Pricing heifers?

I agree with bootheel you have to get them from here to green grass with out ruining the good out of them. About being optimistic we made the deal today on our calves for next Dec at 1.50 live and they can't weigh over 1600 lbs with a 4% shrink now we have to keep the costs in line to make it work. Your other question is about commodity saleyard heifers and I think that may be right in the ballpark of where they need to be bought. The majority of them may have health and other costs that you cannot gamble on. Their still can be risk but we try to minimize them ie breeding, vaccinations, quite handling and quite cattle. Bob H

I haven't seen too much for replacement heifer calves sell yet but yesterday I attended the first bred heifer sale of the area- at Glasgow Livestock...
Prices were all over the board from some red angus pounded out at around $900-- to the top blacks selling at $1500...

A long time customer who brings in nice commercial bred heifers yearly had two lots-- one that were AI bred to Hinman Angus HA Program 5652
- and weighed around 920 that brought $1400... The second lot that was the same except bull bred to sons of In Focus brought $1500...(after the sale I talked to one of the ladies that bought most the bull bred ones and she said she went for them because of the In Focus bloodlines in the calves they were carrying- and that she had had good experience calving In Focus calves before)..

A good looking bunch of 50 head that weighed around 900 lbs brought from $1000 to $1100... Their low price came because the owner had no idea how they were bred as the neighbors bulls (Char, red angus, Sim, Sim-angus X) all had gotten in with the heifers for some time before it was discovered...

The best buy of the sale imo was a small bunch (5) of a little smaller framed heifers that weighed 850- bred to LBW angus bulls to calve March 25-May 20 that sold for $1035...

I see Miles City sold some 860 lb. black bred heifers on Tuesday for $1250...They also had a few 3/4 year old bred cows bring $1050-1100---and some old short termers bring $900...

Many folks are still thinking tho that these bred heifers could easily be worth $2000 come about Feb- if we have a little moisture this winter...

Oldtimer wrote:

Many folks are still thinking tho that these bred heifers could easily be worth $2000 come about Feb- if we have a little moisture this winter...

Big difference between coffee shop talk and actually locking in a deal like BobH has. Talk in the spring here was 5 weight steer calves would be $2/lb by fall - well they aren't - they are lower than last year and $200 off the $2 value. Some guys started to get excited in May/June buying put together groups of auction ring heifers to breed at $1200-$1300 because they were going to be $1800 or $2000 by fall. Some of these guys will be lucky to get their purchase price back. And we are not short of feed - certainly for bred cows/heifers - country is full of $60 ton/hay and barley is $5.50-$6 bu.

Saw some heavy 5 weights bring $171 today. It ran a thrill up my leg a little, until I booked fuel at 4.08, then I got a little depressed until I ran the numbers for the farm ground and it got a little better, but my 7 weight steers brought 1.42 and that sounded good, until I rememered I sold 9 weights for the same price in 2002 when fuel was a little over a buck and I got depressed again. Then the wife returned home and I had a beer and nice hot bath and life looked a little better. Anything else I need to get depressed about Grassfarmer?



Bootheel, repressing