Fall cattle prices

[ss55]

What you are talking about are niche markets. If every farmer around started doing that none would make money. Much the same as the corn on the side of the highway. When one guy was doing it local he was making 40 thousand a year. 3 or 4 more guys jumped in to get some cash. 3 years later they all quit because there overhead was to high for what they sold. You split 40 thousand between 4 guys is only 10 each. Can’t sell more local for inflated prices no matter how many people do it. I sell butter off the farm for $8 a lbs.
Walmart sells for $5.50. Only 15-20 people will buy my butter. If someone else jumps in and sells the same for less money I will quit because I can’t loose the customers I have or it’s not worth it.
It always amazes me at how a small amount of people will pay double the price thinking it is a better product because it is local and fed differently or better.
The local feed lot sells farm raised beef local and it’s a huge feedlot. Gets fed just like all the stuff you buy in the store.

What I would like to see is our local butcher shops should be able to sell to the stores in all the towns, cities. Walmart should be able to fill its coolers with local beef. Not trucked from 5000 or more miles away.
Same as there vegetables.

The government is proposing to allow farmers and ranchers to process and sell their own beef direct to consumers exempt from any USDA requirements or inspections. Will small local butcher shops be able to compete with that or will even more local butcher shops go out of business?

 

[rrlund]

What you are talking about are niche markets. If every farmer around started doing that none would make money. Much the same as the corn on the side of the highway. When one guy was doing it local he was making 40 thousand a year. 3 or 4 more guys jumped in to get some cash. 3 years later they all quit because there overhead was to high for what they sold. You split 40 thousand between 4 guys is only 10 each. Can’t sell more local for inflated prices no matter how many people do it. I sell butter off the farm for $8 a lbs.
Walmart sells for $5.50. Only 15-20 people will buy my butter. If someone else jumps in and sells the same for less money I will quit because I can’t loose the customers I have or it’s not worth it.
It always amazes me at how a small amount of people will pay double the price thinking it is a better product because it is local and fed differently or better.
The local feed lot sells farm raised beef local and it’s a huge feedlot. Gets fed just like all the stuff you buy in the store.

What I would like to see is our local butcher shops should be able to sell to the stores in all the towns, cities. Walmart should be able to fill its coolers with local beef. Not trucked from 5000 or more miles away.
Same as there vegetables.

I've sold cattle to individuals as long as I've had them, but my customer list gets smaller every year. We had two this year. You make an appointment at the slaughter house, I'll run him over the scale and deliver him for you. We have people asking all the time about buying one. We always tell them the price per pound, always just a few cents over what we got at the sale barn for the last load we took, then tell them approximately what they weigh. They'll ask how much that's going to be, roughly. When we tell them, and tell them that they'll owe the slaughter house another $700-800 for butchering, cutting and wrapping. Their jaws drop, their voice gets weak and they say "I thought I'd get it cheap buying it this way!". I can show you the check stub and show you what we get direct deposited. I don't have to hope you pay me. Even when beef was cheap, I got the same reaction. Two guys who were brothers in law wanted to split one. I gave them a price per pound, told them about what it would weigh, but either they weren't listening or didn't do the math. I weighed it and loaded it while they were standing fight here. Each half came to about $800. One of them looked like he was either going to scream or cry. He said "I thought it'd be about half of that!".

That's just how it goes though. They think they'll get it for nothing buying off the farm. Sorry folks, I'm not going to sell it for less than I can get at the sale barn, and if you can't pay me 2 cents a pound extra for putting in the scale platform, sorting off one steer when it's not sale day, then burning gas to haul just one instead of selling a load at a time, I'm not going to the trouble. We ran an add one time when prices were low, trying to sell more that way. Didn't sell a single one. Oh we got calls and emails, but No, they're not organic. Yes, we feed GMO corn. No, we won't haul it 150 miles. No we won't take payments. No, we don't take food stamps.

I know two guys who sell packaged beef off the farm. One opened a small farm store and sells fresh produce, eggs, things like that too, the other one just has a couple of freezers. Both of them absolutely hate dealing with the people they deal with, but now they don't want to give up the income, but if anybody thinks about retailing that way, talk to those guys first. A check or direct deposit from the sale barn looks pretty good when you listen to their stories about all the Karens and Mr Karens.

As far as getting an appointment at a local slaughter house, good luck. They're ALWAYS out there 6 months to a year. We had somebody ask back in May. The Mennonte right here down the road that we prefer to haul to wouldn't even make an appointment for him, the other place told him late November, so that's what we have on the calendar.

 

[ss55]

The government is proposing to allow farmers and ranchers to process and sell their own beef direct to consumers exempt from any USDA requirements or inspections. Will small local butcher shops be able to compete with that or will even more local butcher shops go out of business?

