dinderleat
Member
- Location
- Wells
It’s the opportunity cost of the calf as in if you sold it
Heifer costs.
- Thread starter had e nuff
- Start date
It’s the opportunity cost of the calf as in if you sold it
So value bullers at say £320/350?
@Bald Rick your bullers, I'd be very interested at the above figure, or within 20 quid either way.
We crunched the numbers to see if it was worth going flying herd ........ and it wasn't by a long way partly due to risk of buying in disease but also genetic improvement. Most calves we register pedigree now have PLIs in excess of £350
IIRC we costed rearing from calf to calving at around 1150 but I know for a fact that I have to pay a minimum of £1500 for point of calving Danish heifers on my yard and that will depend on Brexit & the strength of the pound v Euro
(of course these are Jerseys in a housed system calving at 22-24 months. Holsteins I wouldn't have a clue but unlikely to be much over £1400?)
rusty
Member
- Location
- Buxton Derbyshire
Just about to loose 4 R1's 10 months old due to gamma test £450 each
2 R2's 22 months old in calf to sexed for August £810 each.
15 milking cows £1216
1 pedigree Hereford stock bull £2650
1 non pedigree lim stock bull £950, only purchased early March for £2000! And passed 3 skin tests since then also.
2 R2's 22 months old in calf to sexed for August £810 each.
15 milking cows £1216
1 pedigree Hereford stock bull £2650
1 non pedigree lim stock bull £950, only purchased early March for £2000! And passed 3 skin tests since then also.
Sparkymark
Member
This
Martyn
Member
- Location
- South west
Hang on you, iv already written the cheque the other night on price displayed, dont you start undercuting!!
Princess Pooper
Member
- Location
- East Mids
Autumn calving - as we are - immediately adds a big cost for first winter, mainly labour, straw and then mucking out, plus ours get 2 tags (
) even before they lose any, intranasal vaccine against pneumonia (£6/hd), IBR, we do allow for a rent even though it's owned land and BPS and HLS do not detract from the cost of rearing them. We are on heavy clay soils adjacent to a river that is an SSSI so outwintering not an option, much colder winter and spring so grass growth is impeded, often a dry summer so we usually feed a kg at grass. A quad bike for shepherding 25 heifers costs the same as a quad bike for shepherding 200 heifers, same for tractors etc so we lose on overheads again.
Then it then also depends how you allocate your general overheads. Which enterprise bears the cost of accountancy, office, running the farm vehicles, phones, insurance, sundries, water rates etc etc - do the milkers bear all of that, perhaps on a per litre basis? Is that necessarily right? Those costs have to be accounted for somewhere for the total costs of running the farm to be correct. I seem to remember when we worked our costs out we allocated indirect overheads on a per acre basis, so if say 15% of the farm area was taken up for heifer rearing then 15% of all those overheads were allocated against the heifers. If those costs are ignored by the milking enterprise as well then we all apparently have wonderfully low costs of milk production as well as wonderfully low costs of heifer rearing.
Some people also allow for labour by saying 'OK, Joe spends x hrs a day with the calves until weaning, then y hrs when they are at grass' etc. They then do the same for the milkers, and never check whether the 2 add up to Joe's total cost, including er's NI, pension, etc, forgetting that a lot of the time, Joe is actually on holiday, on training courses, on general jobs around the farm. He may not be doing something directly attributable to either cows or calves but he's doing something!
I'm not saying there's a right or wrong way, just that all costs have to be accounted for in some way or other.
Princess Pooper
Member
- Location
- East Mids
They will need to be the best to make that trade.
Princess Pooper
Member
- Location
- East Mids
They're good calves, but they'll have milk intakes of 10l/day + be eating cake and forage when they are sold, and remember we are HF x not grazing rats.
10l and cake at 4 weeks? They sure will be marching on.
Farmer Keith
Member
- Location
- North Cumbria
Maybe what it really comes down to is can you out winter them for the second winter. That’s where a huge chunk of the cost comes in in terms of housing, labour, bedding and s#%t handling costs?
It looks like those that can are in the £6-800 range and those that can’t are looking to be over £1100 somewhere. It obviously helps if you block calve and can run an entire years worth as one group.
It looks like those that can are in the £6-800 range and those that can’t are looking to be over £1100 somewhere. It obviously helps if you block calve and can run an entire years worth as one group.
betweenthelines
Member
- Location
- southwest
A lot depends on your replacement rate though, doesn't it? 25% and that's a lot of cost and land devoted to just maintaining your numbers.
Lower the rate to 15% and that's less time, housing and land (so keep a few more cows?) plus a quicker increase in genetic potential, because you're only breeding from the top 30% not the best half of your herd.
Lower the rate to 15% and that's less time, housing and land (so keep a few more cows?) plus a quicker increase in genetic potential, because you're only breeding from the top 30% not the best half of your herd.
Princess Pooper
Member
- Location
- East Mids
There wasn't any land rental value in that detailed costing above. I'd love to be able to buy or rent land for free that's good enough for rearing heifers to calve at two years, I'm sure we'd all be up for that!
d williams
Member
The bull?
Farmer Keith
Member
- Location
- North Cumbria
Very true, things like rental value are very farm specific I suppose and as has been said most farms will have ground unsuitable for milkers/silage that would still be to pay for if you were to buy replacements in but it’s still a very valid point from a costings perspective.
It’s obviously something as farmers we have very little control over, we just have to pay the going rate in our local area, where as we have a lot more control over our wintering costs which make up the lions share of it in terms of heifer rearing I suppose.
- Location
- somerset
we bought a 17 bulling hfrs, jerx and frx out of Exeter last summer, average £321, kicked ourselves for not buying more!
but the true cost of rearing, is influenced by several major 'things' the biggest probably being the survival rate of the hf calves, if you calve 10 cows to get 5 hfr calves and then lose 2, which i'm told is quite common ! and you factor that against say 9 bb calves... then feed is the next cost, we use acidified milk, very low cost, others will use milk powder, the different growth rates between the best powders, and the cheapest, is very noticeable. have you got a 'dedicated' person doing the calves, or are they fed just when you get round to it (understandable). do you give them enough conc, do you give them good grass, or the odd bit round the corner, and then, do they calve at 24 months or 30 months, or 36 months, its quite common to see big strong fresh hfrs in mkt, have a look how old they are, plenty 3-4 yrs old, in a current catalogue I see there is one nearly 7 yrs. looking at all these things, without costing in labour, rent,finance, you can easily see why the average cost is high. for the record, excluding the year we had crypto, we reckon about £700, the crypto year about £2000 !!!!!!
but the true cost of rearing, is influenced by several major 'things' the biggest probably being the survival rate of the hf calves, if you calve 10 cows to get 5 hfr calves and then lose 2, which i'm told is quite common ! and you factor that against say 9 bb calves... then feed is the next cost, we use acidified milk, very low cost, others will use milk powder, the different growth rates between the best powders, and the cheapest, is very noticeable. have you got a 'dedicated' person doing the calves, or are they fed just when you get round to it (understandable). do you give them enough conc, do you give them good grass, or the odd bit round the corner, and then, do they calve at 24 months or 30 months, or 36 months, its quite common to see big strong fresh hfrs in mkt, have a look how old they are, plenty 3-4 yrs old, in a current catalogue I see there is one nearly 7 yrs. looking at all these things, without costing in labour, rent,finance, you can easily see why the average cost is high. for the record, excluding the year we had crypto, we reckon about £700, the crypto year about £2000 !!!!!!