# Highland cattle herd value??



## j_maki

There is a small heard of highland cattle for sale close by consiting of 1 reg bull(8 years), 4 purebred unreg cows(8 years), a heifer and a steer calf. The guy is asking $3200 for the whole herd. Does this sound like a fair price? How many years have some of you got from your highland cows and bulls?

Thanks 
Jeremy


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## Bret4207

In my area you either can't give a Highlander away or they want a grand a head. What do you want to do with them? While they are supposed to give fine beef, the bone ratio is high and my local butchers don't want them at all. If you want them for the novelty that's something else. We want some to put in the back pastures because they're hardy and graze well.


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## francismilker

I seen 6 highland heifers that were 5+ bred and two yearling bulls come through my local sale barn yesterday and they averaged $250 each. Kinda sad but any thing that is not black is gonna take a beating at the sale barn around here. I'm with Bret4207. It's either feast or famine unless you find a niche market for them.


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## tinknal

I only know of one Highland situation that makes sense. I know some people who have a huge amount of land in far northern Minnesota. This is really wild country with bears, wolves, and probably mountain lions. The pastures are forest, swamp, and brushland. They cross them with Longhorns.

These cattle are survivors. They can exist in rough country with marginal feed and a heavy predator load. This is really the only situation that merits Highlands in my opinion, at least on a commercial scale.


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## SpaceCadet12364

The $3200 for that many Highlands, sounds pretty good if that price is in your financial neighborhood.

Anyone who runs Highland cattle, especially purebred ones, and is ignorant enough to run them through a sale barn deserves to take the beating that they are begging to get by selling through the sale barn! 

Private sales are the way to go....we sell for breeding stock, or for beef. We get $3.75/lb based on carcass weight for ours, when we do have one that we sell for beef. For registered animals, that grand a head is probably a reasonable price. We usually get between $800-1000 for heifers, maybe $900-1200 or so for proven cows, $700-1200 or so for bulls. If they don't want the papers, we can work with that too. Not so much of a demand for bulls, so most of them get snipped and make much more with them selling them for beef. Pasture-raised Highland beef is great! We only give ours a little bit of farm feed occasionally, to get them to come up to the barn for a look-see. I don't buy beef at the store anymore, and I can tell a difference when we do eat out or at a friends for dinner.

Highland cows will calve regularly into their early 20's. A bull, probably not quite as long, just because of the acts of agility that are required to settle the girls. 

Highlands usually have very mellow attitudes, we have only had a couple with much of an attitude, and that was when they had new calves at their side....which is understandable.


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## Bret4207

tinknal said:


> I only know of one Highland situation that makes sense. I know some people who have a huge amount of land in far northern Minnesota. This is really wild country with bears, wolves, and probably mountain lions. The pastures are forest, swamp, and brushland. They cross them with Longhorns.
> 
> These cattle are survivors. They can exist in rough country with marginal feed and a heavy predator load. This is really the only situation that merits Highlands in my opinion, at least on a commercial scale.


That's what we're hoping to get a few for. We have some real rough pasture that they could make use of. People with them tell me they do a bang up job, but we can't find any affordable stock to try it.


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## anvoj

Bret-
I was watching the craiglist postings for highlanders over the winter, just curious about prices around the country. The lowest prices anywhere were in NW NY. Something like $300 a head. Maybe somebody was selling out of their herd or something, but you might want to look into it.


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## Tad

My cousin has a herd of 20 to 30, he is getting rid of the this fall. The meat is good but between takeing 3 years to finish a steer and the endless complaints for the meat packer he is going to something else. Around here they won't take anything with horns that big so he has been dehorning calves for a few years now. Look into were you can send them before you buy them if you are going to sell retail.


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## Bret4207

anvoj said:


> Bret-
> I was watching the craiglist postings for highlanders over the winter, just curious about prices around the country. The lowest prices anywhere were in NW NY. Something like $300 a head. Maybe somebody was selling out of their herd or something, but you might want to look into it.


We watch CL like a hawk!


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## anvoj

I think these cattle were somewhere W of Albany and E of Buffalo. I don't recall where exactly though


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## Bret4207

I'm way up north in the Thousand Islands area. Trucking can be a killer.


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## wwubben

I shudder when I hear people saying highlanders will do good on brush and junk pasture.They need to be fed decent.They will browse and eat what most other cattle won't eat.They need to be vacinated and wormed and salt in front of them also.You can not abuse them.
The $3200 is a fair price.
The cows will be productive well into their teen years.
I sell mine to private people for freezer beef.I have more people wanting the beef than I have critters.
They are slow to grow to maturity----but what is time to a steer?I make a good profit with my highlanders.


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## anvoj

what is time to a steer? money out of my pocket.

