hi I'm Mike harvest on the ranch can be a time with a lot of decisions and when
the difference between profit and loss can literally be a few blades of grass
today we continue this month's hang series and take a look at the numbers
behind hanging on our wyoming life
welcome back and thanks for coming along and continuing to explore the ranch life
and escape the ordinary paying season on the ranch is all about tractors grease
oil repairs and pull the crop itself but what it's also about is money now that
may sound bad but let's look at it this way the ranch is full of tools that
tractor the grease the oil the wrenches they need to fix it all of it they're
all tools money is a tool as well on the ranch and just like I wouldn't leave a
wrench out in the rain to get rusty and waste away I wouldn't waste money and
knowing where it goes and how it adds and flows on the ranch is just as
important as any other tool all the way down to the simple tire pressure gauge
paying season is a time of year on the ranch where we hope that whether soil
conditions pest populations even fences all work together to help grow a crop
that we can harvest in order to feed the cows during the winter here in Northeast
Wyoming and in our situation with grazing pastures rainfall and every
other contributing factor we're looking at feeding hay and supplemental feed to
cows for at least six months of the year in fact we call it 180 days in order to
give ourselves a little bit of a buffer although this spring we've fed a little
bit longer stretching the feeding season to about 200 days with a single cow
eating an average of 25 to 30 pounds of hay per day we can figure that we need
to have about 5,000 pounds of hay on hand for each and every single
full-grown cow each bowl is gonna eat almost double
that and with just that information we can figure out what we need our hay
harvest to be each year our baler is set to make bales that weigh about 1,400
pounds each that 5,000 pounds per cow translates to about three and a half
bales per cow and seven bales per volt to get us through winter with a herd
side of 150 cows and currently five Bulls we need to harvest about 800
thousand pounds of hay or 571 bales now here's the difficult part of ranching in
Northeast Wyoming we get one shot to get this harvest rainfall averages are about
14 inches per year here and a majority of that is an early spring that creates
one harvest as the rain tapers off beginning in July once we cut the grass
the one or two inches of rain that we're going to receive for the rest of summer
and fall is not enough to create any regrowth because of that we have lots of
hay grow a disproportional amount compared to other climates that may be
able to irrigate or get enough rainfall on their own to create multiple cuttings
here each acre of ground has to produce and each acre is quickly translated to a
calf that we could sell in the fall historically speaking there's a reason
this area of the country was one of the last to be homesteaded in the early
1900's it's it's a hard area to try to ranch and I have a huge amount of
respect for those that were able to come here with nothing and build a life here
I also feel a connection to those folks although our struggles may be very
different when we set out to hey we have to start
looking at how cost effective it is grazing ground letting the cows harvest
the grass where you costs nothing but it also doesn't help when there's a foot of
snow on the ground and the cows are hungry buying hay will cost us at the
very least one hundred and fifty dollars a ton maybe the worst would be about two
hundred and that's delivered that's a delivered price it but it does add up
quick with each truckload of hay carrying 22 tons and costing close to
four thousand dollars just for comparison purposes if we had to buy all
of our hay it would cost us on average of sixty thousand dollars harvesting the
hay well that costs also custom cutters in the area will charge you about
twenty-five dollars a bale to cut it rake it and Bale it in our situation
that would be a cost of about fifteen thousand dollars which really isn't that
bad when you look at it you don't have to deal with machine cos there's no
breakdowns and you don't have to mess with the time involved the problem is
that in this part of Wyoming well it's not that common to see custom cutters
and finding somebody to custom cut for you is hard most of us hard-headed
ranchers in the area are still harvesting our own we don't have the
time to go harvest somebody else's so the big question is what does it cost to
put up my own hay and where is that break-even point and is it even worth it
it all comes down to operating costs fuel repairs net ramp those are the big
three now those are variable costs now you also have your fixed costs
depreciation property tax insurance all that kind of stuff and all this can get
really complicated really fast I'm going to concentrate today on variable costs
of putting up our own hay here on the ranch and try to keep it as simple as
possible now if we really don't it well first of all we'd be here all day the
easiest way to figure this out for today may be to look at the three steps of
hang and figure out how much each one costs we mow it we cut it all down we
lay it on the ground if then we rake it up into a wind row and finally we Bale
it creating that nice 1800 pounds cylinder of wintertime
happiness for the cows so we can start out by looking at fuel costs all of our
tractors use roughly the same amount of fuel per hour
all of our fuel is delivered in bulk and the diesel is for off-road use only this
allows us to be highway tax exempt because of that we're getting our diesel
