Victorian Cattle producer Jenny Bird writes: Location
This feed on steer job is beginning to look like a waste of time and effort.
Sowing oats and rye on the promise of rain ……..was meant to be started on Monday…..but that’s how farming goes sometimes!!!
Sent another 64 head of steers to my father’s 400 acres of hill ….he’s got more grass than me this season …waiting for a lift in the feedlot price!!!
I have the second B Double of Angus pictured below ready to roll out and locked in at $1:85 to go in 6 weeks time. but the coloured cattle price has to go up over $1:80 to pay the extra trucking costs. It is all starting to get scary.
Some of the ‘coloured’ milk and 2 tooth steers are pictured below. Their weight range is 420 to 480 kg and thirty head consume a silage roll every second day while they have been on the last of the irrigated pasture. Tomorrow they are locked out of the sown paddocks and have silage only. This dam they are beside has a 20 mg water licence anad can be replenished from the lagoon and dams above it.
So the plan is to get 150 acres under oats and rye pictured below and get as much silage put away early in spring and re sow suitable paddocks with perennial…and pray for rain!
I will do a few smaller paddocks with perennial just as a test to see what I could have got away with!!! But the better perennial mixture of ryes and clovers is $5 to $12 a kg…..so I opted for some the local favourite at $3:70 a kg. I’m not a big gambler!
The mountains are capped with snow and the record lowest temperatures on record have put the wind up me too. Frosts are predicted for the next week or so. The whole exercise has cost double what I had budgeted on 12 months ago.
Fuel delivered on farm was $1:72 a week ago before the big price rise…..I am not game to re order before I go for the over draft extension!!! The contractor Mark pictured below is the cheapest cost of all at $60 a hectare ……I felt so guilty I have offered to fill his tank before he pulls out tomorrow.
Sowing rates are at 80 kg oats (at $300 a tonne)/ 8 kg annual rye (at $2 a kg)/ 80 kg DAP (at $1630 a tonne) to the hectare. DAP $1600 a tonne bagged…………$4800 Oats $300 X 3.3 tonne off farm and $550 X 1 tonne cleaned and private buy……..$1540 Annual rye $3 X 400kg……..$1200 (Couldn’t afford the $12 a kg perennial) Double spraying out as the weeds got away again……..$3000 Sowing contractor $60 per hectare………$2500 plus diesel.
So 40 hectares of potential growth and potential silage with maybe a chance to strip graze the irrigated 25 acres pictured below will mean I may be able to better than double the 300 steers and 50 cows and calves I turned off it in the last 6 months.
The buy in price of weaners is more than you can see getting for the 450 kg product after drench and trucking costs. Doing $9000 silage rolls and then feed them, $9000 on 60 litres of Fasimec….and thousands on Pestigard….. sweat tears of blood waiting for the price to lift and worry if the cattle are going to fit into a Swift grid targeted at the milk and 2 tooth 380 to 499kg empty weight with the crunch back to $1:83 for those over and under with no compensation for doing them twice with Pesigard at $8 a head!
There’s got to be an easier way of making money……let me know when you find it will you?
My estimated input costs have doubled!!!
It wouldn’t hurt so much if you could see it back in the steer price or could look forward to $2500 a hectare return for your grain in 7 months time……..but this feed on steer job is beginning to look like a waste of time and effort.
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Farm input costs are rising, how are you coping?.
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Tags: Farming
Hi there Jenny, get ready to start growing trees, the world is run by idiots and green zealots these days and the only way to survive will be to join the lunacy. I read today that Caltex expect to be paying $40/tonne for carbon permits once C trading begins in Aus, add to that the reality that you will need to purchase permits to emit for your cattle and the prospect of being a food producer after 2010 looks bleak. Forget commonsense and the need for people to eat, that kind of thinking is now archaic. Its been superseded by spin which fuels the media which runs the world. I estimate that my property (2000 acres) will produce $800,000 worth of carbon a year and there are no direct input costs, the trees are growing naturally. I do however need to do some study so that I can complete the paper warfare without the need for too many middle men. Once carbon trading starts most farmers will find tree growing is the only viable option. The rest of the world can’t see how stupid this is, we farmers need to take advantage of their stupidity and ensure our own survival so that there will be someone around when the inevitable crash comes to set the world on a sensible course again.
G’day Charlie,
If you had clicked on “Subscribe to Comments” you’d get an email as soon as someone had replied to you or anyone else commented on this article.
Thats if you want to follow the comments and reply to people who reply to your comment of course.
Yes Charlie I heard this sh…surprising news today too! Have to agree with you but can someone tell me how many blades of grass or crop equate with a gum tree? Are the Chinese paulownia trees better ‘carbon eaters” than gum trees because they have a broader leaf? Cabbages have lots of leaves…wouldn’t they be better? They create flatulence so I guess they aren’t the best alternative to suggest! The world has gone crazy! Time to step off perhaps……..book a flight on the next inter planet tour. Jen….but we can’t lose our sense of humour , can we? Or should we?
G’day Jenny,
If you had clicked on the “Reply to this comment” under Charliesy our comment would have been a continuation of Charlies Comment.
In other words you would be replying directly to him. I’m only writing this so you and others can see how this works - It’s brilliant because anyone can make a statement and others can comment on that statement rather than the article and you can follow it, because its all one thread.
I’ll show you what I mean - I’ll reply to Charlie after you have made this comment and see where it appears.
I know you will get this automatically because you ticked “Subscribe to comments by email” - Well done.
Mmmm! Speed reading again!Thanks! I was only a teacher for 27 years (of intellectually disadvantaged teenagers…I taught how to get a job and keep it!) and back then computers weren’t invented! I’ll try to do better Sir.
Am a bit brain dead from checking NLIS buttons for traceability. We have bitten the bullet and locked 350 in to go to Swifts (AMH)….we can’t afford to send more than 10% NOT LT in a day. It is those non reading buttons that cause surprises along with the ones that lose them around the silage feeders the day before they truck out!
Price??? Angus $1:88 if they hit the targetted weight weight 380 to 449 kg empty for milk and 2 tooth or back to $1:83. Black Baldy (Midfed 1)Milk and 2 tooth, 380 to 499 kg empty $1:75 or back to $1:70. There is no payment for the thousands of dollars worth of Pestigard we have needled the Angus with. The Angus were destined to go elsewhere but aren’t now….the Japanese have pulled out of the contract over night. So we’re a bit busy! In this feed-on caper you ahve to have something up your sleeve to survive the surprises. Jen…am off to buy another tonne of DAP and sow a few more acres. Dairy heifers at $9 a head a week agistment may look good in spring!