We’ll be looking at writing a business plan for starting a cow-calf operation venture.
The livestock business is a major economic activity and one area you can easily grow your investments. This is seen in a cow-calf operation where beef cattle are raised. Cow-calf operations are the backbone of the beef industry.
COW-CALF OPERATION BUSINESS PLAN GUIDE
This is the ideal small-scale livestock business to consider if you’re operating with a limited budget. More important is the need to have a structured strategy or plan that guides your operations. One exciting fact about this business is that there’ll always be demand for your products.
Despite the huge possibilities for revenue generation, you’ll need to understand the variables involved which in turn might end up impacting the profitability or otherwise of your business.
Choosing Your Cattle
Your choice of cattle is crucial to the success of your cattle business operations.
Key areas usually considered during this process include the structure, color as well the breed. First, you want to consider what’s marketable.
Consider the fact that demand always depends on the type of cattle involved. In most cases, people go for cattle with the best turnover.
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Purchasing Your Herd
The quality of cow-calf operations depends on the sources your purchase from. Some of the most popular and best sources to get your herds from including online auctions, local producers, friends as well as neighbors.
Some caution should be exercised here. Not all sources should be considered for herd purchase. This is because health issues are common with such. A sale barn should be avoided because it’s one of the sources that could easily pose health problems.
If you must purchase from a sale barn, then you might want to take further precautionary measures. One such involves talking to a veterinarian. A comprehensive vaccination program can be adopted to adequately manage health issues.
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Only go for Good Breeds
Knowing the origins of certain cattle breeds is vital to having a successful operation. Due to hereditary factors, proper development of certain calf breeds may not be satisfactory. This in turn affects your overall profitability. Therefore, it’s important that you only purchase from trusted and reliable breeds.
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Research on Breeds that Do Well in your Area
Certain calf breeds are known to perform best in particular locations over others. Therefore, you’ll need to find out what works best for your specific location. One of the ways to find out is by conducting internet research.
There are also experts you can make such inquiries from. What more? Other cow-calf operations within your area can be used as a case study to find out what’s best for your business.
Funding
A cow-calf operation is capital intensive and requires adequate financing or funding. One of the major necessities for getting access to finance includes a well-written business plan. Your business plan details every aspect of your operations.
This is presented to your banker, investor, or whoever you’ll be seeking such funding from. The business plan is essential because it highlights the viability of your business idea. In summary, it shows the investor where the money is and how profits will be earned.
As such, your cash flow section should be written in detail to help clarify your income and expenses. Have all your finances fully and carefully worked out to enhance your chances. Having written the plan, approach your banker, agro lending agencies, or other financing sources to raise the needed funding.
Start Small
A cow-calf operation needs to be started on a small scale especially if you’re new to this business. Multiple factors will determine the size of your herd. These range from management style, and land availability among others.
Whatever the case may be, starting small and growing your business steadily enables you to better appreciate the intricacies and work that goes into building a successful cow-calf operation.
Always Seek Expert Advice
As a new cow-calf operation, you want to ensure your business isn’t dependent or hinged on guesswork. To guard against this, consider seeking advice from seasoned cattle producers within and beyond your locality. You’d be even luckier if your friends are involved and experienced in livestock production.
While seeking help from experts is a great idea, you should be careful about the type of advice you act on. Only those from experts should be given serious consideration. That way, your chances of failure are greatly reduced.
Have Measured Goals
Successful business operations, including those of a cow-calf business, have one thing in common; they all have measured or set goals. These have to do with the size of your herd, how to increase your earnings, as well as growing your entire operations.
Measured goals have the capacity of keeping you focused on adopting reliable and trusted strategies that positively impact your business. These measured goals can be divided into short and long-term goals.
Marketing
As a livestock farmer, it’s important to network extensively with other farmers as well as understand the distribution chains. This enables you to sell off your cattle easily. To aid better marketing, consider growing only quality stock
Buy or Rent a Land
The land is essential to the success of your cow-calf operations. There are options when it comes to getting land. You could buy one, use an inherited land or rent one for this purpose. Among these options, buying a land is the most costly and will increase your startup costs considerably.
Before you buy or rent one, you should be conversant with the laws and taxes that apply to such lands. This way, you can avoid areas with unfavorable laws that may affect your cow-calf operations. There should be good water sources as well as fencing to temporarily keep newcomer cattle in.
A cow-calf operation business plan is essential for the success of your business. In this article, we’ve covered the many steps involved in the planning process. These tips are essential and serve to enable you to launch your business with the least difficulty.
More importantly, the process of writing your cow-calf business plan shouldn’t be rushed. This is a detailed process that requires all of your attention. Having written the plan, there should be proper implementation of its contents.