I get your point wwubben, but we have lots of brush and rough pasture and ours do a great job of cleaning it up so that we can improve them. That's half the reason I got them. Granted, we only have 6 head on +/- 70 acres, so they can pick and choose. They can't eat rocks, but I think if you're attentive to them and make sure you're able to feed them hay when they need it, they are a great tool for improving your land.


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## haypoint

Salesmanship.
Highlanders are like timeshare condos. Expensive to buy from a true promoter and cheap when you try to get rid of it.
Why would someone run a Highlander through a sale barn? Because no one else will buy them, that's why. Not everyone has the ability to get Rodale Press to run an article on their herd. Attracting folks with deep pockets and promoting the belief of huge returns from this do-everything breed is hard for most folks.
We have seen it happen with Emu, Angora Goats, Draft Horses, Mule foot pigs, Silver Fox, Pot Bellied Pigs and miniature horses. Soon we'll see in Large Black pigs and Alpacas.
They are all enjoyable to look at, especially if you don't figure what they cost to buy and maintain.


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## haypoint

http://up.craigslist.org/grd/1797757645.html


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## anvoj

Yeah...
I got mine very cheap from an older guy who was losing his pastures and had to get rid of them. You do see that kind of thing a lot. The breed attracts hobbyists who let their herds get too big with nowhere to sell the excess. They're just such charming little devils! once you're in you want more and more.

They'll never be the industry standard, but I still think they have a place, especially for smallholders like myself and the OP who want to improve our land and raise a beef or two. And it doesn't hurt that you can buy them on the cheap.


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## SpaceCadet12364

If you are going to grow beef animals, you should be prepared to do with them what a beef animal is used for, that is to eat them or sell them to someone else to eat if you can't sell them as breeding stock. Unless your animals are sickly, and/or you live surrounded by hundreds of miles of vegetarians....why could you NOT figure out a way to sell them without giving them away or worse yet losing money on them at a sale barn? 

If someone gets into Highlanders and doesn't know enough about them to feed them right, keep them healthy, and how to promote them in their niche....well, why did you do it in the first place? Its like those that will get the breeds like Highlands, and have them dehorned. The horns are part of their natural a/c system to help keep them cool under that heavier hair coat they sport. If you are scared of the horns, go buy an angus or something more common. That way, if you get tired of them or have a need to sell them, you can send them through the sale barn and maybe make a couple bucks.

Personally, it doesnt make much sense to dock animals at a sale barn because they: have horns, have long hair, aren't (not always) black in color. You have much less waste with a Highland beef, they don't need to carry that big ol thick layer of fat to insulate them in the wintertime. Pasture feeding your beef animal, the meat is much leaner and better for you. You do have to cook it a bit differently, since it is so lean.

Haypoint, not all of us get articles done on our places, nor do we invest heavily on advertising. Local word of mouth seems to move beef quite nicely for us, even here in hickville southcentral Kentucky.  Something about farm raised pasture fed beef that brings the folks and has them coming back for more.

The only showing we do (or have done anyways) has been at the county fair level; don't have the wherewithal or the funding to do the big shows like some do. 

So, if anyone has some Highlands they want to give away, feel free to bring them by here. I'll figure out something to do with them. 

:soap:


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## haypoint

Oh, if it were so simple.
Finding someone today that has enough freezer space to take a quarter of a beef is getting harder. Many slaughter houses are not licensed to allow you to sell your meat to the general public. One way around it is to get four people to buy the cow and then take "their" cow to be butchered. Can be a time consuming project. Then you have to get enough out of the cow to make it worthwhile. With the increased bone, and hair, to meat ratio, you can't expect to get a good price out of a cow that won't produce as much meat. Often times, the general public prefers grain fed beef. It is less likely that folks are graining their Highlanders. Scrub pastures also effect the meat's flavor.
All in all, it matters little how you lose money on your Highlanders. For most locations, there just isn't the public support for them.
When you read articles about how great something is, it is easy for the novice to get sucked into it. It happens all the time and not just with Highlanders. I know of people that spent hundreds of thousands of dollars developing a cranberry bog. Articles encouraged people to get into it, the price was high. But Ocean Spray sets the price and it hasn't been that high in 15 years.
Horned cattle get docked for sound business reasons. They are a PITA. Staff or other cows can get injured and that is costly. There is a higher demand for Angus beef in the commercial market, so that demand fetches a higher price for black cows. Fact of life. I'm not sure you can prove the Highlander has a higher percentage of meat per cow than the commercial breeds. If you are going to promote the Highlanders, You will need to talk up the health benifits of lean beef, the ability to survive on scrub pasture and their excellent mothering abilities. You might as well claim a higher percentage of dressout, too.
Some places can generate a following for lean meat, congrats. Some places the population avoids the tougher, dryer, healthier lean grass fed beef. It matters little what you and I think is best, I'm talking about the potential customers.
I don't think anyone was talking about giving their Highlanders away. Does your offer stand for Highlanders at 85 cents to a buck ten, market price for those plain black Angus cows? I become a believer when a persons money and mouth meet.


