The Cost of a Cow: Part 2 - Finishing

Alright, so from Part 1, we figured out that it costs about $678 to feed a cow and it's calf to the end of the calendar year if the calf is born in April.  At this point, we'll assume that the cow's feed is now assigned to the next calf she is going to birth, so we aren't including her feed in the cost of finishing this calf.  

So, we have a calf, born in April and we've fed it through December.  Now, we feed it until grass is ready again, so we have another four months of feedlot costs at $2.30/head/day or a total $276 through the end of April.   That calf is now a year old, or a yearling.  Our total cost is now $954 against that yearling calf for feed.  The yearling should be about 800-1000 lb now for one of my animals.

Now the yearling goes to grass.  From May through October, it's feed costs are again $30/month.  Six months of feed will be $180.   Our total feed costs for that 18 month old feeder animal is now $1134. 

When the animals are larger, they slow down on their weight gain because they're trying to grow bones at this point as well.  They don't gain as fast also if you're doing a grass finished animal which reduces the carbohydrates (aka energy to a cattle nutritionist) available to the animal.  If your yearling animal gains 2lb/day on grass without any nutritional supplements, you're doing really, really well and have excellent quality feed. 

Let's say your yearling is 900 lb at 1 year, and it gains 1.5lb/day on grass for 180 days.  So in six months of grazing, it gains 270 lb to have it be 1170lb by the end of October.  

For grass finished, larger-framed animals such as mine, 1170lb is a bit too light for good marbling and tender steaks.  So, we have to go back into the feedlot with the animal.  Since it doesn't have to "work" for it's feed now, it will gain about 2lb/day again without adding grain into the forage mix.  Two months in the feedlot should get it to 1300 lb at a cost of $2.30/day or $138.   Our total cost of feed for the animal ready to be butchered is now $1272.

Not bad, right?  For a 1300 lb steer, you'd get around 500 lb of meat, which puts you at an out of pocket cost of $2.54/lb of meat in the freezer.

Not so fast.  We haven't accounted for many, many other costs associated with raising a cow.  The biggest cost left out being butchering, but there are also costs per cow including fencing repairs/depreciation, vaccinations, ear tags, mineral/salt, rotational fencing depreciation, cow and calf mortality, and last but rarely accounted for, labor.  

In Part 3, I'm going to do my best to characterize all the per cow costs and summarize the butchering, which I did address in another blog linked here.   

Part 4 will be fencing and labor and Part 5 will be the final summary.   

These are some fat heiferettes.  They would be considered to be at or near finishing weight.  This bunch averaged 1238 lb after a 4% shrink.