I really enjoy these white boards talks. It’s nice to see the numbers laid out and well explained. It’s hard to find that these days because it seems everyone is so secretive.
Yep, my banker has the same paper as yours! I told him I was planning on building a shed for winter, he asked me how I was paying for it! I said cash! He said good, because the bank probably wont borrow money for a building in a guaranteed losing proposition! He said keep grazing, those are the only farmers he deals with that are actually making money
Awesome! Thanks for this. I didn't really sit down and study it... but just briefly watching you run through the numbers is helpful, I believe, in making sure my brain is thinking the right way as we tiptoe towards our venture...
Jon I just found your channel through this love 4 love deal. Wow. That’s all I can say. You’ve already become one of my favorites. One of my favorite things to do is talk farming numbers. Period. I’ll talk numbers on raising peanuts in Canada just to make the gears in my head turn and learn and think. Looks like your from the great state of Minnesota. My FIL lives in Princeton, don’t know how you compare to that area. He’s a retired/exdairyman. I’m from southern Indiana and one visit I fell in love with that area. Hoping I can convince her to move back and rent her dads farm one day. For now 19 will be my first year farming on my own as a start up farm. Interested to see how it goes. Look forward to seeing more videos from you. Good comparison would be cost of say a used but good 100-180 HP tractor (4430,4440,4630 etc) vs a new tractor in the notill strip till min till environment.
Gonna mention with grazing as well, if you have healthy pastures or cover crops for grazing, it could have a result of having excessive hay on hand. You can sell some and get money back, but that still adds a lot of more math to the equation in regards to haying operation, but it should result in a (+) rating if hay prices are decent. I'd call our setup a hybrid, kinda changes throughout the year... A lot is dependent on what mother nature wants to do, some years are better some are worse. We like to graze when we can, as long as the pasture can handle it.
Very interesting presentation. I like the idea of mostly grazing, but for a guy that doesn't have a lot of land available to use, the feedlot method would work better. I was also wondering if the numbers would change on the grazing scenario if a person had a mortgage on the land instead of renting. I guess it would depend on the mortgage payment, but that may make the grazing side less profitable. Really enjoy these presentations- you always make me think about the different possibilities!!!
Lol. Yes if we were going to do a 1 hour presentation to really break this down and be very specific you bet the grazing side could have a big swing both ways under a couple different scenarios. We could bring in acres per head on silage on the lot and covers grazing vs old grass guys. Both scenarios would have the very real potential for using 25-30 % less acres. Them are acres that like farmingin4g said could be used to sell hay get 25% more cattle or do row crops.
I am not a fan of cow calf in barns except for calving issues or a few in a barn right after calving in either extremely cold or stormy weather. People who are putting up buildings for calving cows (able to hold the whole herd) is just crazy in my opinion I don’t care if it’s borrowed money or cash. My cash can to to other parts of the operation to make me either more efficacy with my time or efficacy in feed. We do feed cattle for quite a while BUT we do try to feed on grazed cornstalks for much of the winter and grazing cornstalks really helps to stretch feed supply’s. Roughly (1 cow per acre per month) on grazing cornstalks here. Then I believe cattle in the no till situation really helps lists of thoughts here as well but running rout of time to type... ( ps I think you need a bigger white board)
In nw oregon you have no choice but to put them in a small sacrifice area with cover/ barn due to it raining almost non stop for 4 months. Pastures would be completely destroyed otherwise and you would have mud up to their knees. This is during the winter months. Mine are in the barn from December to April
We pasture gaze non tillable ground pasture rent is low 30-40 acre here in Michigan..your numbers ate good most guys don't figure that close.run cows outside year round.cavles only go in barn at weaning time.rotate graze corn stalks all winter..
Jon can you reference where I could find the paper and information you used so I could apply to a backgrounding and stocker operation? Personally I don’t use loans but in fairness I did when I started and had to learn the hard way. I climbed the ladder really fast fell off and had to start again I’d say I’m about a 1/4 the way back the climb is much slower now but I sleep better!
