How do smaller cattle farms work over there?
Can you just ring up a stock agent and say I have 10 cows ready to go to the works, or is it more difficult than that?
I imagine if you live a million miles away from the works transport cost will be horrendous, so not feasible.
How does the beef price get worked out? Is it all based on a nation wide/global price or is it locally set?
Over here there pretty much all the beef will go to a few large companies whi will either export or sell locally, so you get the market export price that everyone in NZ is getting.
There is a whole industry (called home kill) of people who get their own cattles killed/butchered for their own use but this meat isn't allowed to be sold publicily.
There has recently been a few of the homekill guys getting set up so the meat they butcher is allowed to be sold to the public, so some farmers have started selling meat direct to the public or resturaunts, of have started going for things like Wagu beef and making some good money from people who like going to farmers markets and all that bollocks.
I’ll come at this from the perspective of a reformed hobby cattle farmer. My dad bought a 12 acre tract when I was in elementary school and went 1/2sies on another 20 acre tract with my uncle at the same time. Between those 2 pieces of property and a few grass leases and some other family land, they had about 500 acres and raised as many as 100 head at a time. The ‘home tracts’ were reserved for weaned calves and 1st calf heifers. This was not a day job for either of them and it certainly would not pay to raise a family. In a good year calf sales would pay for expenses, and in a less good year the expenses made for a tidy write off. It’s not everyone that can say they have a tax deductible hobby. Today, with the home properties and the facilities and equipment long since written off and paid for, the “cattle farm” runs at a profit. It is still not nearly enough to live on, but no more itemizing deductions come tax season. And, with my dad and his brother in their 70s, the cattle are mostly something to allow them to drive around and look at them.
In general, to sell meat to the public you have to have a USDA inspected and approved slaughter and butcher facilities. For the guy with a few cows, the investment isn’t worth it.
Most “hobby farmers” take their calves to the local “auction barn” for sale. In South Texas where my family raises cattle, many/most small towns have- or are near- an auction barn. These calves typically are bought by “feed lots” that fatten the calves for a number of months before reselling them into the beef market. Sale prices are dictated by who shows up to which barn to buy, how much money they have to invest, how many and what quality of cattle are available at that barn, the apparent quality of the specific animal, and the overall market. One calf may sell for $98 per 100 (lbs live weight) and the next may sell for $105 per 100. Some barns may have a higher average sale price than others in the general area, but it will be a few cents per pound. Beyond that, sale prices will be regional, but will all be dictated by the overall beef market. If demand for beef is high, then prices will be high. If feed prices are high, then the supply of cattle at the barns may be high, and sale prices will be low.
There are niche markets that cater to people or groups that will buy an entire calf/steer/cow/whatever, have it slaughtered and butchered (at a federally inspected facility) and split the costs and meat. We have done this, but you are in a “you get what you get” proposition. There are only so many rib-eye steaks on an animal.
My dad butchered a steer last year for himself. I had a picture somewhere. Like a really big deer hanging from the bucket of a tractor- big surprise, right? Not much the feds can say about a rancher slaughtering his own animals for his own consumption. But, if one were to take an animal somewhere else to have it butchered (which we often did when I was a kid), even if for personal consumption, that facility must be USDA inspected and approved.
In all of this, it is the long-spindly fingers of the federal government that makes the hobby cattle farm a loser- even before considering the fickle ups and downs of the cattle market and feed and hay and barns and pens and trailers and tractors and fences and gates and repairs and insurance for that one time when your cattle jump the fence and end up on the highway and one gets hit by a Toyota Carola and on and on and on…
