My niece buys bottle calves from local dairies to raise for future spa appointments. For a Holstein, it’s been $40 & for a Holstein-Angus cross, it’s been $80. Holsteins are actually decent beef cows as well as dairy, it just takes longer to feed them up to spa weight since they have larger frames.
This year, calf prices have gone UP ... way up. People (”from PA” she’s been told) are coming down with large trailers & buying up all the calves at prices $400 - 600 per calf!! Since my niece has an established relationship with a neighboring dairy, he is going to sell her a couple of calves for $150 each (will be born any day now). That price looks good in comparison to the $400 - 600, but it’s still about double what she’s been paying.
You’re right about the prices going up. One of Beau’s good friends is a dairy farmer and he took a half-dozen
‘unfinished’ beef steers to market and got over $3K for them all!
I know Beau paid about $300 for Chuck (who goes to ‘The Spa’ on the 14th of March) but he did ‘all the maths’ associated with feeding him (which was mostly pasture this season) and we’ll still be about $3.00/pound including processing when he returns from ‘The Spa’ in nicely wrapped freezer packages. ;)