at about two dollars and sixty cents a gallon
our average fuel use in the tractors is six gallons per hour that gives us a
fuel cost of about sixteen dollars per hour
mowing involves using a eighteen foot sickled and that mower is pulled behind
a tractor with this setup we can mow ten acres of hay ground per hour we're
raking now recovering a little bit more area about 30 feet and really close to
about 20 acres per hour and baling is the same as we're falling that's the
very same wind row that the rig lays down for us mowing costs us $16 per hour
we mow 10 acres that's a dollar sixty an acre raking and bailing heaps costs
eighty cents per acre so our fuel cost at total is three dollars and 20 cents
per acre the other thing we have to consider our repair costs now those are
truly variable costs some years we may spend a couple thousand basic repairs
other years it may be a major breakdown during Hayne that may cost ten thousand
dollars we try to average these out and we say five thousand dollars per year in
repair cost during hay now in a perfect world if we had to spend that whole
budgeted amount we would put that into an account roll it over the next year
but you know anything about farming or ranching you know that money gets spent
somewhere else repair costs really are variable but we try to plan for the
worst and we hope for the best for us we're cutting about five hundred and
fifty acres so repair cost is right around nine dollars per acre
the other big cost associated with bailing is net rap now this stuff is
what we use to keep the bales together some people still use twine it's a lot
cheaper but I found that the net rap helps keep bales drier and it keeps them
to stay together a little bit longer each roll of net wrap costs about three
hundred and fifty dollars now I've tried cheaper brands they don't work as well
for me and our baler John Deere obviously wants you to use their brand
and their Baylor's so maybe they're some sort of engineered that way but it is
what it is you can vary how much you wrap how much net wrap you use if you're
transporting bales by semi you might want to wrap each one a couple of extra
times and make sure it stays together but for us we only wrap each Bale twice
and a roll of net wrap will wrap about 100 bales now that's caused of $3.50 per
Bale that's all we're really gonna look at for cost today and here in a minute
we will look at a cost per Bale I've not added in those fixed costs for this
video the insurance the depreciation the labor costs those are all gonna vary
depending on where you are and are much more very easily left up for you to take
an account and based on your location besides if I put our amounts in here I
just get a bunch arguments about anyway so let's add it all up and we'll figure
it out our hope here on the ranch is to average one veil per acre of hay ground
our total costs fuel at three dollars and 20 cents an acre repairs and upkeep
at nine dollars per acre and net rapid three dollars and fifty cents per acre
all add up to fifteen dollars and seventy cents per acre that's my cost
per Bale and I'm not paying myself an hourly wage to make hay so we're and
we're also not making making payments on any of the equipments thanks to my
father-in-law Gilbert having loved us this equipment before he passed away but
it's easy to see how making hay can really get sideways really fast let's
say I hired and help us hey now that ranch hand is
probably going to want at least $10 per hour so what do we do well I don't know
we've done what what we've always done but I can tell you this that if custom
cutters were available here which they aren't I probably would hire them I
could sell one tractor I could probably pay for their services for a few years
but that is also if we have hay now drought is something that we struggle
with constantly here and such there's such a small window of precipitation to
make our entire harvest that's almost a constant gamble may be having the
tractors and the equipment to do it yourself maybe that's just the insurance
we need just to make you kind of feel like you're more in control of your own
crop you may ask why I'm sharing all this with you and the main reason is to
give you the background of what we do and why we do it and what's required to
get food out there to millions it's not just us it's thousands of farmers and
ranchers who spend countless hours and tractors to put food on our tables just
the fun I added up the hours that we spend here on the ranch hang balancing
around at six miles per hour came up with some totals this year we'll
spend 55 hours mulling 28 hours raking and another 28 and baling total of 110
hours make up the hay that the ranch is going to use to keep going for another
year the amazing part is that 110 hours often has to be completed in a very
short window with as many is well 16-hour days and a few sleepless nights
as possible we are almost done now we have a couple
fields left to bail and then we'll be able to share with you exactly how
harvest went this year we have cut fields that were hailed out after doing
these exact calculations and figuring out that buying 8 $125 a bale is a bit
more expensive than actually put it up ourselves is 16 and every veil counts
are hang wrap up is coming up on Tuesday then we're gonna have a little bit of
fun next week we're gonna have another 360 video coming out that puts you right
in the driver's seat lets you make a few bales yourself I hope you can subscribe
explore the ranch life and escape the ordinary every time you come and visit
us until I see you again have a great week and thanks for joining us and on
Wyoming live