E 1 How Much Do Your Cows Cost?

[Deleted]

I had a sobering encounter with a calculator yesterday, when I had the inane idea to try to figure out just what our costs are to produce a steady supply of milk and meat from our little herd of Dexters. Here's what I included:
Maintenance costs to keep a cow or a steer included minerals, kelp, hay fed Sept thru April, yearly fence maintenance, and misc. expenses (buckets, feeders, etc). These costs I figured to average $426.66 per year, per mature animal.
For dairy cows, I added additional costs of grain, beet pulp, AI, and yearly testing for disease. These additional costs for milk production I averaged around $653 per year, per cow.
For steers, I figured on maintenance expenses for 2 years, and butchering fees of around $300, based on a final live weight of 850 lbs and grass finishing.
Here's what it broke down to:
For milk, if we kept one cow and bought milk from the store while she was dry and/or nursing her calf (roughly not milking for 6 mos out of the year, as sharemilking hasn't worked for us), or if we keep 2 cows and alternate their freshenings to keep us in milk year round, the cost per gallon is the same. This is assuming that each of the 2 cows would give us roughly 1 gallon per day. The verdict: the price to produce a gallon of milk from our Dexters is roughly $5.90 per gallon. That's some expensive milk, and that's assuming that everything goes according to plan! However, if a cow produces more than a gallon a day, the price per gallon goes down.
For beef, our Dexters don't finish out until they're 2+ years old on a grass fed management system. This means that we always have to have two steers (one finishing this year, and one growing for next year) if we want to have meat every year. To have an 850 lb steer, yielding 355lbs of retail cuts, the end cost comes to $3.25 per pound of retail cuts, or $2.19 per pound hanging weight (assuming a hanging weight of 527 lbs).
I'd be very interested to hear what the rest of you estimate your cost is to produce milk and meat from your animals, especially those with different breeds. This was definitely an eye-opening project for me!

[Joelle]

Well, I'm bad with numbers to start with, so at the risk of sounding trite, I try not too think about it too hard. I gain so much out of my animals beyond the consumables, that I just don't feel like it's fair to put it all down to a dollar value.

Even if it does take almost $6/gallon to produce the milk like it does for you, that's the going price for Raw Milk anyway. I enjoy the process of milking, and I love spending time with my animals - that's not something I can put a dollar value on. In fact, if I bill it under "entertainment," then I'm spending 2+ hours a day getting it for free - that would run me $10 at a movie theater just for the ticket, not including snacks, gas and travel time. So that price per gallon just dropped, in my book.

Plus, I figure the milk I get will (eventually) be enough to make all my dairy products in my own kitchen, which again may cost less at the store but the flavor and quality is much lower. Cheddar is relatively cheap at the store, but artisan cheese of the quality you can make at home costs much more than that. Plus, you have to figure in gas money and time to actually GO to the grocery store, which for me is considerable as the nearest real grocery store is 40 miles away.

Next, I figure in how much you get out of your cows in terms of manure for fertilizer - I have piles higher than my head, ready to go in the garden to make more veggies for me to eat. That helps keep me out of the grocery store, too.

I plan on feeding my chickens clabber and getting away from store bought feed as soon as I can, which then become organic egg-layers because they're not getting store feed. What I don't eat myself I can then sell at a higher price. I'm hoping to raise pigs on milk soon too, which means lots of milk-fed pork, which is better quality than what I can get at the store.

None of this figures in the health benefits of eating home-raised beef and drinking fresh milk, which adds up over time. AND don't forget the health benefits of being around animals all day, out in the fresh air moving around instead of sitting on your butt in front of the TV.

Bottom line: the numbers may not look good, but the overall advantages are priceless. Sounds like you're right on target as far as what your beef and milk are running you dollar-wise: I pay $3.25/lb for grass-fed beef at a local butcher. So if it were me, I would take satisfaction in that, and enjoy the benefits that money can't buy.

[Tricia]

So do you figure if you sold the beef from one steer you could recoup your costs? Not even going near your time involved!

[phil]

I've never really pushed the pencil quite that hard, but I'm sure that my costs are even higher than the original poster's.

[epitts75]

Like Tricia said, I think it's important to consider the income from selling some things to recoup some of your costs. Also, you didn't figure into the mix value added things. I know I pay almost $4/quart for yogurt. Even if my cost for the milk was $6/gallon, that's quite a bit less than $24/gallon for yogurt. I don't know if you get butter from Dexter milk, but with a Jersey you get quite a bit of savings from that as well. Maybe the added cream from Jersey milk really does give quite a bit of savings...I'm thinking cream cheese, sour cream, etc. And what about the sale of the offspring. Did you subtract that from your total expenses?

