Would we be crazy to buy a calf now?

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Can a person or should a person buy a calf now? We figured we would need to keep it/them through the winter and am wondering if this is a totally bad idea. Everyone I know has always said buy in spring and butcher in the fall but we are late getting started on our farm. We were kind of interested in having the manure right now also to help boost the fields. We are interested in the most organic ways to do things so we thought this would help.

Lynn

-- Lynn (johnnypfc@yahoo.com), August 29, 2001

Answers

Right now would be the more expensive way to raise a calf. Depending on where you live and how cold it gets, YOU may only be feeding hay and that could get expensive. Figure 6 months of hay, 1.5 bales/day thats getting up near 300/bales for the winter. Plus a place to store it all. Depending on where you live, thats $300-$600 for square hay bales. Less if your doing large round bales, but then you need the equiptment to handle the bales.

Is the manure that expensive in your area? Around here just stop by with a trailer and say fill it up for free. Find a local dairy with excess manure might be a bettery way to go. Also depending on the size of your field, is a single calf going to produce enough manure for you needs?

-- Gary (gws@redbird.net), August 29, 2001.


Hi Lynn, I'd say go for it! A calf will eat approximately 2% of it's body weight a day (although I'd offer more) so alot of the equation would depend on the size of your calf. If you got a relatively small calf now and butchered it next fall it would be doing the most part of it's growing on your pasture. If you fed 20 pounds a day starting now (for a very big calf) that would be one ton of hay every 100 days. If you can get hay resonably it could work for you. Besides, you would know what you were eating, and these days that info is priceless!

-- Julie (julieamc@eagleslair.net), August 29, 2001.

A baby calf eats little for the first few months. When spring gets here it will be just right to hit the grass running and put on some cheap gains. I prefer to raise calves in the winter myself. Don

-- Don (dairyagri@yahoo.com), August 30, 2001.

Lynn, although I have no experience in this, I would think that a calf would be cheaper in the Fall (alot of people don't want to have to overwinter) than in the Spring - correct me if I'm wrong here. Buying it now would give you 6 months more experience than if you wait till Spring. Don't know where you live, but if you live in a colder climate, are you set up for it? Do you have to worry about frozen water, do you have to haul water, etc. Also, are you going to want to go out and feed it when it is 15 degrees with 1' of snow with another blizzard on the way? Another consideration is do you have hay already in the barn ready to be fed, or are you going to have to buy it? If you buy in Spring, pasture is free. Good luck with your new life on the farm!

-- Michael W. Smith in North-West Pennsylvania (kirklbb@penn.com), September 02, 2001.

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