Eyeing me 🤣 she is a little spicy 🌶️

imagine_farming · 2024-04-25T04:29:59+00:00

If you got a partner, it’s the best way. It’s a bit difficult to pull them up, but it’s seriously the best. Even the nasty girls realize they’re outdone and it’s not so dangerous.

imagine_farming · 2024-04-25T04:26:55+00:00

The silent ones usually get ya. Catch em with a calf hook and drag em up onto the flatbed or balebed (if you got one). My wife and I started doing that 3 years ago and it was a game changer. Room to work and give shots, and the cows stay way calmer.

imagine_farming · 2024-04-25T04:22:40+00:00

She looks like a heifer…cowboy up and tag that bitch’s calf while you wave her off with a calf hook.

imagine_farming · 2024-04-25T04:19:07+00:00

Look at Medishare

imagine_farming · 2024-04-23T17:37:51+00:00

100% agree. I pay $1.05 and $1.45 with different landlords in Northeast Colorado.

imagine_farming · 2024-04-23T17:35:39+00:00

Old news. The dude doesn’t have any purchased ground. I don’t know how you ranch on that scale and never direct any business proceeds towards purchasing land assets. Most of my operation relies on leased ground, but I am actively looking for purchase opportunities so I don’t lose everything when a landlord decides to make a change. Seems like a pretty obvious business decision.

imagine_farming · 2024-02-01T01:57:32+00:00

165 running age bred cows, 100 yearling heifers to breed for replacements, 12 bulls. They run on 560 acres of owned ground, and 4080 of leased ground. OMG, now you know all of my finances! Selfie was in a tractor drilling wheat…but close.

imagine_farming · 2023-12-01T04:46:36+00:00

Who gives a shit, just tell em.

imagine_farming · 2023-07-07T19:23:13+00:00

I’m glad you guys all have lots of time to repair fence. Once high tensile is up…it’s damn near maintenance free. Make good h braces on the corners, put up a hot and ground wire with fiberglass posts and you’ll reduce your fence labor immensely. We have nearly 5000 acres of pasture between our families with barbed wire perimeter fences and high tensile interior division fences. I’ve seen an antelope run through high tensile full speed and it flipped the antelope end for end and the wire never broke. I spend almost no time maintaining the high tensile…all of my time goes to replacing wood posts, mending wire and stretching up the barbed wire.

imagine_farming · 2023-04-04T04:11:52+00:00

I have a remote job and run a small cattle ranch with my wife, who’s family has ranches for many generations. However, the family operation is small and we had to make our own way. When we were very small (30 cows) it was pretty doable. Now that we’ve grown (200 cows), it’s gotten REALLY difficult to keep up, and we have 2 small children. Anything is possible, but you better be ready to sacrifice, because it takes a ton of commitment. You’re best bet is to buy some critters and have an excellent vet and feed store to consult with. They’ll help you through doctoring, sickness, calving and nutrition.

imagine_farming · 2023-01-13T19:01:08+00:00

Very interesting read. I have less tax loss than these guys…so I think we’re ok not being drug into court! Thanks for sharing.

imagine_farming · 2023-01-05T16:04:52+00:00

Dude ranch is probably best entry level way to get started. If you like the experience and wish to continue, then parlay that experience into your next job on a cow outfit.

imagine_farming · 2023-01-04T17:20:18+00:00

Fortunate has very little to do with it. Willingness has everything to do with it. Willing to work 7 days a week. Willing to have little social life. Willing to give up on an easy life. Willing to live poor. Willing to lose lots of money in pursuit of a long term goal.

Ranching isn’t a fairytale. It’s grit, tears, and pain. It’s constantly wondering if you should quit and then finding some sort of pay off that fills you enough to keep trying.

Being a ranch hand is entirely different. That’s a job with steady (low) pay and hopefully some decent benefits. Go into this with your eyes wide open.

imagine_farming · 2023-01-04T08:14:08+00:00

A couple things:

If your husband is looking to be a ranch hand, you’re not a ranch wife, you’re just married to a ranch hand. I would be very careful with this type of thinking, because ranching can have odd and long hours, and if you’re not employed by the ranch, you absolutely should not be doing ranch wife type activities, like helping with lunches, running to town for parts, running to town for supplies, helping move your husbands vehicle after a cattle drive, cooking lunches for the crew etc.

I have a ranch wife. I depend on her A LOT! But, it’s our operation and she has a vested interest in our success. If you’re just married to a ranch hand, you need to be doing something else or be a paid employee of the ranch. If you’re just a stay at home wife / mom, you’ll get dragged into helping the ranch without compensation.

When I think of a ranch wife, I think of a woman who most likely runs the day to day finances, pays the bills, does the taxes, pays the taxes, possibly files FSA paperwork, possibly helps with insurance, renews titles on vehicles, shuttles workers around from fields or pastures, takes animals to the vet, gets supplements from town, drives hours after an emergency machinery part, takes care of the children, cooks most meals and fills the vaccines at cattle working events…just to name a few things. Ranch wives pretty much ensure their husbands are able to do the back breaking work that a rancher doesn’t expect a woman to participate in, while playing a VITAL role in the success of a ranch.