I like his concept and there are folks around me that do unroll Bales for grazing I would need a three-point unit for the tractor because in the winter time the snow is going to get too deep when I finally have them full-time out in the field
Spread Sheets Jon. Spread Sheets. I have watched some Magic Pencils work for a lot of things. Please break it down to cost/head/day. because the math seam to be skewed. because i usually have to feed cows from Nov1-May 1. Last year was one messed up year. i had a foot of snow in late Oct. 3' drifts on15 ac the end rows of corn combined what we could and in the same field was 15ac of millet in windrows. come thanksgiving we had another storm. after that we turned them on on that 160ac just feeding 2 bales of hay a day. for 100 cow calf pair. that was some cheep feed. have also Dry Lotted 30 pairs on 30ac of short pasture and 10bu of corn/day and made them look good. Different strokes for different folks. your mileage may very.
ask your banker for a farm business management book from your local college and see the numbers from a couple hundred farms in your area. them are true numbers, then have your banker put your numbers into that fbm program and see what you think. grazing is different everywhere because of seasons and utilization of acres. you have to know your numbers. feed lot, cost of manure spreader, loader tractor time, fuel, labor, hauling bales in labor, loader tractor time and fuel. 10 bu/day for 30 cows is a $1.3 a day per head just in corn. how much does the building cost? any concrete get poured? any regulations from pollution control have to be met or added costs for manure storage? insurance, electricity, taxes, depreciation..... feedlot is not very cheap. some costs will carry over to a grazing system because we are in a snow environment. so at some point we are going to have tractor time in the winter to move bales or have bales placed for bale grazing. but you dont have a lot of them other costs. Corn is not cheap. i still like it but if i can grow high energy plants vs corn i would be better off. its cheaper. but with a soil health grazing system if the cows are grazing from spring to fall on managed pasture no tractor, hay mower, rake, tedder, baler, wrapper, manure spreader is being used, no buildings are costing us money vs a feed lot that needs bales every day. behind the combine cows can go onto the corn ground for even more grazing if weather allows it then bale grazing will probably begin.
@@jonstevensmaplegrovefarms3754 No buildings. No concrete. For the 1.3/ hd/day. I was just saying if you are going to give an estimate on an operation setup I would like to see your work. On a white board you get lost on your numbers. If you would show your on the computer were it would be easier to how you come to the conclusion. I'm not saying that grazing is bad. I'm just saying that you may have to use all the tools in the toolbox. Right now I'm looking to drylot st bread cows next year. And not breeding them back. I have all the infrastructure all ready at my disposal. But this year I don't have the forage for it. So you try to utilize everything you can. With whatever you have at your disposal. Just like one year I sold calves and an old guy says wow you have enough to go buy a new pickup! I said a new pickup doesn't make you any money. So I'm not cutting you down at all. I just like to analyze what new ideas are out there.
@@chriscomastercobler7371 coat rack you have to use what you have. Most of the time when I do a chalkboard talk I have the numbers from a business management book that will have data from about 200 Farm out of my area. Do a lot of these numbers are Regional. A guy in Texas might have completely different numbers to do the same operation.
Very interesting, Not sure about your numbers or maybe I am and just cant admit it to myself. LOL! It was kind of hard to understand your feed #'s, I couldn't really see your feed categories. I also don't see a average # of head for the 1600 farms. Or the # of grazing days avg. I am missing the boat somewhere, I need to go back and relook at your video. One thing is for sure is that I simple like your lets say attitude Farmers help farmers. Great content, thanks for your time.
The number of days grazing we've got a lot of flexibility there because the cost of the three acres whether they're grazing or Bale grazing they're still eating on the pasture. I had figured 7 months grazing 5 months Bale grazing. So with the Bale grazing you're going to have some hours on a tractor staging the bails out there but then would be similar hours to a feedlot bringing the Bales in to a storage area and then going and grabbing bails to refill hey monks on the lot. But just kind of keep it a little more simple we kind of call that a wash.
I went back and viewed your video again, It made more sense to me the second time. I even did a rough estimate of my feed bill and it came out close to what you had per head of feed, but that included fertilizer and having my hay custom done. I guess what I am having a hard time with is your $20 profit per head. I really hate to think that I am doing all this work for aprox $20 a head. Lol. I am only hobby scale tho. So I will use our Wyoming life for example: he stated he has aprox 150-160 head so at 160x $20 profit= 3200$ I have a hard time swallowing that's all they make for profit. I am not sure if I am looking at it the right way or my math adds up?? I think I may be looking at it the wrong way. Let me know what your thoughts.
