Educate me on having cattle

[Spike56]

There is always a fad, for the surrounding subdivisions, in to small ranchettes, city folk buy. These can be anything from raising Emu Birds, to Pot Belly Pigs. These fads don't last long, and only the first involved make any money.
If your interest is really to maintain the AG tax advantage, there are less labor intensive animals to work with that satisfy the lower taxes. I would put Cattle on the wrong end of that decision of animal that satisfied the tax code. You can go exotic, with animals that require near no maintenance. And this is just opinion, and we all know what opinions are worth.

Just for fun, I will point out, that Chuck Norris never had a Highlander in any of his movies.

Frank, I respectively disagree with "cattle on the wrong end of that decision to satisfy the tax code". There is no market for Emu's, or Pot Belly Pigs, or any other small animal around here at least. At least with cattle, once you are setup, there are auction barns. The only other "possible" thing would be growing hay. But, without the equipment to cut/bale, with fertilizer cost, spraying (I do have a 3-point 100 gal at least) I think this is really a no-go. The soil and horrific droughts we have in East Central Texas are just too difficult for hay production.
So, I understand what you are saying, but there just is not anything else. I have had friends around that tried to grow Cotton, Sesame, Corn. They all had "Dad's or hand me down equipment" and better land. Peanuts were king around here for a while until the $$ of seed and insurance ground that to a halt. Also, on the peanut deal, the West Texas interests came into the area and bought up everyone's allotment. Once enough people quit peanuts, the local buyers dried up, so everyone else sold.
Guess everything is an individual experience / situation. There are many people around who have chickens to sell eggs. They end up giving the eggs away. But most of these have < 20-acre properties.

 

[EddieWalker]

In your area is a barn necessary for cattle?
Even in our area a barn isn't for keeping many of the cows in, it's for when we are working with them.
One group of feeders does get to eat in the old feed bunks from when it was a dairy farm.
But 3/4's of the animals life outside summer and winter. We have a couple of fields that get designated as winter feed lot fields.
We know that they will get excessive manure on them as well as feed waste from shoveling out the feed wagons. As well as getting packed down and requiring plowing in the spring instead of being no till fields.
I can see one for keeping feed clean and dry.
For cows a roofed over shade cover should be good.
If you start to feed in a barn or even a 3 sided shed you will concentrate the manure in that location,
and the ground close up will get chewed up and mudded when it rains.
Barns and stalls concentrate the cows and will mean added equipment such as a manure spreader,
and if hay or straw is mixed into you will find that tines work better then a bucket.

We probably don't need a barn to store cattle. We want it to feed all of our animals in separate areas. We also want a dry area to do this. We get about 4 feet or rain per year, and it can be uncomfortable going to to feed during a thunder storm, or right after a heavy rain. Dealing with their poop is going to be interesting. I'm trying to design a barn that can make this easier, but I'm sure their will be plenty of modifications along the way.

 

[LouNY]

We probably don't need a barn to store cattle. We want it to feed all of our animals in separate areas. We also want a dry area to do this. We get about 4 feet or rain per year, and it can be uncomfortable going to to feed during a thunder storm, or right after a heavy rain. Dealing with their poop is going to be interesting. I'm trying to design a barn that can make this easier, but I'm sure their will be plenty of modifications along the way.

With covered feeding areas, keep the roof high so any tractor will clear and pour lots of concrete. With that much rain fall cows will punch the ground up terrible making a muddy mess.
Highway fabric under gravel will make nice roadways but are hard to get the manure off without losing gravel.
Good luck and enjoy the cows, you can cuss them and enjoy them in the same breath.

 

[Eagle1]

With covered feeding areas, keep the roof high so any tractor will clear and pour lots of concrete. With that much rain fall cows will punch the ground up terrible making a muddy mess.
Highway fabric under gravel will make nice roadways but are hard to get the manure off without losing gravel.
Good luck and enjoy the cows, you can cuss them and enjoy them in the same breath.

As much as like my cattle they have caused me to expand my vocabulary many times..... It's all in their timing.
One time my favorite cow decided to visit the inside of someone's tent while they were sleeping. Took the tent with her when they startled awake. Quite the scene.

 

[Larry Caldwell]

We lost the ability for both of us to go anywhere when we started collecting Akitas. We tried to get her son to watch them, but he is too lazy and irresponsible. My parents used to be able to, but they are too old now. We have friends that have volunteered, but we’re not comfortable with that. We’re still looking for somebody that we can trust, but it’s not looking good.

