Hi I'm Mike.
This is the 3rd year in a row that we are going to have to buy hay for the ranch.
An expense that will an effect on everything.
Today we look at the hay production, what we have made to this point, what we are going
to have to buy and how to pay for it, on a special episode of the Project List on Our
Wyoming Life.
Welcome back to Our Wyoming Life.
This is an episode that, if I can be perfectly honest with you, I'm not looking forward
to making.
It's a tough one and I'll see if I can explain why.
Every rancher I have ever known up until this point has been a very private person, at least
in this area.
They don't share how many acres they have, how many cows, or even sometimes what kind
of grass they have planted in the pastures.
I've always thought that it was some sort of arrogance that brought that on, but now
I realize.
It's a defense mechanism.
Bear with here, if you are the only one who knows your rough acreage, your inventory,
your costs, then at the end of the year you are the only one who sees success or failure.
If you share with everyone that you have this much land, this many cows to feed, you've
harvested this much hay, then you are opening yourself up for a number of things.
Trust me I know.
Since we have started haying this year, we have received hundreds if not thousands of
emails and comments, most are good, some come straight out and say that we don't know
what the hell we are doing.
One thing that blows me away is how some folks, and this is the very negative minority, don't
take different climates into effect.
Different soil structures, the fact that we only have a couple of inches of topsoil or
driving wind and not much rain compared to where they may be.
There are plenty of places that you can get 4 cuttings of hay, tons and tons of hay off
a few acres, this is not one of them.
So back to that defense mechanism.
When you are in a harder situation, you have to notice that you get more defensive.
I think everyone does it, its kind of that back up against the wall mentality.
No one wants to feel like things are slipping away from them, out of their control.
You want to have the answers on how to fix this problem, but sometimes the fix is beyond
your control too.
Maybe it costs too much, or you have other opinions that you must deal with also, or
maybe you've piled on that added pressure yourself and you have 36,672 that you don't
want to let down either.
But hay, here we go again.
Opening ourselves up, you think I'd learn, but you guys are in this with us in a weird
kind of way and we welcome you along for the ride.
So this is going to a bunch of numbers and a bunch of math, but its all important to
figuring out how the ranch will stand financially next year.
What needs to be done and how to do it.
We are going to break this down into 3 parts.
We are going to figure out what we need to feed cows over the winter, we are then going
to figure out our hay production on the ranch and how much we are going to have to buy and
then we are going to look at ways to pay for it.
Doing it this way leaves little to the imagination, the numbers don't lie and should make the
whole situation obvious.
Our first step in the process if figuring out, how much hay we will need to feed the
cows over the winter.
That is our big expense of the year.
When it comes to feeding cows, or any other livestock for that matter we use AUM or Animal
Unit Month measurements.
An AUM is the amount of feed required to sustain a 1000 pound cow for one month.
Its figured at roughly 2.5% of here body weight per day.
So 1 single 1000 pound cow will consume 800lbs of forage or hay per month.
Our cows are a bit heavier so we figure 1200 lbs or 900lbs per month.
That number is multiplied by the number of cows so we will be feeding 135,000 pounds
of hay per month or about 68 tons.
Take that times the 6 months of feeding in the winter, a good estimate, although we never
know what winter will bring but it gives us a place to start.
68 tons a month for 6 months and we need 408 tons of hay.
Just to feed the cows.
Throw bulls in there, with 5 of them big guys.
Eating 50lbs each per day and we add another 23 tons.
So we are nearing that 450 ton mark.
450 tons of hay is what is required to sustain 150 cows plus the 5 bulls for the winter.
We also have a few heifers to feed and horses so that takes it up to about 500.
That also gives a buffer for a rough winter.
Now lets turn to our production for this year.
We have harvested about half the hay we are going to harvest this year from the ranch.
Hay production is light.
Normal production for this area is about 1 ton per acre harvested.
This year we are going to be lucky to get a half a ton per acre average.
That is due to the lack of early rainfall as well as soil condition, I'm not going
to lie.
Our hay fields need work and figuring out the best way to do that is on the list, but
what is done is done.
We deal with what we have so if we can harvest about 500 acres of hay ground this year.
That will give us 250 tons of hay produced by the ranch.
That's good, its better than nothing and it definitely helps.
Like I said earlier this is our 3rd year in a row buying hay. 3 years ago we bought all
the hay the ranch needed.
Hay production was that bad, it wasn't even worth cutting it so we grazed it off to help
get the cows through the summer.
Prices were better then and we spent about $70,000 to buy hay.
Last year we harvested a quarter of what the ranch needed and that year cost us over $50,000.
