Guess a lot of people did not get the cattle price memo

I buy a good many cattle straight off the farm and it has always been a tough business, most people I deal with want cash money only which can get tricky at tax time and probably 70% of people are worried to death they got a nickel per head less than they would have elsewhere. There are always a lot of deals you just have to walk away from because people will not educate themselves to the actual market and be reasonable, they only know that so and so told them what he got at the sale barn although so and so may have better cattle or is exaggerating. I have never seen it as bad as it is right now, after these high markets of the last couple of years people just don't want to believe its over, maybe they have more money tied up than the current value but that is the risk involved. In my area we have an ocean of high priced heifers coming with their first or second calves that will only bring back 1/4 to 1/3 of what the people paid for the mama's unless a miracle occurs. In a few more months I might be glad I could not get many bought.

LAA I like buying calves off the farm as you can usually get healthier calves. I have just about quit fooling with the smaller cow calf guys. Their calves many times are not as well cared for and they want top dollar. The market has came back up some on fats but not to where the calf guys want it to be. I have turned down three lots of calves this week because there was ZERO room for any profit. The yards can set empty for a while if need be.

It is not just livestock . Remember guys in late 70 early 80
held beans in bins thinking 10 - 15 would happen again soon.
Now our area autions on good ground is around 6,000 - 8,000
but privitly they still think 15,000 - 19,000 is still here .

I sold my calves to one buyer for 5 years. Pretty simple sale. Took sale barn prices, I deducted what I would have to pay for commission and trucking and shrink loss. That was the starting point and went up from there. He calculated what his cost would be hauling, vet, shrink, time to get them back to gaining again, added that in and we had a price. We were both satisfied. This may not work for others but it work well for us. Good Times don't last forever........Bad Times don't either!

Good cattle are still bringing a a decent price but it doesn't pay to put on that extra 200# that I usually try to get before market time. This week I sold a trailer load of steers that averaged 500#, they sold for $2.10. I had one 700# on the load that only brought $130 more than the others. These calves were out of brangus/angus cows and angus bulls. They had been weaned over 60 days, nnalert, wormed and broke to a feed bunk.
I don't know of anyone that buys off of the farm anymore around here. Mainly because of the problems you had. There were a lot of people that only had a few acres that bought some $1000 calves last spring and fed them all summer. Now they are lucky to break even on the purchase price. It's a hard pill to swallow for most. Anyone who has been around for any time saw this coming. The cattle business seldom sees high prices, there are too many groups trying to derail the meat industry. Oh well these dips keep the faint at heart from getting in and flooding the market.

I don't know what feeders are doing,but fats are bouncing back some. After falling from the high dollar fifties,they had settled in to the low dollar thirties. I took two the first Monday of this month and about fainted when I got the check. $106 and 108. I took a load Monday of this week and they'd come back to $126-128.50

It amuses me to read CL and see the same cattle posted day after day at a lot higher than market prices.

The board price on feeders was in the low $1.90s yesterday. Have to have a gift to make that spread work. I could not do it.

The calves you describe should and would bring a premium any where, we still buy out the farm gate around here because there has been so
much consolidation in the auction barns there are not that many left and the closest one is 70 miles, the other problem is we have so many #2
cattle because of all the Braham and longhorn and cracker cow influence we don't get the buyers from the biggest feedlot outfits in the
panhandle and elsewhere. I buy mostly cows and breeding age heifers and use good Charolais or Hereford Bulls on them, they seem to clean
the calves up and take the leather and spots off of them better than angus Bulls, at least on the first cross. Heavy bred cows and pairs are
always in demand in my area and the culls go on pasture and on feed for 60-100 days then straight to Texas and sold on the rail.

I wonder what they were actually bringing at the sale barns? They were quoting $118-130 on fats Monday when I got that $126-128.50.
The only feeders they quoted were Holsteins. 4-500s were 120 to 175. 5-600s were 100-150 and 6-700s were 100-140. Most likely the colored cattle are being held back for the special feeder sale.
United Producers

One of the problems in farming is a lot of folks don't look at it as a business, they do things because they've always done it that way or because Dad or Grandpa always did. That'd not intended to be a slam on Dad or Grandpa but things change and markets have cycles. Two words of wisdom I've been exposed to over the years. 1 in the basic animal husbandry class a Michigan State University we were asked to judge or rank a group of steers, we did so. The Phd who taught the class for some reason was at the lab (labs were usually taught by the Grad students-period). After we were done and discussed the results the Dr. asked "which of these steers will be worth more at the sale barn?" Of course we replied the #3 steer (who was ranked #1), he replied nope the heaviest of the bunch will bring the most money. 2- There was and individual that worked down in Texas for a good portion of the 1900's, he traded cattle in horses from the mid 1920's through the early 1970's. He wrote a few books on his escapades in dealing in stock as well as providing veterinary services to ranches (some say he was a DVM but no one can find any record of him ever attending school or ever being licensed), in one of his books he was trying to explain why horse trading was more profitable than cattle trading. He said that it's to easy for cattle buyers to make a liar out of you, all they have to do to figure out what they're worth is to put 'em on a scale.

Most folks on this board understand the nature of commodity cycles, prices wax and wane. Prices go up, everyone jumps in (buying stock, land, equipment and feed at higher prices) with the increased supply prices fall so people get out (selling stock, land equipment and feed at lower or almost distressed prices). For my $.02 there's two ways to make money on markets like this, go counter cyclical (sell out when prices are high, buy in when prices are low). The other is to stay level, do the same year in and year out and hope on average make money. This means you don't ramp up or down unless you're trying to go counter cyclical.

That being said if any one wants to look at my 401K history it's pretty obvious I'm still trying to get the knack of the counter cyclical stuff.

I'm pretty sure the vet/author you mentioned is Ben Green. His books are funny and worth reading.
Horse Tradin

What is the best way to figure shrink? The closest sale barn to me is about 35 miles. My calves are around the 550lb. when I sell.What would they lose say there and back to my area. Thanks