Back 12 or 15 years ago, an inlaw who was a beef finisher reckoned that he was paying too much for bad cattle (What's new says you
). He believed that suckler farmers were making handy money selling over priced weanlings. He was on a very big land platform and decided to take on the same amount of land on a 12 year lease from a relative. Over 3 years, he built from 0 to 30, to 60 to 90 suckler cows. His experience with suckler cows would have been minimal. He had loads of teething problems - big problems with scour, hard calvings because of over fed cows, poor quality weanlings because of low milk yields - you name it, it went wrong for him. It almost drove him to the point of break-down. He had 25% mortality every year. In year 5, he had 90 cows and only ~60 scanned in calf. I used to meet him and he would ask how can one man be so unlucky?
But it wasn't bad luck. It was mainly down to a lack of experience. He thought that he could cut out the middle man and cash in on it all. He forgot that he needed to learn and paid for it dearly. He sold all of his suckler cows in year 5.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
he's starting to milk next week