Canadian dairy farmer

[rrlund]

So is everybody hoping for more of that free government cheese or what?

 

[oldwrencher]

I have an excess of very good grass hay inside, in rolls . thank goodness I have many deep hollars to deposit it in as no one wants to buy it unless I sell it for nothing and deliver it for free. I will find something else to do besides hay !

 

[Traditional Farmer]

The gov't being in farming is the original problem,they create problems then come up with so called solutions.

 

[Traditional Farmer]

Save it for next year might be a dry year and hay in demand.Big surplus of hay in my area this year too.

 

[r.w.b.]

i had nuff of poor milk prices. grade A was cheep at the milk tank but same milk after adulterating it was expensive. heard lots of you make too much.
feild mad for milk company had a used car salesman kinda line of crap about their expenses. id open back door on my barn n say look 100 jerseys at $900 per head 50 holsteins at $1300 per head alone is a lot of money. i decided plastic jugs must be very expensive.
9 and a half years was nuff for me.sold out n let somebody else open the gate on em.
made lots more selling hay than i ever did milking plus the heifers i raised made more money than they did milking them.
kept on farming and went back to trucking.
in top of my door way in my storage shed i hung a new germania milker where i almost hit my head on it to remember never do anything that stupid again

 

[rrlund]

I sold my cows for $1200 a head in the fall of 2003. Got a check for more than I'd ever seen in my life. I had started buying up bred beef cows a year earlier. They were selling for fire sale prices at the time. I bought small herds as cheap as $375 a head, didn't pay over $725 for anything. They drop a calf in the spring, I wean it in the fall and feed it out. I've sold 8 so far this year. Averaged $2175 a head so far. Had one steer brought $2460, more than twice what I got for my dairy cows. It's a self filling process. An auctioneer friend calls it a revolving door. It'a like selling my dairy herd every year but never having to milk them.

This post was edited by rrlund on 02/02/2023 at 04:50 am.

 

[BarnyardEngineering]

(quoted from post at 05:46:18 02/02/23) I sold my cows for $1200 a head in the fall of 2003. Got a check for more than I'd ever seen in my life. I had started buying up bred beef cows a year earlier. They were selling for fire sale prices at the time. I bought small herds as cheap as $375 a head, didn't pay over $725 for anything. They drop a calf in the spring, I wean it in the fall and feed it out. I've sold 8 so far this year. Averaged $2175 a head so far. Had one steer brought $2460, more than twice what I got for my dairy cows. It's a self filling process. An auctioneer friend calls it a revolving door. It'a like selling my dairy herd every year but never having to milk them.

This post was edited by rrlund on 02/02/2023 at 04:50 am.

Dad sold out in 2007 in about the same way, and tried jockeying cattle for a while after that.

His experience trying to sell dairy replacements was about the same as oldwrencher's experience selling hay. Even though he was well known for growing robust healthy heifers that made good milkers, nobody wanted them unless you gave them away and delivered them for free.

They brought more sold as cull cattle than as bred heifers. So he quit raising heifers and started raising steers. You could buy a weaned Holstein steer for about nothing, and the feed was basically "free." Holstein steers aren't worth a whole lot but the profit margin was much better than trying to raise one of the "designer" breeds.

 

[BarnyardEngineering]

(quoted from post at 15:23:24 02/01/23) Here in the US they just lower the commodity price of milk, for
all the good it does. When the price goes down, the answer is to
add on, push the cows harder, make up for the shortfall on volume.
When the price goes up, the answer is to add on, push the cows
harder, and take advantage of the high prices.

I've said that for 40 years.

People still look at me like I am crazy!

Heck I'm surprised that nobody's called me crazy or a liar in this thread. When I say that, someone usually does.

I remember my folks being worried about making the mortgage payment on the farm because milk prices were so low, only to hear that the neighbor was adding on 50 more cows.

 

[Bruce from Can.]

Most days dairy animals sell for about the same price for meat as they sell for as replacements. Being able to now get a heifer calf every time has totally ruined the dairy cow market. Every dairy farmer can have too many extra replacement heifers. I was breeding half my cows to Black Angus bulls, because the black calves brought more money than a dairy calf would. I also sold quite a few of my good milk cows for $1,200.00, last fall. And happy not to just not send good milk cows off to slaughter.

