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West Central Illinois | I'm in almost the exact same boat as you size wise and where i've only been in this for 5 or so yrs now. Recent opportunity came up to rent a piece that bordered the home farm. Is it a good time to expand #s? No, but i'm not going to let an opportunity like that pass by because it takes many years to build relationships with your neighbors to the point where they trust you to take care of their land when they start slowing down.
Right or wrong i patched up the fences on the place and put in a bit of infrastructure so i can split it up into 6 paddocks and rotate the place, then put in an order for P1 and P2 short solids and experienced type cows to put together as that seems to be about the only hole in the market right now on breds even though it don't look like much of a hole with what i've had to give. We'll see if it was the right or wrong move but from what other people around here experienced in 2014 buying good bred heifers and expensive 3 and 4 yr old cows back then it seems like i didn't want to repeat that.
As far as keeping heifers i'm just going to keep on keeping on just keeping back about 15-20% of my heifer calves for replacements out of cows i REALLY like. Not going to keep a big bunch of heifers to breed just because it looks like there might be an opportunity because there'd be a good bit of those heifers get bred that really don't deserve to go on and be cows. | |
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Preparing for lower prices