Adding cattle to the mix will make it harder to go any where, but I really done need to go anywhere. One of the things that I am going to do is build a barn that will make feeding a lot faster and easier. That’s should start in a couple months. I need my fence done first, but I don’t think I want to bring the cattle here until I have a barn for them.

Barns are for hay storage. If you let cattle into the barn, don't confine them. It makes them susceptible to lung infections. They do benefit from loafing sheds and windbreaks.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

Barns are for storing hay. We had one shed on side of barn where we feed, but also feed in the field. Yea, you get wet and muddy.
I used to say, I went to college because I grew up on a farm. Now I wouldn’t want to have traded it for anything. I still enjoy putting in hay.

 

[JasperFrank]

Eddiewalker, can we get a goggle earth pic of the property? You can crop it so we can't see the co-ordinates or any other location references.
I've seen some very intelligent people set up their cattle operation in a way that is near maintenance free just by how they set it up. I've also seen some set ups that don't make any sense and requred an crazy amount of labor of moving cattle around. One of those crazy labor farms was my father's farm, because it was a collection of three older farms, each was originally a different type, One was crop, one was dairy, and the other was cattle. He operated them as three different farms, with three different sets of equipment and three different skill sets.
Dairy was the first to start losing money, so that was shut down. The cattle part was the next, as the bugger cows where always getting into the crop part. So it was all converted in to crop. Then leased out to crop companies that had all their own equipment, rotation schedules, and took on all the risks. This worked out for 15 years or so, till the Dad died, and left a very messed up 30 year old Will, that didn't even mention his new wife. No one wanted to renew a lease, cause ownership was unclear. Then one brother, the oldest, alcoholic one, insisted on a 1/3rd carve out. And never came to terms that the second wife would get at least 1/3rd of the Estate, using the Marital Election, which could be taken in kind, or in consideration. She wanted cash. He could not cover this on his own, even with the other assets, that had already been determined. Yet, he persisted as if the Dad had never been remarried. You've never mentioned other siblings, so if you are the only other survivor, aside from your parents, consider that lucky.
Don't know what you are doing outside of attempting to be responsible for this estate, but In my life, I would have been far more ahead, NOT being responsible, flying back and forth to the East Coast and the West Coast, taking time off work, and as it finally worked out, being cashed out by the two other brothers to do my own interests was the best option.
The two brothers fought, over stuff, for the next ten years. And they destroyed each other. One is dead and the other is living in a trailer in Florida. The one in Florida was the brother that wanted to work his carve out, raising cattle. Which he couldn't manage, so he lost all his inherited money. "Teach me about Cattle" is a trigger for me. Your situation maybe entirely different, and if you can make it work.
TBN is about shared experiences, that no one can entirely understand, with vastly different ways people live in their environments.

 

[EddieWalker]

This shows what I'm doing with my fencing. There will be 4 pastures that will be around 12 to 14 acres each. Then there is the barn/feeding area, which is about 5 acres.

The barn is in there, but it's too small, so my plan is to make it a little over 3 times bigger. From the barn, the animals will walk to a roundabout with gates going to each pasture. I'll have the one open that they will be using. When I want to move them to another pasture, I close that gate and open the other gate. Then in Winter, I'll just leave all the gates open. There will be gates between each pasture so I can mow easily, or just get around my place.

Currently I'm working on the first two pastures, so I'll have 24 acres for them. As I clear the land and create more grass areas, I'll put in the fence to divide it into two pastures. But that's down the road. Once the 24 acres is fenced, my next goal will be to get a fence all the way around my place. Then I can work at a more leisurely pace at clearing and planting coastal Bermuda grass. Right now, I feel under pressure to get the fencing done, get the barn built, and get the cattle here.

 

[JasperFrank]

Is this a mistake, or is it not part of the property?

 

[EddieWalker]

That's my front entrance. It leads to my houses. The pasture above is the 5 acre feed area. It has a small half acre pond, and my little barn. The red lines are going to be where my fences go. The green in the red lines are going to be gates. Where they all come together, is where the roundabout is. There is a small triangle pasture in the top center of the picture that is where I'm planning on keeping a couple of intact billy goats. I might not do that and just get rid of all the boys until I want to breed. It's easy enough to buy one for breeding and then sell him.