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Western Ontario | My grandpa always used to say that timing had a lot to do with the success of a rain dance, I sold 900lb grass yearlings on Tuesday September 4,2001…..I didn’t want to, usually held them until mid October but I was out of grass and didn’t want to buy feed for a month….9/11 happened and by mid October those same cattle were worth $200/hd less, was a difference of $40k back when $40k was a significant amount of money lol. The other side of that coin was interest rates on mortgages cratered in the next 2 months, we had a couple renewals and we were able to knock 5 years off the amortization and keep our payments the same. The heifers I bought that morning were the most expensive feeder(plan was to breed and sell) cattle we had ever purchased 750lbs @$1.30/lb (can). I told my wife the start of August that we could sell them and take a $35k hit or borrow some more money and breed them for ourselves and spread the pain out over 4 or 5 years. They turned out to be a great set of cows and lasted a long time but they were crazy times. There were lots of really good cattlemen around this area that went out of business from BSE not because they weren’t doing a good job but market timing went against them. | |
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Cattle Cycle... is this time different ?
