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First let me thank you all for opening my thread. I want to give you a little background on myself before I present some questions. I am a 22 year old male who has wanted to farm his entire life. I used to have several uncles who farmed and my father raises vegetables on his 10 acre spread in North Central ohio. I have always tried to pursue anything I could to expand my opportunities, whether it was working for neighboring farmers, reading, talking to people, on up to going to college and getting my Associates degree in Crop Management. In a perfect world, I would have inherited a 1000 acres and a full line of equipment. The world isn't nearly perfect, so I have 4 old tractors and some even older equipment that my father uses to do his "farming". I have always been interested in the dairy end of things but more interested in crop farming. When I went to college, I worked on several local dairies(Wayne County, Ohio is the dairy capital of the state) and gained a lot of experience. I am definetly not an expert, but I do know enough to have gotten hired at a state prison to instruct and supervise inmates on their 200 cow dairy farm. Toward the end of my college career, and even since, I have tossed around the idea of someday wanting to either be highly involved on a dairy farm or having my own. The ideal situation would be finding a partner to farm with who is a lot more of a cow person and each of us managing our own side of the business but contributing to all of it. I worked for such a farm in college, it was 2 brothers who farmed together. With the right personality types and a certain degree of management it works very well.
Anyway, I digress. The idea of having my own dairy is so strong that when the opportunity came up in August I bought a 4 month old heifer. The idea is to raise her to breeding age, breed her with sexed semen, and then lease her to someone after she freshens. This will allow me to keep expanding my "herd" and building equity while also keeping my (good) paying state job to pay off some credit card debt I foolishly created in college and also paying off my school loans.
With just the one, I don't think I'll have trouble finding someone I trust to take her. However, I have been thinking about seeing if I could get a loan and buy "some"(2-10-20?) bred heifers and lease them also. The biggest problem I can see right now is finding someone who would lease them right now as anyone I am interested in leasing them to probably only put up enough corn silage for the cows they had in the herd. I suppose you could scrimp and make it last but trying to feed 80 cows on 60 cows worth of corn silage is kinda iffy.
Has anyone ever leased cows before? I am curious what the typical rate is? I was thinking $1.50/day while milking and the farmer feeds them while dry. Would that be out of line? I would keep all the calves and they would probably go to my fathers house to be raised unless the farmer was willing to raise them too. In that case obviously he would pay less for the lease. Who stands the death loss if the cows die? Can you buy insurance for that? What is the typical term for financing dairy cattle? I know Farm Credit shows a 3, 5, or 7 year loan. Figuring 3 lactations, would they still let you go with a 5 year loan? What are bred heifers worth? Breeds would be holstein and possibly brown swiss if I could find some reasonable. If I were to ever have my partnership I have person in mind to be my cow guy and he comes from a Brown Swiss family so the thought was to eventually have about a 50/50 Brown Swiss/Holstein herd.
Long term plan is to find, lease and be at least part time farming in 5-10 years depending. I have a farm back home that would fit this situation perfectly if I could get it rented/bought but that is a ways off yet. First priority is to get the bad stuff paid off and try to get the rest paid off and save some cash. Then second priority is possibly to get transfered to a prison closer to there so I could possibly try to start milking while still working full time to keep that steady income. Then the other "first priority" is get the farm running smoothly enough and bringing in enough cash I could support myself. Also in there is another "first priority" which is to keep the girlfriend happy and eventually get married. I guess that is first priority after getting the bad debt paid off and before anything else.
Anyway--enough ramblings. If you have made it this far, I thank you reading my post and thank you in advance for your thoughts. I welcome and appreciate them all even if you are going to tell me something other than what I want to hear.
Thanks again
Mike
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Buying/Leasing Dairy Cattle
