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Cool story. Sounds like they’re doing their own butchering and distribution also. That helps maintain quality and increases the brand’s value without depending on a middleman. More profit also if this is the case.
They take the cow to a USDA meat packing plant and have them butcher and pack it That's required here (USDA approved) to sell beef to the public.
They opened up their own retail store (right on the farm) 2 years ago - it has been a huge success.
They take the cow to a USDA meat packing plant and have them butcher and pack it That's required here (USDA approved) to sell beef to the public.
They opened up their own retail store (right on the farm) 2 years ago - it has been a huge success.
Do they have a website? I’d prefer to support them than some soulless Corp. Feel free to message it if you’d prefer not to post it.
Unless you have a lot of money {and I do mean lots of money}, if you were not raised in a ranching environment and understand cattle ranching,expect to go broke.
Note the median income for a rancher is less than you want, and it requires a larger ranch to reach the median income, and it is not reached without a lot more hours a month than you are thinking.
HERE ARE EXAMPLES OF COST TO BUY A DECENT RANCH, AND THE SMALL ONES ARE NOT GOING TO NET $60,000 A YEAR. On smaller acreage, owners have a full time job, and ranch on the side.
I am not in the ranching business but I have had some relatives and friends who were/are family ranchers (as opposed to giant operations).
The people I have known that actually made significant money at it have had land in the family for many generations and they grew up in the business. They have had some major lean years too. The majority have a second job of some sort, whether working for someone else or running a business related to ranching. If you have to start out by buying or leasing pastureland I think you're already three steps behind financially. Just making a go of it tends to require everyone in a large family working on it.
Another thing to consider is that there's a vast body of knowledge that I can't imagine you can acquire except by a lifetime of experience. How much do you know about grass, for example? Well, think about it. You're going to have to become an expert on grass and grazing. What grasses are best for which terrain, for which stages in the life of the cattle, what do you do when there's either more or less rain than expected? What do you do to prevent encroachment of the various plants that want to come in and take over your carefully tended pasture, but which are not cattle food?
Which business strategy would you follow? There are ranchers who raise cattle clear from birth to market for slaughter, others buy yearlings and pasture them for a year or so then sell to a feedlot; and there are many many variations of business strategy. A given person may do things one way for a few years and then change based on how the market conditions seem to be changing. Will you own the cattle yourself (higher risk, but higher return) or raise them under contract to someone else (lower return, but some guarantee of income)? Are you familiar with all these strategies? Are you competent to negotiate with the other parties in each deal? Remember, you're brand new and you don't know what anything's worth and they've been doing this all their lives.
Do not make the mistake of assuming that because a rancher has dirt on his hands and sht on his boots and talks with a slow country drawl that he's stupid. He's probably smarter than you are and he knows his business top to bottom and inside out.
If you just want the feel and smell of ranching but you're not prepared to make a life study of a field you don't know anything about, I'd suggest buying a nice sized piece of pasture land with a house on it, in a ranching area, fencing the house and a couple acres and a barn for your own use, and leasing all the rest to a local rancher for his use.
OP, you might want to consider working for a while on an existing ranch, learn both how to do what needs doing, and find out if you are really cut out for this.
I have 13 acres and lease it to my neighbor, he runs a varying number of cow-calf pairs and a bull on my place. Irrigated pasture. I have been doing this for almost 30 years, and I am still learning things. Even though I am not really all that involved with the cattle - mostly just observe and contact the neighbor if I suspect a problem. They are his cattle after all.
Agree with most that for you to make $60K per year, even as gross profit, you would need a pretty big spread, and some luck in terms of buy/sell prices. If you can do as much as possible of the work yourself, that means more work for you, but more money as well.
Income is unlikely to be consistent. Maybe one year your bull dies. That will be a low-profit year. If you can get 50 head of cow-calf pairs through the season and not lose even one, you did good but you can't count on this every year.
Kind of like "horse sense", you need to have or develop "cow sense". That's not something I can talk you through over an internet board.
This is the clearest I got. Most like this says ranching is hard to make money. But we know small ranches exist all over. What gives?
This is what is called a stocker operation. If you don't even know there are different kinds of cattle ranches, maybe you need to rethink your retirement plans.
My grazing operation does not make much or any money. Vast majority of what I am paid goes for water, pump power, and property tax, in about that order. But I wanted some space around the house, the land has water rights and you have to pay the assessment annually. The cattle "mow" the pasture. The pasture being relatively short has fewer mice. Over the years I have re-engineered the irrigation system to take more advantage of the natural pressure from the irrigation ditch being higher than all of my land, in fact the lowest pasture now I generally don't run the pump at all, just let the rain birds run off gravity "head".
Of course there are the tax write-offs, and that helps.
This is what is called a stocker operation. If you don't even know there are different kinds of cattle ranches, maybe you need to rethink your retirement plans.
Strongly agree, that's why he would be better off working as a part-time ranch hand, to "learn the ropes" so to speak.
Bloomberg thinks farming is intellectually trivial, and not very hard to pull off. Typical of a "citiot", to think that, and he's dead wrong.
Strongly agree, that's why he would be better off working as a part-time ranch hand, to "learn the ropes" so to speak.
Bloomberg thinks farming is intellectually trivial, and not very hard to pull off. Typical of a "citiot", to think that, and he's dead wrong.
Yeah, Mr. Bloomberg, that's why so may people are rushing to get into the farming business...
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