Buying beef off the farm

Seeking guidance from anyone that buys cattle directly off the farm or from a neighbor. How to do you settle on a price? One ?easy? way is to look in the local farm paper to see what things are bringing at the local sale barns. However, the prices quoted are usually in ranges. For example, this week yearling steers were $80 to $115. I would want to gravitate toward the $80, the seller of course would say his animals are more toward the top of the range. Is there anything one might do other than to burn up a few afternoons of vacation time sitting around a sale barn with a pen and paper? This is not for a carload of feeders, more like 3 or 4, so engaging an appraiser Etc is not worthwhile. Would there be any other good references for prices?

Are you buying feeders or fats? If somebody wants to buy a butcher steer,I ask whatever I got on the top end of the last load I sold. I generally have some going a few times a month,or at least once a month,so it's pretty up to date. I haul free to the slaughter house,so I don't think going to the high end is out of line.

The average price from the local sale barns is a good starting point. Actual quality of the animals in question will determine final price. Also, you may be able to negotiate a better price if you do your own hauling, relieving the seller of that expense, in addition to the fact that the seller will not have to pay the sales commission at the sale barn. If the seller has to deliver to you, expect to pay a little more than if you do your own hauling.

Why would you buy the cheaper ones there is a reason their price is low. why would you need an appraiser to buy some cattle.

What do you want them for Shaler? Beef, milk or just to have a few head of cattle around? Resale later?

I don't see anything wrong with a fella wanting to do any of the above but it makes a difference in price and quality.

I do think you'd be money ahead buying straight from the farm rather than a sale barn since a lot of times auctions are used to sell off less than stellar stock.

(quoted from post at 10:02:18 01/06/17) Why would you buy the cheaper ones there is a reason their price is low.

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Gene is absolutely right. Bargain cattle usually ain't a bargain in the long run.

I know a guy here that thought he got a heck of a deal on a couple of dairy calves a few years ago when most calves were selling just stupid high in the spring. He didn't know a thing about cattle but wanted some for his new place in the country.

He figured he would have a couple of cows and sell the calves off them or have fresh beef every fall.

What he bought were free martins and that fact should have been disclosed imo. but it wasn't.

I have been selling privately for some time now but, I am picky on what I sell. I always sell my best stock and get at least 10-15 cents more than the market. I also take the time to show my stock to my customers. We get in the truck, go out in the field and let them see the mama cows and the bull. That gives them satisfaction that they are buying premium stock and feel better paying a premium price. I also deliver at no charge. This helps them offset the price paid.

Educate me. What is a "free martin"

Female twin to a bull calf. Doesn't develop right.

Dave H is right. They are sterile.

I sell a few for slaughter. I usually get a little more than the local market. Mine are born and raised here, they get nothing except hay and ground corn that I grow. And it is non GMO if that makes a difference. Most of the corn I grow is non GMO, so that isn't a problem. I haul to the slaughterhouse at no charge. I sell at live weight. I have no complaints so far. Everybody thinks my beef is great. Which makes me happy.

Mine are born and raised here,but once they're weaned,they get stuffed as full of good GMO corn silage and ground GMO ear corn as they can eat. Even at whatever I got the last load I sold,I come out ahead by not having to pay commission and everything.
Never had any complaints. I have one that lives about 75 miles away and comes over here every year to pick two and then comes back to pick up the meat at the slaughter house. I've got electronic scales in the barn. He pays live weight the day I haul them. So does everybody else who wants one.

I sell several to my neighbor every year, have been doing it for quite a few years. What we are both happy with is as follows.

1. I have my own scale to weigh each animal individually right on the farm. We weigh when both buyer and seller are present and there to observe scale readings. (Here, market reports are given in 100lb ranges.)
2. We take the newest market report available from Central Livestock (the largest market in MN).
3. Since prices are give in ranges (ex. 1.20-1.40), we take the average price. (1.30) I have no commission costs, he has no trucking costs, as I deliver them after we are done weighing on site.

We both feel it is a very fair way to do it. When prices are high, good for the seller! When prices are low, good for the buyer! It all averages out.

When I sold calves off the cow. I took the buyer (bought all my calves for 5 years) out to the field. He picked out all he wanted or all of them. We looked at Sale Barn Price. I deducted my trucking costs and sale barn commission. He paid .10 per lbs. premium. He took very healthy calves home and they were all ready to go on feed. When I bought a few back, as fat cattle for friends that enjoyed premium beef, He trucked them to a scale and to the locker plant no charge. I paid him whatever top was at local Fat Cattle auction, no shrink. Everyone got a good deal. What goes around comes around. No use trying to take advantage of anyone.

I buy about 10 Holstein feeders every year. I have a guy I hooked up with about a 100 miles away on Craig's List about ten years ago. He likes to get them started and I buy them off him at about 4-5 hundred lbs. They are nnalert, dehorned, castrated, and started on feed when I pick them up. He does a good job with them and they look good. I weigh in at his elevator and weigh out after we are loaded. What ever the market for Holstein feeders are at the time I will normally pay towards the top of the market. The price is agreed on before I head his way with the trailer. I figure I don't have to deal with the stockyards and the risk involved with doing so. I normally pick out of a large group and he seems honest as far as any history is concerned on any of them. He gets his calves a day old from the Amish. Nether one of us are getting rich but we are both happy doing it the way we do.

Way back in the day cattle that were born sterile was butchered for a feast on saint martins day.so the medieval peasant got a free feast on saint martins day. So freemartin

I finish my steers on grass. When they are close to being finished people look at them and pick the one they want. I haul them to the slaughter house and they buy the critter on the rail. The price per pound on the rail is set the day the person tells me which one he wants. Been doing it that way for 15+ years.
Bud

Funny for the day#2.

When the family was growing up I tried everything to live a comfortable life with a 6 member family. Obviously food was a large expense and in particular meat (not a deer hunter). When I was a kid, my uncle raised rabbits for show and sale and I did a lot of butchering for him in the summer.

Fast forward. Co worker had yearling calves and bought one with the capability to dress it out on site. Shot the critter, drug it over to a tree, strung it up like I did rabbits and away I went, just like I did with rabbits.

Got the hide and head off and started on the carcase. Knife up at the groin where I started with the rabbits and went on down to the bottom of the rib cage. About that time the stomach (all 3 of them), which must have weighed at least 150# come rolling out over the ribs (which I am standing directly in front of) and as they do a rib bone fractures the sack/all 3 sacks................need I say more???????

But cleaning up that mess was just part of it. When I got it home, I found out that a storage (home style) freezer (was using 3) wasn't designed to cool down a hot 400# carcase on a hot August day. I got the job done finally, but it took a couple of bottles of Maalox.

Then came the production line where I lined up the family and everybody had a job. Had no saw so everything had to be tenderloined. Took it a quarter at a time. Finally got that job done. Surprised nothing spoiled and nobody had to go to the hospital with food poisioning.

Next time I took the live animal to the slaughter house and took my cut and wrapped meat home.....but that's another story....the trip from the farm to the slaughter house with a live, very active, yearling bull, in excellent health, full of vigor, in what used to be a closed in single axle U haul trailer that a neighbor used with his boy scout troop...you know the orange and white ones with the 45mph max sign on the back.....................

A female that is twin to a bull. Has less than fully developed reproductive organs, due to the influence of the developing bull"s testosterone. About 15% of freemartins can reproduce.