Chapter Thirty-Three: Building Large-Scale Feeding Farms
The sky is gloomy and it's going to rain.
Athol rushed the sheep to the sheep pen in advance, and Kanerbi accompanied Chen Mo to the cattle farm...
I bought 108 Angus cattle before, including more than 20 pregnant cows. In the past few months, the cattle farm has also added new calves...
Angus cattle are an ancient breed of small beef cattle that can be put to slaughter in about 10 months if there is sufficient food. They are usually put to slaughter within 18 months.
Chen Mo went to the cow farm to have a look and took some fresh milk home.
In the small valley, Dasha and Ala were chasing each other outside. When they saw Chen Mo, they ran over...
Erha had a confused look on his face. He hadn't seen him for two days, and he didn't seem to recognize his master anymore. Alaa happily rushed over to Chen Mo, circling around Chen Mo, shaking and howling, startling Ah Li who was sleeping in the living room...
After raising pets, he no longer felt lonely when he returned home. After feeding them food one by one, Chen Mo went to the bedroom to read the driving test written test questions.
The English test questions are like a bible, and I fell asleep just looking at them.
When I woke up, it was raining heavily outside the window. The rain was getting heavier and heavier, accompanied by thunder.
There's a power outage.
Chen Mo is used to the power supply here, and the power will be cut off during thunderstorms.
The heavy rain stopped in the middle of the night, and it was sunny again the next day, with red clouds rising very early in the sky...
Canlby and his wife Mary were busy catching chickens, and Athol was picking out the strong fat sheep and rushing them to the car.
The sky after the heavy rain is exceptionally blue, like a huge emerald, with a few white clouds floating at the end of the sky...
Chen Mo loaded up thirty chickens on the car and set off first. He took out his cell phone from time to time to take a look on the road. Finally he got a signal. He put on his Bluetooth headset and dialed Hill's number: "Are you up?"
"I just got up and got ready to go to work." Hill was a little unhappy.
"You called me yesterday." There was a missed call from Hill on Chen Mo's cell phone. The call came after six o'clock yesterday afternoon. Chen Mo was asleep at that time and didn't hear it. After he woke up in the middle of the night, his cell phone had no signal.
.
"Um."
"I'm back at the ranch. The signal in the countryside is very poor. There was a thunderstorm again last night."
"Oh... I thought you didn't answer my call on purpose." Hill puffed his cheeks: "What are you doing?"
"Drive to Helena."
"Driving in Montana is like an extreme sport. There are speedsters everywhere. Please pay attention to your safety."
"I'm using Bluetooth headphones. Are you free tonight? Let's go watch a movie."
"I'm free. But I have to go out now. See you tonight. Stay safe."
"Bye-Bye."
"Bye-Bye."
Chen Mo turned on the Bluetooth music and played the classic music from the 1980s and 1990s stored in his mobile phone...
Helena, the capital of Montana and the county seat of Lewis and Clark County, is located in the mountain basin of the Rocky Mountains in the western part of the state. It is the largest commercial and transportation center in Montana.
Ellison's company was near the train station, and Chen Mo asked several people to find the place.
"Hi, Chen, here." Ellison came out of the company door to pick up Chen Mo.
"This place is really hard to find." Chen Mo complained.
"It's okay. It's like this the first time you come here and you don't know the way. It will be easier to find it next time." Ellison shrugged, invited Chen Mo into the office, and took out the contract he had prepared early...it was for one year.
contract.
Chen Mo could only understand the English contract roughly. If there were deliberate traps in the contract, Chen Mo couldn't tell. He just looked at it casually and planned to wait for Canlby to come over and confirm that there were no problems with the contract before signing.
Silky chicken: kilogram, US$25.
Reed Chicken: kg, $27.
Dorper sheep: Grade 1... Lambs, $1,619 per pound. Growth stages, $1,216 per pound. Adult lambs, $914 per pound.
First level, mutton is taken from young sheep under 13 months old, and must be castrated sheep, ewes that have never given birth, etc. It requires well-developed muscles, non-protruding bones throughout the body, subcutaneous fat covering the whole body, and beautiful oil patterns.
Road, the buttocks are plump with fat. After freezing, the fat and lean meat cannot be separated. The meat is firm and firm...
Dorper: Grade 2... Lambs, $1,217 per pound. Growth stages, $710 per pound. Adults, $4.58 per pound.
The selection criteria are still young sheep under 13 months old. The muscles are required to be well developed. Except for the withers and the vertebrae tips of the neck that are slightly protruding, the bones in other parts are not protruding and the fat is all over the body...