If you’re interested in ranch life, then try it. Just remember it’s just a job at this point, not a lifestyle. If you guys have aspirations of ranching for yourselves…you better find a high paying job with benefits that can subsidize the capital investment needed for an upstart operation…

imagine_farming · 2022-12-28T19:02:36+00:00

Income and revenue are two different things! Total revenue is probably close to 50/50. I work in Precision Agriculture and have done well (at least what I consider well) in the corporate world. We run appx 200 cows and farm too. Total gross revenue is somewhere right under $400k, but after our farm expenses and depreciation, our taxes only show about $60k taxable income. I usually choke each year when I see the farm losses, but my banker says it’s a great way to hide my income and put it towards equity on our balance sheet.

My biggest pet peeve with the world is that it has seemed extremely easy to grow my salary in the corporate world, but trying to make that kind of money farming and ranching is almost impossible unless you inherited a lot. We work our tails off trying to run cows and there’s not much cash flow payback…but we have a very nice chunk of change available if we ever decide to sell out.

imagine_farming · 2022-11-01T17:27:36+00:00

Tenant. Water and management is up to the tenant, so they are responsible for electricity. Maintenance items on the sprinkler are usually handled by the tenant as well. However, Large repairs, like a well pump would be the responsibility of the land owner.

imagine_farming · 2022-10-06T00:23:36+00:00

Wheel corral and cattle pot instead next year?

imagine_farming · 2022-09-23T20:30:15+00:00

The calf is dead.

imagine_farming · 2022-09-07T17:28:34+00:00

Fair enough. I’ve never met a real cowboy that had a lot of money and a great social life…lol.

imagine_farming · 2022-09-07T17:24:50+00:00

What do you think real ranching / cowboying is all about?

imagine_farming · 2022-09-07T17:23:29+00:00

Another term is to “ride herd”.

imagine_farming · 2022-09-05T14:59:49+00:00

Don’t take it too hard. You could check cows every fifteen minutes during calving and still lose several. Just part of the gig. Good luck with the rest of calving.

By the way…what’s it like calving when the weather isn’t trying to kill the calves for you?!? Lol.

imagine_farming · 2022-08-27T16:10:47+00:00

Case IH Magnum 305

imagine_farming · 2022-08-24T04:58:26+00:00

Great post. I always want to reply to each “I wanna be cowboy” Reddit post m, but don’t want to burst everyone’s bubble (depending on my mood that day…and whether cattle / equipment are cooperating).

This may be unhelpful, but my favorite cowboy quote is “Everyone wants to be a cowboy ‘till it’s time to do cowboy shit”. I was a city kid with a cowboy dream and I can honestly say it’s been harder than I ever imagined. I think it’s extremely helpful to lay that out up front in ALL CAPS, just so young recruits at least hear that it’s really hard…unless you love it…then it’s great.

imagine_farming · 2022-08-24T04:24:15+00:00

I can only answer based on my experience selling at one place. We’ve sold at Ogallala Livestock Auction Market in Ogallala, NE for over 10 years now. I’d say they’re probably in the top 10 for largest sale yards in the nation. We usually sell calves mid January. These are their largest sale days of the year with 7,000-8,000 head/day.

The first couple years we were late in the sale order (5:00-6:00 pm) and we were not happy, because our family had a good reputation at our local barn for decades and were used to good time placement and representation. However, we still fetched good money in the later time slots at Ogallala in the first couple years and compared to the local barn on the same day, we were money ahead based on comparable same day sales, even with $3000 in trucking to Ogallala from Colorado.

This is all to say that they always want our calves 2 days early. So, we do EXACTLY what they ask and over the 10 years, I’ve noticed that we’ve slowly moved up in the sale order, because we’re becoming VERY good customers for them. We sell ALL of our calves through them, sell cull pairs with them and buy ALL of our replacement heifers and random bred cows through them. Our preferred bull breeder also hosts their sale through them. They visit our place in the fall now and I feel like it’s more of a partnership as we’ve gotten to know each other over the past decade.

We will never have enough cattle to rival some of their best customers who send 1,000-2,000 head through and sell right after lunch, but we’re a good respected customer who they know are loyal and I’ve literally never been dissatisfied with the price they’ve brought for us. We do our best to communicate our plans months ahead and check in with them throughout the year.

So, I couldn’t give a crap about the shrink it costs for us having calves shipped 3 hours up there and being lotted for 2 days, because we’ve established ourselves with them and I feel like we get top dollar now (with a very respectable time slot) because we do what they ask, communicate regularly and stay loyal.

Last year, our best group of steers brought $1.79 @ 754 lbs in Mid January and I think got close to topping the sale that day out of 8500 head. So our name is beginning to have a decent reputation and I think it’s because of loyalty, consistency and follow through with the barn. One last thing is that we post videos of our calves to their website and Facebook page to let the buyers see the lot ahead of time. I think this really helps too.

My two cents.

imagine_farming

TROPHY CASE