Ellen

[Deleted]

I'm in total agreement that there are many benefits to keeping a cow that can't be quantified by a calculator, and have put off making these calculations for the three years we've had cows for just that reason. Not to mention the additional monetary value in producing a calf, improving the soil and pasture through grazing and manure distribution, providing clabber for the chickens and the pigs, etc etc. I didn't include sale of a calf as an offset to the cost, only because we've never tried to sell one (but know we need to in order to cut costs). As for the almost $6/gal price of producing milk, when compared to the $7+/gal price of organic whole milk in the grocery store, it seems much more reasonable! I wasn't trying to diminish the tremendous value in producing our own food, just curious as to the real costs (which are not unsubstantial). If our cow keeping were governed solely by the economics, we'd have 2 cows, 2 calves (which would be sold at weaning or raised as replacements), and 2 steers. Instead, you can see from my signature line that we have a few extras hanging around!

[Becky]

I think along the lines of Joelle. I don't think about the money VS product issue. The value of the milk and home grown beef is immeasurable. I KNOW what I am putting on the table for my family and there just isn't a $ amount that I can put on that.
The chickens and dogs all get milk everyday, and we just butchered two pigs that got our "extra" milk every day.
I make cheese all the time and have 6 wheels of it waxed and aging with another on it's way.
The fertilizer is already boosting veggie growth, and we still have beef in the freezer from the last one we butchered.
All of those things keep me and my family out of the grocery store and away from hormones and whacked out foods.
I don't know what else I would do with my time. I truly *enjoy* my time outside with the animals. Today we were sitting outside eating a sandwich and here came *the* chicken. We would hold out a piece of bread and she would jump up and grab it. Of course we were cracking up!! Again, priceless....

So, I guess, for me, what I am saying is that I don't do it for financial gain, and I can't look at it that way. If I did, I'd have to stop doing it because I can buy the burger, milk, cheese, and eggs cheaper. Not to mention the hospital bill after I crunched the numbers and had a heart attack, stroke, and a nervous breakdown....

But, I will keep doing it because I love it, and it *does* save money on the gym memberships.

Becky

[epitts75]

But you have to consider the things you mentioned...soil amendment, price of calf, feed for other animals as part of your financial calculations. Those are not separate benefits. Seriously, go to the farm supply store and have them price for you the cost of fertilizing your fields. Then figure that into your calculations. Do the same with the chicken feed and calf income. You have to run your numbers for the farm as a whole not for one product. Think of it more as a many-faceted business than just producing milk. I don't think you can figure it with a calculator. Open up excel and create a detailed spreadsheet for a better idea of your expenses. Then you can get a real idea what your milk is costing you. Think of it this way.... If you owned a restaurant and gave away a really nice loaf of bread to each table that came in for dinner, you wouldn't calculate the profitability based solely on the loss of income from that bread.

We just moved off our farm three weeks ago and I am working on getting my new garden started. I am appalled at the hundreds of dollars I am spending for things to amend my soil that used to be 'free' when I had a farm. Your milk is alot cheaper than you think! :-)

Ellen

[Deleted]

To answer your question, Tricia, we'd have to sell the meat from 2 steers at $3.50/lb hanging weight to pay for a steer for ourselves.

[pipergrey93]

I don't think one can really compare grocery store "milk" to real milk. One is unhealthy and the other is ridiculously healthy. Ditto on your own meat that you know has no un-natural hormones and tons of antibiotics.

Yes, it's expensive but I feel blessed to have it. You can't get it in a store at any price!

Sandy

[RachelK]

A gallon of milk costs us approximately $1.25...well worth it

[Rhein-O-Ranch]

A couple of years a go we got 2 bull calves from the sale barn. They were 700 lbs each. I fed them 8000lbs of grain and 3 round bales of hay in 100 days. At the end of the 100 days they had gained 400lbs....For an average of 4 lbs per day. When i put the pencil to it at $2.50 per lb hanging weight I figured that when I sold one I had recovered the expenses of raising both calves.....So we got a whole cow for the labor that we put into 2.
I guess you must be buying your feed in 50lb sacks. I get my feed a 1000lbs at a time. It is at least 1/2 the price of bagged food. Of course we are feeding over 1000lbs per week here. So I couldn't even dream of having to feed that much out of 50lb bags.
I have a buddy feeding out heifers that are born on his place. He gets them up to about 900lbs and then sells them at $3.00 lb hanging weight. He makes over $1000.00 per cow. At least twice what he would have gotten at the sale barn. So far he hasn't had any problem selling the meat.
So there are a whole lot of ways of looking at things. Personally I don't even try and figure what it costs. We enjoy what we are doing. And what ever it costs I doubt that we would enjoy anything else as much.

