lower compared to last week while slaughter bull prices were $1 to $3 lower than a week ago. The price situation is not any better for yearling cattle as many feedlots are in no humor to purchase cattle and transport them through wet and icy road conditions to then run the calves off the truck into muddy pens. At the same time, cattle feeders are in no humor to pay big dollars for feeder cattle that will be placed against the June and August live cattle futures that are at a $10 and $14 discount to April respectively.

The heavy summer discount on live cattle futures has begun hitting local producers hard as local load lot prices for heavy yearlings in January are running about $5 per hundredweight lower than December and as much as $15 per hundredweight lower than loads sold in November. The feeder cattle index has declined $11 since the beginning of November. It is easy to say that there do not appear to be any fundamental reasons for the market to move lower, but that has been said before and the market has moved lower based on unsubstantiated expectations. The bright spot is that the price of a 900 pound steer is the same as the price of an 800 pound steer which provides incentive to keep feeding cattle and growing them larger. The price signal on heavy feeder cattle is the market signal feedlot managers are sending to producers. At this time, the best decision may be to keep feeding 700 and 800 pound feeder cattle and keeping an eye on the cash market. The wrong decision is to throw all conventional wisdom and knowledge out the window, because the market will adjust and find its equilibrium."

 

[farmerjan]

@greybeard ; just a question. I am having trouble getting on the CT Q & A forum. I have been able to get on several of the other parts, tried the market reports, the Baxter Black tab, a couple others. But the Q & A tab just comes up blank on my computer. I tried turning it off, and starting from scratch with pulling CT up and still nothing. Are you having any problems? It did this yesterday and I just left it and said I would do it today.... but still can't get on it. ???

 

[greybeard]

@greybeard ; just a question. I am having trouble getting on the CT Q & A forum. I have been able to get on several of the other parts, tried the market reports, the Baxter Black tab, a couple others. But the Q & A tab just comes up blank on my computer. I tried turning it off, and starting from scratch with pulling CT up and still nothing. Are you having any problems? It did this yesterday and I just left it and said I would do it today.... but still can't get on it. ???

It was down part of yesterday for a major update.
It came back up yesterday evening, but many people are having trouble logging on from some reports.
https://cattletoday.com/forum/index.php?sid=bb6ab56338f5c8c59dcfe29251f88557
This url works for me, but may not show up correctly on this board so I'm going to take a screenshot of it; (The url below is not 'clickable..it's a jpeg. Clicking it will simply take you to an image host.)

 

[farmerjan]

Well, it is Saturday. We had some clouds and sun today. Temps down to 24 last night, up to mid 40's in the sun, but a bit of a wind. Tomorrow supposed to be about the same.
We did preg checks on Monday and Tuesday and didn't have very good results. About 65-70% pregnant. The vet says that he thinks due to all the rain, and continued green grass, that the cows are magnesium deficient. Most all the first calf heifers were open, and several cows were not in as good a condition as they should have been, a little thinner than we like. So today we weaned all the heifer calves off, and moved the open cows to another pasture with the bulls for a 2nd chance.
Normally only the first calf heifers would get that chance. But with the cull/pound cow prices so bad, and hearing some really bad feedback from some people that have sent cows to the sale lately, we decided that they may as well all go back with the bull. If they come up open again, maybe the cull prices will be better. It sets them back about 6-7 months, but if they breed back, then it is better than losing a year; or giving them away for 10-25 cents per pound.
We had someone who was interested in 10-15 heifers and they came today and picked out some to buy. Wound up with 16. We will keep them for a week, they will bring us the vaccine and eartags to put in their ears, and we will do that for them. The good thing is all the calves had gotten accustomed to eating some silage, and grain out of the bunk, and know what a water trough is to drink from, so they will not have a big transition when they go to the new place. That will still leave us about 20-25, and we have decided to keep about 5 for raising as replacements. There are too many bills/operating loan payments that need to be made so we are not keeping many. There were a few real nice ones in the group she picked. But we will have some more nice ones coming so it is time to get things in a little better shape financially. The nice thing is, they will be paying a decent price, and no commissions, so we will get more than if we sold them at the sale if current prices are anything to go by. And the group weighed just a few pounds shy of averaging 500 which was a bit more than we expected, so a nice surprise there. @ 1.25 lb we were pretty satisfied.

