Oops, one more herding question. When you sell the cattle is there a season? How do you sell them?

Question

Also, how do you get more cattle if you keep selling them? Do you keep the babies? Thanks for your help!!

Answer 1

You can sell cattle any time during the year. Depending on how many cattle you have you can take them to an auction or you can contract with a company to have them bought. It completely depends on what age you sell your cattle at. If you are selling feeder calves you would want to take them to auction or sell them to a feedlot. If you are selling fat steers you would take them to an auction or market when you believe that they are most likely to make choice or qualify for a program such as Laura's Lean.
You can keep replacement heifers and bull calves out of each year's calf crop. You would want them to be the best of the calves, however unless you are A.I. ing (Artificially inseminating) you would want to make sure you don't have too much inbreeding. So you would want to keep track of your breedings and not mate a father to his daughter or mother to her son, though cattle with similar bloodlines can be mated carefully.
You can also go to a sale or auction to obtain more breeding stock. You may want to go to a purebred sale and then crossbred and get the most hybrid vigor on your farm. For example you may buy Angus heifers and Charolais bulls.
Your best be tis to have a plan ahead of time and make sure you keep track of everything.

Answer 2

There are many ways to sell them depending on the kind of cattle you have. If they're "just cows" the livestock auction or privately to other people are two options. If they are purebred cattle you have an additional possibility of a market selling registered cattle.
For some breeds - I know one Longhorn breeder - willing to take many steps in marketing there's ways to diversify. They sell breeding stock. They sell meat, hides, lamps made from feet, tail mounts, taxidermy mounts, horn/skull mounts, walking sticks (let's just say it's something no one would have in their hand while it's on the animal!) and other things. They actually, really, lose money on selling breeding stock because they have put a lot of time and effort into developing other markets as well.
Yes the heifers you can keep as replacements. The bull calves unless they are purebred or *really* outstanding gaining early are castrated to become steers. You can sell them as feeders or raise them to market weight.

Different breeds have different characteristics. When looking at different sizes always use the larger female with the smaller bull. Have seen some horrid results from breeding large shouldered big front end bulls to smaller cows. :-( One had to be cut out of the cow...that was enough to cement firmly my belief in being very very selective in breeding. The cow really had a hard time. It wasn't my animal - I just worked there (and not for long after that). Breeding a smaller cow like a Jersey or angus to a large frame bull like a Simmental or Chianina is asking for problems especially if individual traits aren't considered.

Answer 3

You can sell them year round. The best time I think is in the fall. You can keep the older calves, or keep a few of the adult cows and a bull.