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Joe Said
EDON COLE
MT. VERNON, MO.
Joe Horner, State Agricultural Business Specialist spoke at the Ag Lender’s Seminar recently. His first comment regarding beef prices was that we have fewer cows, less calves and based on the traditional, 10-year cycle, there should be a trend towards higher calf prices. We have fewer heifers being retained for breeding and that was noticed this fall in the lower numbers of heifers in the Show-Me-Select bred heifer sales.
At the same meeting, budgets for the coming year were released. They may not suit your operation as they are designed for a 50 cow herd which is average for Missouri. This budget has both January to June and July to December calves. It’s assumed the owner buys replacement females. The other assumption for 2020 prices was based on fall 2019 price forecasts.
What does it cost to keep a cow each 365 days? I hear this a lot and it seems most cow owners just shake their heads and shrug their shoulders and say, “I don’t know.” So, at our Monett Beef Conference on February 4, we plan to have three cow owners share their numbers. Our budget shows for operating expenses an average cost of $865.24 for end of year calving cows. Those calving the first half of the year show $855.71 cost.
This is for budgeting purposes only and if your wife, brother, son, daughter or accountant comes up with a different value than use it as you plan for the future.
In fact you can develop your own personal enterprise budget by using the Missouri Beef Enterprise tool: https://extensiondata.missouri.edu/Pro/Beef/Docs/MissouriBeefEnterprise.xlsx
The spreadsheet allows users to make a beef enterprise budget for a cow-calf, heifer or steer backgrounding operation.
The 2020 beef budget for the average producer doesn’t look very optimistic but since most of you are better than average you might make some money in 2020 on your calf crop. Unfortunately, if you add ownership costs such as depreciation, interest, insurance, taxes on breeding stock and capital items the total cost to keep the cow rises to $1000.
The above budget uses a sale weight of 590 lbs. on steers and 550 lbs. On heifers. The percent calf crop weaned is 88 percent on fall calvers and 85 percent on first of the year calvers. Something no one ever figures is their own labor per cow. The budget figures 8 hours at $14.97 per hour. If you figure you’re running cows just for fun and are donating your labor, you’ll feel better about the profitability of your cows. ∆
ELDON COLE: Extension Livestock Specialist, University of Missouri
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