beanplanter - 1/16/2025 11:48
12thMan - 1/16/2025 07:31 I agree, not much talk of hoops and confinement. The folks that did that last time got scorched and are probably now storing boats and campers in the hoop. Bred heifers and bred cows are bringing top dollar continent wide but is it expansion or replacement. $5k (talking about the Canadian snow peso) for a bred sounds like a lot of money but if you just sent a 9 year old cull cow, got $2500 for her and her steer calf brought $2500 this past fall is that all bad?? The things I keep hearing continent wide are low pasture availability, hay and pasture ground that’s been converted to crop ground and the fences aren’t going back up, older producers that aren’t looking for any more work/can’t find labour and the young guy that maybe wants 30 cows needs to scrape up $120-150k and pay 8% interest with crazy equipment/pasture/hay and overheads. It’s not that I think this time is different but might get stretched out a bit. My question for everybody on here is where is the cow herd expanding?? Correct me if I’m wrong but sounds like parts of Texas and that Missouri have better feed resources than the last couple years but are they expanding or just rebuilding closer to numbers of 2-3 years ago, any other areas expanding, honest question because as Saskman asks how do we know this is the final push, to actually expand cow herd first we need to take a significant amount of heifers out of the slaughter mix??
I think people are underestimating the affects of the green belt giving up. They didn't "sell down", they gave up. 30-50 acre per cow territories can't cause a bounce/crash to move the needle like the one to two acre per cow areas can. Areas of Texas definitely can as those guys get in and out in mass all the time, but we're not hearing much about it this time around.
Two full years of non stop dispersals on the radio has lead to being able to buy all the hay you want for well below the cost of production right now and the radio is still listing dispersals for every monthly "special" cow sale. The guys are 60-70 years old so there's no way in hell they're buying cows again and their kids left 20 year ago. Those who haven't already plowed it under seem more than content to mine the hills and just sell whatever hay it makes for whatever price it brings. They're old, they don't care, their kids are gone, a farm sale to hunter is the next step. More land has changed hands in the last year than ever in my lifetime and no sane person is buying it at these prices to put it back to grass.
"It's different this time" has always been right, but the "difference" has rarely been statistically significant. A slow drip is barely noticed. It'll be a while before we see if this one was just another drip. Here locally, the old farts went to bed with the well running so it's up to Texas and the rest of the country to prove they didn't and that it'll bounce back.
You said a mouthful about land changing hands. That seems to be the case everywhere currently and it sure doesn't pencil to run some cows and try to make payments on what it is costing.