-20 dollars per head on the lot. Cost of crop should include fertilizer and harvesting. If you have little debt for equipment and buildings you could swing from minus 20 to a positive 20 pretty quickly. At 80 square feet per head and 11 dollars per square foot of building costs plus concrete, then a feed wagon or mixer, feed storage, manure spreader, chopping equipment..... the lot adds up very quickly. The under 50 head on lot were the group that was losing 200 dollars per head. But under 50 head on cover crop pastures can be the guy making the most money per head. Come home from the day job move a fence and go in. Maybe get some bales out while grazing for diet balance 1 time a week. Sell fats to co workers in the big city. That is a guy the bankers would love to work with!!!
Boy I think that's a highly variable answer? For us at the local auction last week fats were about a dollar 8 to a dollar 10 cows bread for spring calving are bringing around that $0.50 a pound. If a guy wanted to grow a beefer tour start a beef herd boy right now you get a lot of animals cheap.
@@troyremmers6223 in all seriousness at $20k land price i would be selling it as fast as i could and buy some 4k dollar land. To me the big difference between grazing vs feedlot is when grazing i dont have to run equipment to feed every day. Other part is our customers want grazed animals not feed lot.
Very interesting. We run a cow-calf operation in a Barn. When grazing cattle how do you feed them over the winter time. There's a lot of equipment that you need to make hay the store up. Maybe you touched on this but I didn't hear. I have a lot more thoughts but we are having our heifers have calves at the moment it'll come back what's some questions
Same equipment between the two farms for putting up hay. Just like hauling hay into a feed lot you set bales out. The bale doesn't know if it's going to lot or pasture. Lol you have tremendously less equipment for grazing. guys that have bale grazing down place the bales so come winter time they just move fence and not start equipment.
Now before anybody gets bent out of shape with my comments. Think about what you got to say. Your operation shows your hard work. I believe you get quality beef off of a feedlot. I'm not a big fan of finishing cattle on grass. In a controlled environment like a steer Barn death loss is less than 1%. Grazing cattle doesn't work for some farmers it all depends on your location. There's a lot of cost that goes in the grazing to keep the Herd on the farm all winner. And there's guys that don't mention those.
That why guys like myself or farming4g are hybrid. Because of our climate. That is why I also mention cost for shelters for the grazing guys. That is why I also mention seed expense for seed because we are going to put a quality pasture in that is going to give us the TDN,protein and energy that we need. There is a couple local grass finishers that are seeing 3lbs a day!! In our climate that is pretty remarkable. Remember not all death loss is weather related. Statistically you will lose a new born, you will have a cow die. Yes weather can give a guy huge loss sometimes.
Paulson Farms Statistics, science, math and management are not some peoples strong suits! And they prove it in their comments! Hard to argue the numbers, especially from a publication that uses numbers from across the country! Just saying!!!
@@larsonvalleyfarm the problem is there's too many people here on UA-cam that are jealous. They just need to get out there and do it themselves talk is cheap. Otherwise get a day job flipping burgers
I really enjoy these white boards talks. It’s nice to see the numbers laid out and well explained. It’s hard to find that these days because it seems everyone is so secretive.
exactly
Yep, my banker has the same paper as yours! I told him I was planning on building a shed for winter, he asked me how I was paying for it! I said cash! He said good, because the bank probably wont borrow money for a building in a guaranteed losing proposition! He said keep grazing, those are the only farmers he deals with that are actually making money
We are looking at beef when get out of dairy. Very informative, thanks!
Awesome! Thanks for this. I didn't really sit down and study it... but just briefly watching you run through the numbers is helpful, I believe, in making sure my brain is thinking the right way as we tiptoe towards our venture...