This year we are still going to be lacking 250 tons of hay and I have already been pricing
out and trying to line up hay.
As demand goes up, which it is the price of course goes up.
I have found hay that I can get delivered to the ranch at the price of 185$ per ton.
For that 250 tons we need we are going to be looking at a price tag of $46,000 and change.
I have looked at hay from farther away that may be cheaper in the field but it's the
trucking that gets us.
We can get it delivered for about 5$ per loaded mile.
Every hundred miles a truck runs costs us 500$ just for the truck.
The hay that costs 185$ delivered is grown about 200 miles away, so we are paying 1000$
per truck load just for the delivery.
By the way each straight truck carries 22 tons of hay usually, so our 250 tons will
be on 11 trucks.
So if I can find cheaper hay farther away, there is a point where it becomes more for
trucking than hay.
I found hay 800 miles away, for 100$ per ton.
The truck can still only carry 22 tons, so that's $2200 for the hay, then add on the
trucking and now I am paying $281 per ton of hay.
That's the curse of buying hay, the farther away you go the cheaper the hay but the more
the trucking.
We have to take all this in account when buying hay.
Now lets look at the hay we can make on the ranch this year the 250 tons.
Lets say we didn't buy hay and just fed as many as we can with what we have.
Just cows and bulls, 250 tons of hay will feed about 80 cows and 4 bulls.
We would sell around 70 cows or roughly half the herd to do this.
This of course would affect the next year on the ranch as the income from those cows
will be half as much, but we would have the money from the sale of the cows that we sold
to make it through winter.
Is it better to have the cows or the money in the bank?
I can tell you, that you can't spend a cow, but money in the bank will get spent.
One way or the other.
That seems to be how it works.
Ok, so we sell just enough to pay for the hay we need.
This is a tricky situation too, because now we are trading ranch capital for operating
expenses.
Not a good idea and a bad spot to be in.
Now that money is gone for sure, not in the bank although it is an investment in keeping
the herd size up and producing more income for the following year.
There are bank loan options but personally I'm not too keen on that prospect.
But there is one other option and oddly enough its thanks to you.
Everyone who has watched our videos over the past 18 months and watched a commercial or
ad before it has been helping us out.
Those fractions of pennies have been adding up.
We have never taken a dime from YouTube to this point.
Its just been sitting there in an account for us, saving it for a rainy day.
Oddly enough this is a rainy day.
We have done the same with our Patreon supports, those that pledge a set amount starting at
1 dollar per month to support what we do.
And although we never anticipated it, that's what is going to help us out.
Would I rather have taken that money and put it into something else?
Would I like to replace Erins Yukon for her or at least had a down payment to do so, of
course I would but you have to prioritize.
Over the past 18 months, thanks to Our Wyoming Life we have earned enough to pay for a little
over a quarter of the hay we need.
Not all of it, we are going to sell my horse trailer to help and we will be selling some
cows this fall and the income there will help too.
Let me go on record as saying, when we first came here to the ranch.
Not knowing anything about ranching or farming, it looked easy.
Its not.
There's never enough cash to go around, you basically work for free, you make sacrifices,
but you also get a lot back from it.
Being here on the ranch has made both Erin and I better people.
And it has made us friends that we never would have had otherwise, people that I couldn't
imagine not having in our lives.
Its also made Our Wyoming Life a community of people that take our work in putting out
videos and support a ranch they have never visited, probably never will.
We didn't start doing this to make money, but I can say that right now.
I'm glad its made some, and I have you to thank for that.
So thank you.
We have a lot of decisions still to make, none of them will be made overnight, although
some of them may be made over sleepless nights.
We are going to have to rob peter to pay paul.
My ranch had will have to wait another year, a new car for erin is out, plans to build
an office and move our Wyoming life out of our bedroom are probably postponed.
But that's ok.
I made a promise a few years ago before Gilbert passed that we would figure out how to do
this and make it work, and as messed up as it looks.
I think we are doing that.
Sizing down the herd may be a step, figuring out how to make more with less may play into
it.
I've had people ask me what I though Gilbert would think of the YouTube thing and I don't
really know.
He was one of those guys that had that defensive mechanism up around him.
You never saw his failures or his hard times but I know that he went through them.
The ups and downs, he was near bankruptcy more than once in his life and I know that
if he got to know you, he would be very impressed.
And so am i.
That's it.
I'm done for the day.
I need a drink.
More to come as we decide a road to take and of course that road may be rough but it will
be worth traveling.
I hope you come along.
Please subscribe, explore the ranch life and escape the ordinary.
Together we can do great things, and those things are coming.
Have a great week and thanks for joining us in our Wyoming life.
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