I do have to wonder if that exemption to USDA inspections will actually be implemented, or if it will it simply be talked about for the next two months until the election is over and them quickly forgotten?

 

[rrlund]

I do have to wonder if that exemption to USDA inspections will actually be implemented, or if it will it simply be talked about for the next two months until the election is over and them quickly forgotten?

No, it won't. It was an attempt at damage control. A clueless attempt. He can't subvert federal regulations by executive order. He might as well have yelled it in to the wind. He's forgotten it already.

 

[john in la]

What you are talking about are niche markets. If every farmer around started doing that none would make money. Much the same as the corn on the side of the highway. When one guy was doing it local he was making 40 thousand a year. 3 or 4 more guys jumped in to get some cash. 3 years later they all quit because there overhead was to high for what they sold. You split 40 thousand between 4 guys is only 10 each. Can’t sell more local for inflated prices no matter how many people do it. I sell butter off the farm for $8 a lbs.
Walmart sells for $5.50. Only 15-20 people will buy my butter. If someone else jumps in and sells the same for less money I will quit because I can’t loose the customers I have or it’s not worth it.
It always amazes me at how a small amount of people will pay double the price thinking it is a better product because it is local and fed differently or better.
The local feed lot sells farm raised beef local and it’s a huge feedlot. Gets fed just like all the stuff you buy in the store.

What I would like to see is our local butcher shops should be able to sell to the stores in all the towns, cities. Walmart should be able to fill its coolers with local beef. Not trucked from 5000 or more miles away.
Same as there vegetables.

The first guy I mentioned lives right up the road from me. He sells beef pork milk and eggs. Also mixes and sells garden soil by the yard.
His wife runs the on farm store. Sells everything he raises through that on farm store. I don’t know for sure but I’d say he has about 50 or more cows. Don’t know where his pork comes from but I do know he bought a second farm about 30 miles away. He might have the pigs there but I suspect he buys the pork from someone else that raises pigs. I know he gets his milk from a local dairy that has its own bottling plant. He has a 16 foot trailer with a chicken house setting out in the field so his eggs come from grass fed chickens.

With Walmart ground beef over $7 a lb his $9 a lb ground beef is well worth the price. The only thing that stops me from buying his ground beef weekly is my wife shops the sales paper. One store has ground beef for $4 a lb this week.
I’ve eaten his ground beef and like I said it is well worth the extra $2. I’ve never eaten his steaks because $25 is a little out of my price range but others have told me they are very good.

So yes it is a niche market but he has grown to where his niche is no more than a local butcher shop would be. Selling a cow or more per week plus the other things he sells creates a lot of foot traffic and is a little more than a niche.

 

[joeysmith]

I've sold cattle to individuals as long as I've had them, but my customer list gets smaller every year. We had two this year. You make an appointment at the slaughter house, I'll run him over the scale and deliver him for you. We have people asking all the time about buying one. We always tell them the price per pound, always just a few cents over what we got at the sale barn for the last load we took, then tell them approximately what they weigh. They'll ask how much that's going to be, roughly. When we tell them, and tell them that they'll owe the slaughter house another $700-800 for butchering, cutting and wrapping. Their jaws drop, their voice gets weak and they say "I thought I'd get it cheap buying it this way!". I can show you the check stub and show you what we get direct deposited. I don't have to hope you pay me. Even when beef was cheap, I got the same reaction. Two guys who were brothers in law wanted to split one. I gave them a price per pound, told them about what it would weigh, but either they weren't listening or didn't do the math. I weighed it and loaded it while they were standing fight here. Each half came to about $800. One of them looked like he was either going to scream or cry. He said "I thought it'd be about half of that!".

That's just how it goes though. They think they'll get it for nothing buying off the farm. Sorry folks, I'm not going to sell it for less than I can get at the sale barn, and if you can't pay me 2 cents a pound extra for putting in the scale platform, sorting off one steer when it's not sale day, then burning gas to haul just one instead of selling a load at a time, I'm not going to the trouble. We ran an add one time when prices were low, trying to sell more that way. Didn't sell a single one. Oh we got calls and emails, but No, they're not organic. Yes, we feed GMO corn. No, we won't haul it 150 miles. No we won't take payments. No, we don't take food stamps.

I know two guys who sell packaged beef off the farm. One opened a small farm store and sells fresh produce, eggs, things like that too, the other one just has a couple of freezers. Both of them absolutely hate dealing with the people they deal with, but now they don't want to give up the income, but if anybody thinks about retailing that way, talk to those guys first. A check or direct deposit from the sale barn looks pretty good when you listen to their stories about all the Karens and Mr Karens.

As far as getting an appointment at a local slaughter house, good luck. They're ALWAYS out there 6 months to a year. We had somebody ask back in May. The Mennonte right here down the road that we prefer to haul to wouldn't even make an appointment for him, the other place told him late November, so that's what we have on the calendar.

