The Ultimate Guide to Buying Cattle: Tips for Success in the Market

Discover essential tips for buying cattle and succeeding in the market! Learn about tracking rainfall, avoiding droughts, and buying hay strategically. Don't miss out on the best time to buy and maximize your purchasing power. Watch this video now!
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#CattleBuyingTips #MarketSuccess #RainfallTracking #HayBuyingStrategies #DroughtPrevention #MaximizePurchasingPower #CattleMarketInsights #LivestockInvesting #SmartBuyingTips #CattleInvestment

[@EastTexasRanching]

We were running 150 head on 200 acres of land (this includes calves, which are not usually included in a head count, as you are usually referring the head count to "producing" heads) in 2021. I Sold 80 head in 2022 and culled the herd down to around 60 head (producers) in 2023. Sold all the calves, and the older cows before they died. We made more money for the year than we had ever made. In 2023, with 60 producers, I sold 45 head (all calves and couple cows and an older breed bull), and made almost as much money (within a couple thousand dollars) as we had in 2022. This was mainly due to worming the young calves when they were a couple months old, along with the rest of the cattle. We use ivermectin shots. I checked into it, and decided to worm the young calves, as it had been generally thought in my family that this could cause harm to them, but I spoke with a couple of cowboys I trusted and they said that was a myth. Ivermectin is not a vaccine. I have never seen such growth in my calves, and this was during a drought. I look for the price of beef to go up even further.
To your video, yes hay is important of course. But you can always find feed of some kind, if you are willing to pay for it. The main thing is having a reliable source of water. You can spend extra money to buy feed, but you cannot have water shipped in. In 2011, many ranchers had to sell their cattle because water sources that had not gone dry in living memory actually went dry. There were so many cattle were being sold that the price plunged. Then no one had cattle, and the price soared. Some of the ranchers who sold out of necessity could hardly buy back in when that drought was over. So, yes, rainfall is very important, for more reasons than just hay. We paid a higher price for hay (and it wasn't good hay either), but we were able to maintain ourselves in the cattle business and ended up making money due to having cattle to sell when the price went up. But, we had a reliable source of water.