 

[rrlund]

Milk prices started to climb just about the time I sold my cows, so my heifers were worth more than the cows. I bred them and sold all of them as springers and was averaging around $1800 for those. I sold an Angus cull cow in November that brought $1080. I bought her a year ago as an older bred cow for $925. I got a live calf but her bag was huge and I had to bottle feed the calf for two days before it got ahold of her. She raised it up alright. I didn't want to keep her around with that bag and luckily she didn't breed back. If she had, I'd have probably been fool enough to try her ''one more time'' and probably wouldn't have fared so well.

 

[550Doug]

(quoted from post at 12:13:49 02/01/23) I should point out also that the system isnt as ridge as
this gentleman would have you believe. There is a
production sleeve, which allows him to produce 10
days worth of his herds production over his quota and
receive full payment for his milk on the 10 days of over
production, before he would face any penalty for
shipping milk over his quota. So he knew he was over
producing last month and probably the month before
as well, but didnt manage his production. And over
the las 8 months his farm would have been given 4%
quota increase free of charge, to match up with market
increases. So this farm would have been given roughly
$150,000.00 worth of production quota at no cost.

Thank you Bruce for your insights and schooling us on the finer details.

 

[John Deere D]

For every greedy immigrant that looks at Canada,I wish they would stay in their Nation of birth!

No one with any brains exits their nation by birth,before they check into the rules of their adopted Nation !

Canada is being flooded with these self serving people!

 

[Stuart]

The US dairy farmers dont work that cheap. They dont have it as bad as you hear on the radio or tv

 

[centash]

I agree with Bruce 100 percent.....I'm sure Bruce will Remember the butter mountain the milk board had years ago and dumping skim milk powder on the world market for next to nothing. As dairy farmers, we at that time, paid storage on non perishable dairy products and took a cut in price for industrial grade milk to offset the losses from skim milk powder sold internationally. As trade rules tightened it was deemed better to cut production....that is to reduce quotas....than it was to continue to store excess product. Selling over production on the world market led to numerous trade disputes from other countries selling on the world market, accusing Canada of unfairly subsidizing export dairy products, thus undercutting the price these countries hoped to receive for their exports. I can't say the current system is better or worse, but regulating your product to ensure orderly marketing and fair prices to all seems to me to be a better way.

Having said that, if milk is selling for 7 dollars a liter, it might be a good time to re enter the business...what do you think, eh, Bruce?...lol!

Ben

 

[ss55]

What does that farm price convert to in $US/cwt?

44 liter/cwt x $0.95 CDN = $41.80 $CDN/cwt
X 0.75 $CDN/$US
= $31.35 $US/cwt ?

The current farm price in the US is what - around $24.70 $US/cwt ? The farmer in the rant video is getting 27 percent more than the US price.

Seems like he would he be better off trying to achieving the most efficient production within his quota. It is easy to loose sight of the big picture when one is overworked and only looking at the smaller details.

Most consumers are smart enough to realize that their retail milk cost would be much lower without the quota system propping up prices.

 

[coonie minnie]

Us is backing off... mailbox likely around $20-21, headed lower.

 

[Bruce from Can.]

Where do you have to go to pay 7 bucks a litre, way up in the Yukon? Or some Inuit village only accessible by plane ?
This guy has already over produced his quota by 10 days, before he faced any penalty. He needs to manage his herd production to match his quota. Naturally if he wants out of the business, there has been at least 20,000 kg of quota bid to purchase in the monthly quota exchange for the past two years. There are plenty of other farmers ready to buy out his quota if he doesnt like the business.

 

[BarnyardEngineering]

(quoted from post at 08:43:39 02/02/23) The US dairy farmers dont work that cheap. They dont have it as bad as you hear on the radio or tv

Yeah, they work for even less.

Canada is getting US$31 and change for their milk.

US is down around US$20.

Most of the 30-odd years Dad milked cows, milk was closer to $10 than $20. Heck if milk was $20 when I graduated high school in 1992, when it should have been at least $20, I may never have left for greener pastures.