Sadly most people dont realize they are getting the expensive cuts of meat in that price
They only compare it to the burger prices

Picked up a half this week
All in 5.80/pound an couldn't be happier

 

[B. White]

I haven't been around any since I was a kid and helped my father keep up with about 50 max at my grandpa's place. He was about too feeble by then to do much except call us if there was a problem. Most would be bought in the fall and fed to sell in the spring. We grew corn and peas to put up for feed using old equipment with no 3 pt hitch. I only remember us buying any hay one year, since at that age the bales about wore me out loading them. Daddy was a mechanic, so no new equipment. He didn't even have a trailer to haul them. He had some full time farmer friends who knew he would keep their tractors running if they needed him, so they would come haul whatever he needed. It was low cost on any inputs except for our labor. We took some to the processor, but bought most beef and pork from the same farmer friends whose kids were grown, so they didn't need much anymore. Worked out good for everybody.

Fast forward a whole lot of years, when we were looking to move one of the things was to make sure to have a pasture and get back to how I was raised. This place has it, but fences were in bad shape where they were still standing and some areas it had already been removed. I bought some beef from a guy down the road that was about the same as grocery store prices. Got to talking to him and he couldn't get scheduled as needed for processing around nnalert time. He found somebody up in Amish country that would finish and process. Feed costs up there were so much less than here that he kept doing it and even with fuel costs he comes out better. I think he is making his money off pork, looking at the prices he had marked on some in the freezer.

I talked to one older man that stopped by one day and he got rid of all his and was leasing his pasture. Said it started making him nervous about getting hurt when got older and didn't move as fast. Got me to thinking how many years I would be able to go before starting to feel the same way and that combined with the investment of replacing fence made me put it on hold for a while. I might enjoy it, but with as little as we need to eat for a year it would really make it an expensive hobby as some have mentioned. A couple of deer last us a while and have recently bought ground beef marked down at Ingle's under $4 a lb and it makes just as good a hamburger as any I've tasted. I put a few hundred feet of muscadine vines in last year for a test run. Pretty cheap to start and most labor will be in February when it is cool. Not much fertilizer needed to get some return. I can probably sell enough to home wine makers to take care of my beef costs.

 

[jhwis]

I've sold cattle to individuals as long as I've had them, but my customer list gets smaller every year. We had two this year. You make an appointment at the slaughter house, I'll run him over the scale and deliver him for you. We have people asking all the time about buying one. We always tell them the price per pound, always just a few cents over what we got at the sale barn for the last load we took, then tell them approximately what they weigh. They'll ask how much that's going to be, roughly. When we tell them, and tell them that they'll owe the slaughter house another $700-800 for butchering, cutting and wrapping. Their jaws drop, their voice gets weak and they say "I thought I'd get it cheap buying it this way!". I can show you the check stub and show you what we get direct deposited. I don't have to hope you pay me. Even when beef was cheap, I got the same reaction. Two guys who were brothers in law wanted to split one. I gave them a price per pound, told them about what it would weigh, but either they weren't listening or didn't do the math. I weighed it and loaded it while they were standing fight here. Each half came to about $800. One of them looked like he was either going to scream or cry. He said "I thought it'd be about half of that!".

That's just how it goes though. They think they'll get it for nothing buying off the farm. Sorry folks, I'm not going to sell it for less than I can get at the sale barn, and if you can't pay me 2 cents a pound extra for putting in the scale platform, sorting off one steer when it's not sale day, then burning gas to haul just one instead of selling a load at a time, I'm not going to the trouble. We ran an add one time when prices were low, trying to sell more that way. Didn't sell a single one. Oh we got calls and emails, but No, they're not organic. Yes, we feed GMO corn. No, we won't haul it 150 miles. No we won't take payments. No, we don't take food stamps.

I know two guys who sell packaged beef off the farm. One opened a small farm store and sells fresh produce, eggs, things like that too, the other one just has a couple of freezers. Both of them absolutely hate dealing with the people they deal with, but now they don't want to give up the income, but if anybody thinks about retailing that way, talk to those guys first. A check or direct deposit from the sale barn looks pretty good when you listen to their stories about all the Karens and Mr Karens.

As far as getting an appointment at a local slaughter house, good luck. They're ALWAYS out there 6 months to a year. We had somebody ask back in May. The Mennonte right here down the road that we prefer to haul to wouldn't even make an appointment for him, the other place told him late November, so that's what we have on the calendar.

I sold to people for awhile. I couldn't charge people I knew what they were worth, so i said forget it. It's a hassle and I always worried about someone complaining even though that me er happened. Like rrlund says, easier to just sell them as five weights in the fall and no worries.

 

[Mark-Ia]

My daughter has a business called ChopLocal that you can buy meat directly from the farmer.