we mainly run cattle on our place right now but ive been around hay,horse,pecan,corn, and cotton production. my brother and i are trying to rebuild our family operation right now to were we are able to produce hay, cattle, and pecans at a profitable level but its been a real uphill batttle

I am also looking at moving to more of a managing particularly running coop's or marketing side of ag from teaching in the future

 

i ask because now i want to collect information for both crop and stock on what is needed. i'd like to know as much information as you can give me without going out of your way to get it. I'd like this on a small scale. small scale to me is working 8-10 hours a day and the rest is sleep and farming. I'd like to know A) amount of land. B) Tractors (amount, type cost) C) Feed (for the stock side) and avg. cost. D) cost of stock and amount of stock E) cost of seed (for the crop side) F) what cash return you'd see out of the stock and seeds. and if you can think of anything i've left out i'd appreciate that too. thanks

 

most of that information will depend on your local area or wherever you are thinking of settling at. my honest suggestion would be find someone that will alow you to work their land on shares or maybe work as a manager for someone before you step in to it full fledge. This way it allows you a chance to get a feel of what you need and what it all cost and the profit with out you being at full finacal responability.

 

I did both we farmed over 3500 acres of wheat and barley, I did 600 acres of hay, and had 175 head of registered Angus cattle.

 

what equipment did it take to farm the wheat barley and hay?

 

A couple Tractors, planters, tillage equipment, trucks and trailers, sprayer, and combines for wheat and barley. For hay tractors, swathers, balers, truck trailers and some other misc. pieces

 

scott did yall ever run cattle on or bale the wheat? just wondering that is a pretty common practice down here.

A lot of the guys i know run a operation in which they can use equipment for many differnet use i.e. using tractors that can handle planting and haying and feeding . Not buying a self propeled swather instead just getting a towed moco. Also once again it depends on the area to for example we start cutting hay sometimes in april and dont stop till november some years where northern states may not have that chance.

Also another thing to consider when farming is what system your gonna use no-till, convt. till or some other method, or with animals are you gonna be set up to rotate pastures or you gonna keep them in one pasture and supplement with hay and feed.

 

Yes we used baled wheat straw for bedding and a filler in the winter time. The cows would go for the straw sometimes over the good grass and alfalfa hay. I used to make about 2000 round straw bales a year. And all in all i would make around 3500-4000 rounds a year between hay and straw and 25,000 to 35,000 small square bales of hay as well.

 

there isnt a lot of squares made down here anymore. I know how the 3-4k on the rounds is. The ranch we work for a lot can run close to 10k rounds on a good year. I spent from may-july usually 60hrs a week moving them outa the field and stackin them 5 bales at a time.

what do yall run to handle that many squares? Also if you dont mind me asking what do yall run as a avg weight on them?

 

We had a new holland baler and a john deere one and i cant remeber the models of them. And we averaged around 85-90 pounds on them since we hand picked all of them and hand stacked them