Jon I just found your channel through this love 4 love deal. Wow. That’s all I can say. You’ve already become one of my favorites. One of my favorite things to do is talk farming numbers. Period. I’ll talk numbers on raising peanuts in Canada just to make the gears in my head turn and learn and think. Looks like your from the great state of Minnesota. My FIL lives in Princeton, don’t know how you compare to that area. He’s a retired/exdairyman. I’m from southern Indiana and one visit I fell in love with that area. Hoping I can convince her to move back and rent her dads farm one day. For now 19 will be my first year farming on my own as a start up farm. Interested to see how it goes. Look forward to seeing more videos from you. Good comparison would be cost of say a used but good 100-180 HP tractor (4430,4440,4630 etc) vs a new tractor in the notill strip till min till environment.
Lol thank you for the kind words.
Princeton can have sand like we do but there is some wet clay ground over there also.
Good luck in 2019!!
Wonderful how Greg Judys numbers add up must be impressive
This was a great analysis of the numbers. In a way it kinda talked me out raising cattle! Haha. I still wish Dairy could work.
If you were in a climate like james O Brien the grazing would help a lot.
If the wife was making 100k off farm income....
Gonna mention with grazing as well, if you have healthy pastures or cover crops for grazing, it could have a result of having excessive hay on hand. You can sell some and get money back, but that still adds a lot of more math to the equation in regards to haying operation, but it should result in a (+) rating if hay prices are decent.
I'd call our setup a hybrid, kinda changes throughout the year... A lot is dependent on what mother nature wants to do, some years are better some are worse. We like to graze when we can, as long as the pasture can handle it.
We have to be flexible. Our climate doesn't offer much choice. Either portable shelters or a barn but at some point they need to have some cover.
Very interesting presentation. I like the idea of mostly grazing, but for a guy that doesn't have a lot of land available to use, the feedlot method would work better. I was also wondering if the numbers would change on the grazing scenario if a person had a mortgage on the land instead of renting. I guess it would depend on the mortgage payment, but that may make the grazing side less profitable. Really enjoy these presentations- you always make me think about the different possibilities!!!
Lol.
Yes if we were going to do a 1 hour presentation to really break this down and be very specific you bet the grazing side could have a big swing both ways under a couple different scenarios.
We could bring in acres per head on silage on the lot and covers grazing vs old grass guys. Both scenarios would have the very real potential for using 25-30 % less acres. Them are acres that like farmingin4g said could be used to sell hay get 25% more cattle or do row crops.
I am not a fan of cow calf in barns except for calving issues or a few in a barn right after calving in either extremely cold or stormy weather. People who are putting up buildings for calving cows (able to hold the whole herd) is just crazy in my opinion I don’t care if it’s borrowed money or cash. My cash can to to other parts of the operation to make me either more efficacy with my time or efficacy in feed. We do feed cattle for quite a while BUT we do try to feed on grazed cornstalks for much of the winter and grazing cornstalks really helps to stretch feed supply’s. Roughly (1 cow per acre per month) on grazing cornstalks here. Then I believe cattle in the no till situation really helps lists of thoughts here as well but running rout of time to type... ( ps I think you need a bigger white board)
In nw oregon you have no choice but to put them in a small sacrifice area with cover/ barn due to it raining almost non stop for 4 months. Pastures would be completely destroyed otherwise and you would have mud up to their knees. This is during the winter months. Mine are in the barn from December to April
Very well explained video thanks for the info
Thanks for breaking her down for us
We pasture gaze non tillable ground pasture rent is low 30-40 acre here in Michigan..your numbers ate good most guys don't figure that close.run cows outside year round.cavles only go in barn at weaning time.rotate graze corn stalks all winter..
Jon can you reference where I could find the paper and information you used so I could apply to a backgrounding and stocker operation? Personally I don’t use loans but in fairness I did when I started and had to learn the hard way. I climbed the ladder really fast fell off and had to start again I’d say I’m about a 1/4 the way back the climb is much slower now but I sleep better!
I will see if I can find an email link on the publication. I bet your local FSA could get you a farm business management book?!
Can you use a bale unroller from Greg Judy?