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## wwubben

haypoint said:


> Oh, if it were so simple.
> Finding someone today that has enough freezer space to take a quarter of a beef is getting harder. Many slaughter houses are not licensed to allow you to sell your meat to the general public. One way around it is to get four people to buy the cow and then take "their" cow to be butchered. Can be a time consuming project. Then you have to get enough out of the cow to make it worthwhile. With the increased bone, and hair, to meat ratio, you can't expect to get a good price out of a cow that won't produce as much meat. Often times, the general public prefers grain fed beef. It is less likely that folks are graining their Highlanders. Scrub pastures also effect the meat's flavor.
> All in all, it matters little how you lose money on your Highlanders. For most locations, there just isn't the public support for them.
> When you read articles about how great something is, it is easy for the novice to get sucked into it. It happens all the time and not just with Highlanders. I know of people that spent hundreds of thousands of dollars developing a cranberry bog. Articles encouraged people to get into it, the price was high. But Ocean Spray sets the price and it hasn't been that high in 15 years.
> Horned cattle get docked for sound business reasons. They are a PITA. Staff or other cows can get injured and that is costly. There is a higher demand for Angus beef in the commercial market, so that demand fetches a higher price for black cows. Fact of life. I'm not sure you can prove the Highlander has a higher percentage of meat per cow than the commercial breeds. If you are going to promote the Highlanders, You will need to talk up the health benifits of lean beef, the ability to survive on scrub pasture and their excellent mothering abilities. You might as well claim a higher percentage of dressout, too.
> Some places can generate a following for lean meat, congrats. Some places the population avoids the tougher, dryer, healthier lean grass fed beef. It matters little what you and I think is best, I'm talking about the potential customers.
> I don't think anyone was talking about giving their Highlanders away. Does your offer stand for Highlanders at 85 cents to a buck ten, market price for those plain black Angus cows? I become a believer when a persons money and mouth meet.


I sell my highlander hanging carcass at $1.50 a pound.That comes out to a little over $.90 a pound live weight.I feed them grain the last 90 days and the meat tastes great.I am making more money per cow than I did with my angus.I have been doing this for six years and I could easily sell more than I now produce.Highlanders are not in the same category as the exotics you mention.Highlander-shorthorn cross has won the denver show carcass contest more than once.There is a place for highlanders on a profitable farm.You must raise them like an agricultural animal and not a wild animal.Treat them right.


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## haypoint

So, you think you can justify raising Highlanders instead of Angus, IF you raise them like Angus and take on the extra steps of selling to a consumer as a hanging carcass? You may be right.
You have done this by avoiding the hype associated with Scottish Highlanders: grows on rough pasture and produces healthy beef without grain.
If a homesteader pays Angus prices for Highlanders and is able to provide good pasture and grain and is ready to do a bit of marketing and setting up the slaughtering part, it is likely that they can profit like the guys that raise Angus and sell at the feeder calf auctions.
Sadly, many folks bought high with the expectations that they had a sure method of getting rich by selling the offspring. Others expected their cows to grow eating brush. A few more expected people to embrace grass and brush fed lean beef. After a bit of flash in the pan grass fed beef marketing, most folks have returned to that unhealthy, greasy, grain fed, tender New York Strips.


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## lasergrl

My highland is dehorned (got her that way) and does better then my mini black angus in the heat. Doesnt make sense since some cattle are polled, whats the difference. The hair doesnt seem to make any difference with the heat, maybe it doesnt get hot enough here. Usually high is 90. She is also smart enough to swim in the wallow I made for them. Highlands horned or not love to wallow. If she had horns Im fairly sure that she would have used them on my other animals.


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## anvoj

Everybody's situation is different. It's great if you can make a profit selling at 1.50/lb. With our long winters and having to buy in hay, I figure I would lose somewhere in the neighborhood of $150/head if I did that. 
Anybody bringing highlanders to the sale barn is obviously in some kind of desperate situation, and that can happen to anybody, regardless of good intentions and good planning.
We had to dehorn our little herd after our lead cow gouged a colt's face and flank, a $200 vet bill and he was lucky she missed his eye and belly. In a perfect world there would be no horses in the barnyard. In a slightly less perfect world we would be set up to separate them, but that's not my situation. They keep just fine hornless and on less than perfect pasture.


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