 

[Baymule]

It only makes sense to buy breeding stock directly from the breeder as opposed to an open sale. Not knocking sale barns, some very good stock passes through there. But to go to where they were raised, have the personal conversation with the owner/breeder and get the details of the heifers is worth a little more. Your buyers picked out some choice heifers, they are not sick or diseased, they are healthy and already on the program to going to their new home. Glad you got a good price for them.

 

[farmerjan]

Well, the weather was crazy. It was sunny and fairly decent yesterday. Cloudy and grey and dreary today, with the anticipated front coming through. Got some light showers about noon, then got a "snow squall, about 1:30 or so. Ground here was getting covered and they said we could get a trace to 2 inches. I left to go test after checking the radar and it was supposed to be out of this area by 4. The ground/road was nearly covered when I left. Got about 8 miles south of here, and just rain and drizzle. Got to the farm, just wet.
All clouds passed over by 4:30 and the sun came out but the wind picked up. It was dropping pretty fast and 26 by 7 pm. Got home about 8 and you can see a white dusting here, but everywhere else there wasn't enough snow to even see. It is now about 23 and is supposed to be a bit colder in the morning but windy so will feel alot colder. Tomorrow night will be in the single digits they say. One nice thing, the mud was frozen and no slick spots or slippery places from the mud... it was nice to walk on firm ground.

Supposed to be back up in the 40's/20's by Sat and even close to the 50's on Sunday.... but maybe some rain "for a change" on Monday.

The buyer of the heifers is starting to waffle and my son is P. O. BIG TIME. I don't blame him after all the time we spent Saturday sorting and moving cattle around. They aren't in a "push" to get us the vaccine, or the ear tags, and maybe only want 10 now. If we had known this, as it is a friend that is acting as the "agent" for the buyer, we would have just shipped them on Friday, gotten our check and been done with it. Yes they needed to be weaned, but they would have gone directly to the sale.
Now they have been fussing and hollering, walking the fence, for 3 days and have lost some weight. Which is normal, but we are now having to put feed into them, and they will have to regain what they lost, and we will have more money in them for the same weight... and maybe not have all, or ANY sold.
It is the last time that we will do this for anyone.

Some people say we can make more by weaning, and "preconditioning" them, but when we figure in the increased feed consumption, plus the aggravation of having them separate and making more work, it is not really worth it for us. We do not have the facilities to wean and feed and hold a big group of calves.
Plus we were planning to get the last big group of cows "home" next week and have them there to be able to pull the steer calves and ship them. This group is in the way, because we had to make 3 "groups", so we could keep these 16 together, then separate the others into 2 groups because we already had about 15 weaned there; and they are pushing the smaller just weaned ones around and they aren't able to get in to eat. If it was warmer weather we could utilize a couple of other lots/pens but with all this cold and the continued rain forecasts, we cannot put them out there with no shelter.
On top of that, a friend took a group of heifer calves to the stockyard (sale) last Thursday, about a half hour north of the one we usually use, and got 1.29 /lb. for his and they weighed avg. 485 lbs. With the commissions the yard charges, which is a bit more than the sale here, they were right in the 1.25 /lb price we quoted this other guy. We still would have been glad to do this direct, but since he is not committing to it now, we are just P$#@$D. My son is giving them a couple of days to make up their mind, but if they don't, the heifers will go back with the rest of the weaned ones, and he will be told no sale. The girl that is supposed to be the agent, is a friend, and like my son said, it is not worth losing the friendship when it is the boss/owner, that is backing off.... but we will not deal with him again. END OF STORY....

Got my yearly eye exam tomorrow.... at least I will be inside looking out at the cold. No more farms to test before Saturday.