I like his concept and there are folks around me that do unroll Bales for grazing
I would need a three-point unit for the tractor because in the winter time the snow is going to get too deep when I finally have them full-time out in the field
Spread Sheets Jon. Spread Sheets. I have watched some Magic Pencils work for a lot of things. Please break it down to cost/head/day. because the math seam to be skewed. because i usually have to feed cows from Nov1-May 1. Last year was one messed up year. i had a foot of snow in late Oct. 3' drifts on15 ac the end rows of corn combined what we could and in the same field was 15ac of millet in windrows. come thanksgiving we had another storm. after that we turned them on on that 160ac just feeding 2 bales of hay a day. for 100 cow calf pair. that was some cheep feed.
have also Dry Lotted 30 pairs on 30ac of short pasture and 10bu of corn/day and made them look good. Different strokes for different folks. your mileage may very.
ask your banker for a farm business management book from your local college and see the numbers from a couple hundred farms in your area. them are true numbers, then have your banker put your numbers into that fbm program and see what you think.
grazing is different everywhere because of seasons and utilization of acres. you have to know your numbers.
feed lot, cost of manure spreader, loader tractor time, fuel, labor, hauling bales in labor, loader tractor time and fuel. 10 bu/day for 30 cows is a $1.3 a day per head just in corn. how much does the building cost? any concrete get poured? any regulations from pollution control have to be met or added costs for manure storage? insurance, electricity, taxes, depreciation..... feedlot is not very cheap.
some costs will carry over to a grazing system because we are in a snow environment. so at some point we are going to have tractor time in the winter to move bales or have bales placed for bale grazing. but you dont have a lot of them other costs. Corn is not cheap. i still like it but if i can grow high energy plants vs corn i would be better off. its cheaper.
but with a soil health grazing system if the cows are grazing from spring to fall on managed pasture no tractor, hay mower, rake, tedder, baler, wrapper, manure spreader is being used, no buildings are costing us money vs a feed lot that needs bales every day. behind the combine cows can go onto the corn ground for even more grazing if weather allows it then bale grazing will probably begin.
@@jonstevensmaplegrovefarms3754 No buildings. No concrete. For the 1.3/ hd/day. I was just saying if you are going to give an estimate on an operation setup I would like to see your work. On a white board you get lost on your numbers. If you would show your on the computer were it would be easier to how you come to the conclusion. I'm not saying that grazing is bad. I'm just saying that you may have to use all the tools in the toolbox. Right now I'm looking to drylot st bread cows next year. And not breeding them back. I have all the infrastructure all ready at my disposal. But this year I don't have the forage for it. So you try to utilize everything you can. With whatever you have at your disposal. Just like one year I sold calves and an old guy says wow you have enough to go buy a new pickup! I said a new pickup doesn't make you any money. So I'm not cutting you down at all. I just like to analyze what new ideas are out there.
@@chriscomastercobler7371 coat rack you have to use what you have. Most of the time when I do a chalkboard talk I have the numbers from a business management book that will have data from about 200 Farm out of my area. Do a lot of these numbers are Regional. A guy in Texas might have completely different numbers to do the same operation.
Very interesting, Not sure about your numbers or maybe I am and just cant admit it to myself. LOL! It was kind of hard to understand your feed #'s, I couldn't really see your feed categories. I also don't see a average # of head for the 1600 farms. Or the # of grazing days avg. I am missing the boat somewhere, I need to go back and relook at your video. One thing is for sure is that I simple like your lets say attitude Farmers help farmers. Great content, thanks for your time.
Maybe I'll take a picture of that page and post it on soil-man.com.
The number of days grazing we've got a lot of flexibility there because the cost of the three acres whether they're grazing or Bale grazing they're still eating on the pasture. I had figured 7 months grazing 5 months Bale grazing. So with the Bale grazing you're going to have some hours on a tractor staging the bails out there but then would be similar hours to a feedlot bringing the Bales in to a storage area and then going and grabbing bails to refill hey monks on the lot. But just kind of keep it a little more simple we kind of call that a wash.
