# What would you do with 75 acres?



## bruceki (Nov 16, 2009)

Here's the basics: I'm looking at purchasing a farm. It was a small grade-a dairy, milking 300 cows. It has a 25,000 sq foot barn built in 2009 - steel, clearspan, with flush system, a manure lagoon, 2 smaller barns totalling 22,000 more sq ft, the milking parlor and so on. 3 bedroom 2 bath house. 

You can see a picture of what the barn looks like in at the bottom of this blog post. Its that sort of barn, set up like that. 

The milking parlor is intact, tanks, chillers, milkers, the whole thing. Local milk inspector is fine with the setup and it could be relicensed as a dairy. 

It sits on 80 acres of land, of which 72 is tillable, and was planting in corn last year. Rainfall in the area is good, it's in western washington. 

The guy who chopped the corn last year says they got 27 tons per acre of silage from the fields. They fertilize it with manure lagoon and chicken manure that comes from a local egg operation. Prior to corn the land was pasture. 

No livestock with the sale, and there's no other land in the area that can be leased, so whatever is done has to be on this amount of ground and with these facilities. 

So here's the question: With this setup, what would you do? Beef cattle? Dairy? Something else? If I wanted to run a beef operation, and raise the feed on site, how many cows could I run?


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## kickinbull (Sep 19, 2012)

This is just my opinion, look somewhere else for property. All the buildings will cost way too much to maintain.Especially for beef. Even with dairy there isnt enough land to support enough cows to make a living.Wish you luck.


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## sammyd (Mar 11, 2007)

ask the dairy guys how buying all their feed is working out for them this year....
80 acres won't feed a lot of cows, not much money in used parlor equipment.


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## ycanchu2 (Oct 21, 2011)

Depends on what you can buy it for. 1000 or 2 dollars an ac I would say maybe but a 1/2 million for it all? NO. There is a reason this dairy is not in business anymore.


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## myersfarm (Dec 24, 2004)

So here's the question: With this setup, what would you do? Beef cattle? Dairy? Something else? 


location location location if on a busy hwy anything if 3 miles down a gravel bumpy road not much else to do


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## bruceki (Nov 16, 2009)

I don't think that a conventional dairy buying feed off-farm is viable right now. With the price of feed, there's a lot of cows going to auction; I think there's 400,000 cows in california headed to auction. As with any commodity, the prices vary; this year, for the last few years, its been low. But folks still like dairy, and once this current shakeout completes I think that the prices will come back, but you're right; there's not enough land there to support very many cows. I'd figure you could do a herd of 40 to 60 dairy cattle with feed raised on the farm, or a similar number of beef. 

I'm interested in this property for my pig operation, mainly. Trying to figure out if there's a little more money to be made doing something in addition to the pigs.


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## Dusky Beauty (Jan 4, 2012)

Is it possible to retrofit it as a goat dairy and explore a different market? a way to crack into the exotic/health foods market in the cities?


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## Dreamfarm (Dec 10, 2011)

Dusky Beauty said:


> Is it possible to retrofit it as a goat dairy and explore a different market? a way to crack into the exotic/health foods market in the cities?


perhaps even plant an acre in herbs and make herbed goat cheese. Probably a good market in Seattle /Portland.


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## Dusky Beauty (Jan 4, 2012)

Dreamfarm said:


> perhaps even plant an acre in herbs and make herbed goat cheese. Probably a good market in Seattle /Portland.


Yeah, there's a big "foodie" movement up and down the pac NW in the metros... My first thought is that goats may be easier on the land needing less feed to maintain production, and the biggest impediments for most folks marketing caprine dairy is getting facilities that meet commercial standards.


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## bruceki (Nov 16, 2009)

Goats are an interesting idea. After the guy sold his dairy cows he purchased 50 dairy goats and refitted the milking parlor to milk them; he said he got a gallon or so from each goat per day. 

Is there a market for a couple of hundred gallons of goat milk a day? 

Regarding land prices -- I don't think that there is anywhere in the USA that crop ground is selling for $1 to $2k/acre. Iowa farm ground is close to $10k an acre. Good berry ground in washington state is going for $8k/acre. Pasture land seems to sell for between $4k and $5k an acre, all day.


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## Kazahleenah (Nov 3, 2004)

bruceki said:


> Regarding land prices -- I don't think that there is anywhere in the USA that crop ground is selling for $1 to $2k/acre. Iowa farm ground is close to $10k an acre. Good berry ground in washington state is going for $8k/acre. Pasture land seems to sell for between $4k and $5k an acre, all day.


Where I live land is $1,000-$2,000 per acre in general. Waterfront properties not included.


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## Tad (Apr 2, 2003)

Just to give you an idea on land useage, We have 70 milkers and 30-35 young stock from week old to springing. We run 50 acres of rotated pasture may through mid october and 150 acres of hay ground. That provides forage and square bales for the bedding chopper. We only use urea on the pastures once a year mid summer, and we could support more cows if we pushed harder on the hay ground but we rent 70 of those 150 acres for less than the cost of 2 ton of urea so we just use manure on the hay ground. Millk prices are high but so are grain and fuel dairy isn't an easy business to break into right now.


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## Dusky Beauty (Jan 4, 2012)

bruceki said:


> Is there a market for a couple of hundred gallons of goat milk a day?


This is where the business end of farming comes in, you'll have to make some calls and do some digging. Easiest thing would be to look up regional commercial goat cheese and goat milk plants and see about selling to them direct-- other avenues will take a little more creativity. 

Another option may be partnering with someone who wants to be a cheese maker-- you handling the dairy, they handling the commercial cheese end.

You also don't have to run out and buy a hundred head of goats--- you can certainly start with a humble number like 10 or 25 and practice with them and their milk while you get other parts of your farm developed.


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## bruceki (Nov 16, 2009)

What kind of ground is that? You can get hundreds of acres in nevada for pennies on the acre -- but it's desert. We're talking about good fertile farm ground in crop. No rocks, flat and ready to go.


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## Laura Workman (May 10, 2002)

Hi Bruce, Given that you should be able to grow lots of nice grass, What about some combination of sheep, cattle, and geese? There seems to be a pretty good market in our area for grassfed meats, and it seems like that would be a lot less complicated than dairying, especially choosing your stock carefully. I think they generally figure one animal unit per acre around here, and more if you heavily manage the grazing. Actually, check out Windy N in Ellensburg. They have what looks pretty attractive to the upscale consumer market, but they're clear out in Ellensburg. If you could do the same kind of thing over here, I'd think it would be pretty viable, particulary with the Seattle market so close. Also check out this place on Lopez Island http://www.sshomesteadfarm.org/ . They do things maybe differently than you might want to do, but one thing they do that makes sense is that they use dairy cattle, just a couple, to provide the extra protein needed by their poultry and pigs. Of course, they don't have many pigs, and you do, so that would be a huge difference. I'm just saying that using an intermediate animal to turn abundant grass, which is food for ruminants, into milk, which is food for monogastrics, makes a lot of sense if you can keep the labor involved reasonable.


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## linn (Jul 19, 2005)

I would probably run a small beef herd with a few nurse cows and of course a milk cow or two. It will take a lot of those acres to make hay for cows, sheep, goats etc.


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