Must be fed on grain and grass.
There are pictures of inspections of fat attachment, etc., as well as more detailed divisions.
Then there is Level 3, which is relatively common mutton. Dorper sheep raised in most pastures according to standards can reach this level. A rough price range is also given, which is much more cost-effective than selling to a slaughterhouse.
The slaughterhouse will only identify whether the mutton reaches the specified standard range, and will not care what feed you use. There are specially formulated fattening feeds, which are cheap and produce meat quickly. As long as the meat quality is within the edible standard range, it can enter the supermarket...
No matter how bad the mutton is, Ellison's company won't want it.
Chen Mo touched his chin and looked at the picture of excellent grade mutton. The beautiful oily stripes on it were no different from those in Photoshop... Chen Mo even doubted whether such mutton existed in the world.
His Dorper sheep are of the upper-middle grade level two, and Ellison offered a price of $9 per pound, which is similar to the meat quality of the Dorper sheep he slaughtered before...
US$9 per pound is the carcass weight, excluding the heads, tails, limbs, internal organs and other remaining parts after slaughtering the livestock, which is considered a good price.
After chatting with Ellison for half an hour, Canlby and the others drove over in their f650...
Chen Mo first asked Canelby to read the contract and made sure there were no problems before signing it...
First there were 85 reed chickens and 15 black-bone chickens.
After being fed well before coming, the total weight of 85 reed chickens was 195.7 kilograms and the total weight of 15 black-bone chickens was 26.2 kilograms.
Ellison didn't care about the farmer's little cleverness and directly settled the bill after weighing it, for a total of US$5,940.
The reed chicken and black-bone chicken that Chen Mo bought at the time were much higher than the current prices.
Then came the slaughtering of Dorper sheep…
Dorper sheep in the adult stage are all second-grade mutton. Five lambs were sent, but they were of first-grade quality. Ellison paid US$3,270 for these five lambs, an average of US$654 each.
Five five-month-old Dorper sheep sold for US$2,300, an average of US$460 each.
Finally, six six-month-old Dorper sheep sold for US$3,294, an average of US$549 each.
The Snow Mountain Pasture will be completely self-sufficient in the future, with a lot of excess feed left over.
The ranch now has three workers, and their monthly salary is US$7,100. Other expenses, including electricity, fuel, machinery maintenance, etc., are calculated based on a total of US$10,000.
The bigger the sheep, the more valuable it is. What matters is the quality of the meat...
Judging from the current situation, if the lambs can all reach the first-class standard, it is most cost-effective to raise lambs.
The income of US$14,800 is Chen Mo’s most impressive income since he bought the Snow Mountain Ranch...
After getting the money in the afternoon, Chen Mo invited Canlby and Athol to have a meal at Helena's restaurant and said: "Ellison still needs a lot of lamb. After you know the pasture, send all the rams that can be slaughtered.
After we get to the slaughterhouse here... from now on, our ranch will focus on raising little fat sheep."
"No problem. There are 50 Dorper sheep that can be sold in the pasture. Selling them will bring a lot of income. Do we want to buy some lambs, ewes, and rams from other pastures?"
Sell them all and you should get a profit of $30,000...
A 1-month-old Dorper sheep sells for between US$110,140 here.
"Buy. Try to select small lambs, and then pregnant ewes... also buy a few more breeding sheep. Isolate them and check their health before bringing them back to the pasture."
"I know this, don't worry." Canlby took a sip of beer and showed a satisfied expression.
Athol has to drive later, but he can only watch Canlby drinking: "Our pasture can only raise 400 sheep, plus 100 cattle. To exceed the breeding scale, we must build a feedlot..."
“How much does it cost to build a feedlot?”
"It depends on the size. There are sheep sheds in the pasture, which are occupied by ewes. It is a breeding area. The breeding area is not big. Now it is very crowded with 180 ewes." Athol said about the simple facilities of the pasture.
: "It's okay now, it's summer. In winter, it's covered in ice and snow, and it's very cold... The sheep are crowded together and it's very easy to get sick."
Canlby nodded beside him: "This is a problem. If the number of breeding is not large, it should be able to survive the winter safely. If the breeding scale is large, it is best to build a large breeding area..."
If the breeding area is planned with space and breeding sheds, there will be no problem in raising tens of thousands of sheep.
"Build. Plan to raise 15,002,000 sheep..." As long as the quality of the mutton produced is not low, this business is very profitable. But you can't raise too many. Now Chen Mo doesn't know how much Ellison can eat.