Big Swede - 3/25/2024 08:48

I've been absent for quite awhile from here so I was looking back through some old posts and one that caught my attention was one about what you can afford to pay for a new bull. I've been buying commercial bulls from the same supplier for nearly 30 years. My cousins have been a cooperator herd for Jorgensen's for the same amount of time. Private customers like myself buy bulls from this herd the day that they ship to Jorgensen's which enter their bull rental program. We usually pay about 20% over steer price. This year we paid the most ever for our picks. I bought 8 bulls for just over $2,500 per head. We use them 3 seasons and usually sell them for more than their purchase price.

We sold our steers the first week of March in Valentine and the happened to be an Angus bull sale the same day. A good friend of mine paid $19,000 for 2 bulls. These were very good looking Bulls and how he runs his business is none of mine but for the life of me I don't see how a commercial cattleman can pencil paying that much for Bulls. If he sold his calves for substantially more money than mine I can see the logic but that's not the case. The big load of our steers weighed 670 @ $3.10 and the lighter load weighed 595 @ $3.3750. Even got my 15 seconds of fame and got my name mentioned on Feeder Flash the next day.

Now I'm not saying just any commercial bull can build a cow herd. I'm in a unique situation that we've taken advantage of.