I went back and viewed your video again, It made more sense to me the second time. I even did a rough estimate of my feed bill and it came out close to what you had per head of feed, but that included fertilizer and having my hay custom done. I guess what I am having a hard time with is your $20 profit per head. I really hate to think that I am doing all this work for aprox $20 a head. Lol. I am only hobby scale tho. So I will use our Wyoming life for example: he stated he has aprox 150-160 head so at 160x $20 profit= 3200$ I have a hard time swallowing that's all they make for profit. I am not sure if I am looking at it the right way or my math adds up?? I think I may be looking at it the wrong way. Let me know what your thoughts.
-20 dollars per head on the lot.
Cost of crop should include fertilizer and harvesting.
If you have little debt for equipment and buildings you could swing from minus 20 to a positive 20 pretty quickly.
At 80 square feet per head and 11 dollars per square foot of building costs plus concrete, then a feed wagon or mixer, feed storage, manure spreader, chopping equipment..... the lot adds up very quickly. The under 50 head on lot were the group that was losing 200 dollars per head. But under 50 head on cover crop pastures can be the guy making the most money per head. Come home from the day job move a fence and go in. Maybe get some bales out while grazing for diet balance 1 time a week. Sell fats to co workers in the big city. That is a guy the bankers would love to work with!!!
Hey man, what is average price for live livestock in US?
Boy I think that's a highly variable answer? For us at the local auction last week fats were about a dollar 8 to a dollar 10 cows bread for spring calving are bringing around that $0.50 a pound. If a guy wanted to grow a beefer tour start a beef herd boy right now you get a lot of animals cheap.
Pound is around 0.45 kg?
Can [ get the name of the fence company? I am in central MN.
What fence company? I did all our own fencing.
@@jonstevensmaplegrovefarms3754 Sorry, I thought you mentioned the fence designer did the fencing.
I thought you meant physically putting the fence in . For our grazing plan we went through the nrcs
University numbers? Everybody knows those who can't...teach.
Jon how are ur numbers now with 20000 land price
you would have to run your own numbers for a specific situation.
@@jonstevensmaplegrovefarms3754 I agree with your numbers I just want to know 20000 land for pasture or would open lot would be with your numbers
@@troyremmers6223 in all seriousness at $20k land price i would be selling it as fast as i could and buy some 4k dollar land.
To me the big difference between grazing vs feedlot is when grazing i dont have to run equipment to feed every day. Other part is our customers want grazed animals not feed lot.
Very interesting. We run a cow-calf operation in a Barn. When grazing cattle how do you feed them over the winter time. There's a lot of equipment that you need to make hay the store up. Maybe you touched on this but I didn't hear. I have a lot more thoughts but we are having our heifers have calves at the moment it'll come back what's some questions
Same equipment between the two farms for putting up hay. Just like hauling hay into a feed lot you set bales out. The bale doesn't know if it's going to lot or pasture. Lol you have tremendously less equipment for grazing.
guys that have bale grazing down place the bales so come winter time they just move fence and not start equipment.
Now before anybody gets bent out of shape with my comments. Think about what you got to say. Your operation shows your hard work. I believe you get quality beef off of a feedlot. I'm not a big fan of finishing cattle on grass. In a controlled environment like a steer Barn death loss is less than 1%. Grazing cattle doesn't work for some farmers it all depends on your location. There's a lot of cost that goes in the grazing to keep the Herd on the farm all winner. And there's guys that don't mention those.
That why guys like myself or farming4g are hybrid. Because of our climate.
That is why I also mention cost for shelters for the grazing guys.
That is why I also mention seed expense for seed because we are going to put a quality pasture in that is going to give us the TDN,protein and energy that we need. There is a couple local grass finishers that are seeing 3lbs a day!! In our climate that is pretty remarkable.
Remember not all death loss is weather related. Statistically you will lose a new born, you will have a cow die. Yes weather can give a guy huge loss sometimes.
Actually your loss is more then 1%. If you had 50 calves and lost 2 thats 4% right there.
Paulson Farms Statistics, science, math and management are not some peoples strong suits! And they prove it in their comments! Hard to argue the numbers, especially from a publication that uses numbers from across the country! Just saying!!!
@@larsonvalleyfarm the problem is there's too many people here on UA-cam that are jealous. They just need to get out there and do it themselves talk is cheap. Otherwise get a day job flipping burgers
@@TheFarmingLife exactly