[Jerseylady*Heather*]

We grow our own hay. We have a beef herd. So a few extra cows is not too big of a deal. The grain is one of my major expenses. But I raise a lot of bummers, and we have a pasture we can turn them out on in the summer, so thier feed is essentially free until winter.That is just the hard work, and maintence of the equiptment to harvest the hay which isnt too bad either. When we sell the bummers at a year and a half they more then pay for all the expenses to maintain the dairy cows. So far since Comet freshened in Sept she has raised 7 calves for us. And is going strong. We plan to put one more set on her in about a month and dry her off again for calving this year. She also supplies our family with dairy products cheese milk butter you name it its great. It saves us a lot of money having a milk cow. Since we would be doing the work of maintaining cows any way its not a major expense for us.

[aspengrove]

In our area $6.00 per gallon of raw milk is the lower end of the price range. Farm raised beef sells for $2.25 to $2.75 per pound hanging weight.

[specialndskids]

I think that IF you were to purchase all of your meats and dairy products from the store, you would have to purchase all ORGANIC to even come close to the quality you can grow at home!! Organic food bills were running us dry so we decided to raise it for ourselves......At one point last year I was paying 13.00 per gallon for raw milk!!! We are moving to completely grass fed......our cost will come WAY down as we will not longer be purchasing grain for our cows.......We do feed organic feed to the chickens, which is quite pricey...... To me it is sorta like comparing apples to bannanas...can't do it!!!! HOMEGROWN IS BEST!!

[parndt]

The things I always figure into this equation, that I am not seeing here, is the cost of antibiotics, steroids, medical bills, etc... Not for the critters, for us! Figure the cost of a lifetime of care for someone consuming the Standard American Diet and you nearly recoup your cost with one mouthful of your own food.

[Veesha]

I have often thought "how do people on the board do this that have to buy hay" We grow all the hay and corn for our 2000+ cow operation, and always have more than we use, so what is a few more mouths to feed...but I have often really had my heart go out to someone here on the board that is having trouble finding or paying for good hay. I really have to take a step back and be so thankful for how easy simply 'milking a cow' is for me. I don't know that I would be as dedicated to it as most of you are, I would just go buy milk at the store, I KNOW I WOULD!
Back in the day when I was a single mom of 2 boys and poor as a Church mouse, we had 2 dairy goats for milk, and I remember all too well how careful I had to be with the hay....where we lived, the wind could be seen blowing whole bales at a time ...well nearly We had our hens, and our 2 goats and lived WAY out PAST now where. My boys went to a 2 room country school with 12 students from K-8th grade. Those are some very good memories though, for us all.
I just want to say I really do admire all of you for being so down to earth, and loving the (not so) little things in life

[Janene]

There are some wonderful points made here. I will add: QUALITY.
You simply can not get the quality of what we raise (milk, meat, eggs, fruits, veggies) in the store unless its labeled as such--a "specialty".

Therefore not only are we cutting out middlemen (thus a smaller carbon footprint) and many steps (growing, harvesting, hauling, processing, hauling again and finally to the store) we get a quality product at a greatly reduced price. We know whats in it and whats not, and we know its not pasteurized, homogenized, irradiated, etc.

Buy a pound of hamburger comparable to your own (note the price). Cook one of each (store & yours) as hamburgers. Tell me which one tastes better?! Store tomatoes have no taste....ours are flavorful and health-giving! (Not health-robbing!)
When I butcher my own, the price per pound is the same, for grind (hamburger) or roasts or T-Bones, etc. Have you seen the price of some roasts and better cuts of steak? (on sale, even!) YIKES!

Also, add up the cost of the dairy products you'd normally use in a week (not just milk). The quality is nowhere near what you are going to have getting it from your own cow.
For some labor, you betcha I'll turn that cream into butter, or sour cream, cream cheese, etc and have a product that is divine and I can't get at any store.

The only hands that touch it are mine--or someone in my family. Not anyone elses'....not a nameless face (like I once was) in some meat/veggie factory cranking out a quota or out in a field picking or some worker putting it on a shelf in the grocery store. I know too much about how things are ran in the 'normal' food world, and it makes me cringe.
My quality control starts and ends with ME--its also peace of mind. We either do it right or learn real fast how to do it right.
Janene

[Heidi]

I don't even want to do the math in case my DH saw it and found out what my "hobby" was actually costing us!!!!

[briarrose]

There are 2 questions I dread hearing and that is the second on the list. The first one is when my husband comes in from the field, where he very seldom goes, and asks," Do you know how many cows you have out there?" I normally try not to answer either one!