INCOME: $6380
Sheep sold 25 lambs for $2000
Eggs sold $600
Cows sold 6 cows (2/3 of profit) $3780
EXPENSES: $18,440
Truck = $850 for repairs
Chemicals = $0
Conservation = $0
Custom Hire = $0
Depreciation = $0
Feed = $7469= cows $7250 alfalfa is way up! This is our single biggest expense. This year we are going to try and hold over on some grass and cut down on the grass harvested. I did not do very well with tracking the dog, chicken and sheep feed last year. I could not find very many receipts. Chicken food is now $18.50 for 50#. At the beginning of the year we were only paying $16.50 its an 11% increase.
Fertilizer = $0
Freight/trucking = $0
Gasoline/Oil/Fuel = $1096, tractor fuel cost $1062 using 205 gallons, I now have an 100 gallon tank that I filled twice last year. This is almost triple what I was paying.
Interest on Loan Equip = $0
Insurance = $1947
Rent/Lease vehicles machinery/equip = $0
Repairs & Maintenance = $5420, Tractor $1766, sprayer $400, truck $1574, side by side $ 153, water pump $1400
Seeds/plants = $348, we bought some triticale seed and planted it this last fall.
Supplies = $3992, gloves over $250, 10 yds gravel $250
Taxes = $1181
Utilities = $0
Vet/Breeding/Medicine = $1298, we got a new Border Collie puppy. She got sick once and had to be spayed. So for everyone that keeps telling me to get a guardian dog they really need to look at the vet and food bill plus the purchase price on the dog and calculate out their losses to see if its really worth it.
Purchased Animals = $1125, we had to get a new bull after 12 years! It’s time to get some new genes on the farm.
Total for 2020 was a loss of $12000. We did better on keeping some of our costs down last year. This year we are going to focus on selling our leftover hay from the barn and machine shed. We are going to put up less hay, only fill the barn. We are going to spray the weeds 3-4 times this year, I have some old fertilizer I got off the neighbor and we are going to try it for the first time. We have one more length of fence to install alongside the creek so we can give the animals another 7 acres to browse on. In the fall we will work on replanting another half of the bottom down by the school house. We keep trying to improve the forage available for the animals to eat. Having the ram get off cycle really hurt us on lamb production.
EGG Production
Well, the chickens lost money this last year. The predators killed me and the wife says I need to focus on predators this year so they don’t kill half the flock. I want to raise the prices again, we currently charge $5/dozen but she tells me we need to double down on timely egg collection and some serious predator control this year before we can decide to increase the prices. The price of feed has not gone up since we raised the prices last year so I am going to keep them the same for now.
We averaged 21.8 laying hens for the year and currently only have 13 hens. We collected on average 6.3 eggs/day for a lousy production rate of 27%! I am sure this is my worst production rate ever. Our monthly feed weight was 154#/month at a cost of $54.25/month. The crazy part is our feed cost was 28 cents/egg or $5.62/dozen. Our total cost for the year was $6.18/dozen eggs. We sold them for $5/dozen. We ended up losing $100 on the chickens last year. Now mind you, every time the weather goes crazy or a raccoon showed up the chickens refused to lay eggs. This happened quite a bit throughout the year. We have 12 new chicks and will work to try and get another 12 to get our numbers up for this year but those chicks won’t lay for 6 months.
Stewart Creek Somethings 