What does a bred replacement heifer actually cost you, natural service?
Enter your weaned heifer numbers, culling and breeding schedule, grazing/feeding costs, and bull investment: the tool walks a set of weaned heifer calves through pre-breeding culling, a natural-service breeding season, and open-heifer culling, then shows the total unit cost per head, the net cost per bred heifer after cull-sale credit, the net margin, and the annualized return on investment — just like the B1a spreadsheet, but recalculating live.
→ Weighing this against buying a bred cow instead? See Cow-Calf Bid Price and Budgets (A1/A2)
Starting heifers
Natural service Angus, bred to low birth-weight bulls — matches the original workbook's description. Change the head count, dates, and starting weight to match your operation.
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Pre-breeding culling
A share of the starting heifers are culled for structural or health reasons before the breeding season even starts, and sold as feeder heifers.
Breeding season & pregnancy
Natural service breeding season, followed by a delivery window before bred heifers and open (non-pregnant) heifers are sorted out.
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Open heifer culling
Heifers that didn't settle are sorted off and sold as feeder heifers at the open-cull date.
Grazing & feeding
Days on each phase × a per-day cost, for the whole starting head count. "Other" is 0 by default — use it for any extra phase (creep feed, weaning pen, etc.).
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Health, breeding & other direct costs
Bull breeding cost (from the bull investment section below): $0.00/hd exposed
Indirect costs & financing
Bull Investment (Advanced)
Bull cost, useful life, death loss, salvage weight/price and heifers-per-bull come from the "Market Prices & Factors" calculator on the home page — edit them there so BCU, A2 and this budget all stay in sync (this replaces the 2018-workbook bull price that used to live only here, never reconciled against the other tools' own bull numbers).
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Result
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Raise your own, or buy at market?
Compares your net cost to develop a bred heifer against simply buying one at today's bred-heifer market price — the same two numbers behind the net margin above, read as a make-or-buy decision.