Property with cattle—questions

Tax write-off?

You can't make money with 5 cows for the amount of work. You won't cover the hay. If you sold the cows and bought yearlings every year and sold them in Sept/Oct so you don't have to winter, you might make break even.

Tax write-off for sure. The land is very valuable on a road that only has houses/lots on 10 acre plus homesites.

How bad ya want to lose money?

5 cows is a hobby. You will put way more money into it than you will get out of it (financially speaking). But the benefits for the soul may be good.

It seems cool but I want no part of them aside from medium rare 16+/-oz at a time. check them daily, get out and in the road and get hit, dogs get after them and push them through the fence, shite goes on and on and on.

I wouldn’t mess with hay for only 5 cows. You’d have to fence off a place to store it or keep it somewhere. Then show up and spear it, cut off the string or wrap and roll it out with the tractor or buy a hay ring.

I’d get square bales or even better 50 lb sacks of cattle cubes. Show up and dump a bag of cubes in a line. You’re in and out of there in 5 minutes.

At the height of my cattling, my dad and I had 25 head together. I absolutely loved it, he did for the most part, and we (mostly he) spent a TON of money, I put in countless hours.

Outside of the land, lets see....

1- 75hp cab tractor with 15’ bushhog
1- $60,000 barn with office and shop
1- $5000 squeeze chute
40- heavy portable panels to work cows
About 2000’ barbed wire fence (built by highschool me and a few local crackheads)
About 3000’ high tensile electric fence (the operation grew) built by college me (minus the crackheads)
2- horses to ride amongst the cattle
1- gooseneck trailer to haul hay and tractor
1- creep feeder
2-3 hay rings
2-3 water troughs
1600’ buried waterline to get to barn
3-4 feed troughs

A metric shitton of feed- we had good looking Chiangus cows and a badass Maine bull (our AI endeavors were an abject failure) we kept them looking right.

That’s just off the top of my head.

Then, I graduated, started traveling for work, dad got bored with it and basically would let the cows get out and not really care too much.

It was a ROYALLY expensive endeavor- but, I probably met my wife because of it all and I got to spend a lot of good time with my folks because of it at a time when most kids don’t.

Also- and perhaps the best part- I used to drag my 70 something year old WWII vet paw paw out there with me (mind you this was over 20 years ago) he would dress up in all khakis and a straw hat like he was back in Guadalcanal- walk around, pick up limbs and sticks all day and basically outwork my arse. I still keep his little hat on top of my gun safe.

ETA- I told my wife about this in an effort to swoon her later and she reminded me about Paw Paw’s fascination with fire- I believe this was also a throwback to his foray in the Pacific theatre....he would assemble the sticks and limbs into huge windrows of material (by hand) and then light them all on fire. It was a doggone spectacle. Then he would tend to them all until they were burned down to ashes. No flammable material was safe from his ire.

Family time- 15/10 would do again.

Why do you need a 15’ Bush hog? That’s wasting grass. If you’re running cows, grass should either be fenced in for grazing or cut for hay. Also, that is an expensive arse squeeze chute. Must be hydraulic which definitely isn’t necessary.

My dad has 400 acres with ~100 cow/calf pairs. All he owns is a 5’ bush hog to cut one pass on outside of fencing.

Sell cows. Buy goats.

Both are going to get out. At least you can manhandle the goats.

Most states can't you get an ag break pretty easily? I mean throw up some blueberry bushes or something like that if that's all you are looking to do. $500 and a couple bush hoggings a year and you are done. Just seems crazy to only have 5 cows unless you want the meat and have some people that will buy them from you directly for organic grass fed beef or something.