Quote:
Originally Posted by philfree
That's pretty informative. Thanks. I know that farmers can insure their crop in case they lose it. The hunting guide up S. Dakota where we used to hunt was glade when he lost his crop and the insurance paid. Said he didn't have to do near as much work. Is there insurance for cows?
|
Not that I'm aware of. Nobody I know carries a policy. In a feedlot Death loss is typically not very high. Giant Snowstorms sometimes cause trouble and one small yard had some epidemic go through, other than that it is out of state cattle coming in extreme weather that kills cows: Southern cows coming in a cold snap or northern cows coming when it is hot. After a few days they get used to it, so the risk is fairly low. Some critters get BRD and just don't make it, but I'd bet over the long term you'd be money ahead to not try and insure anything.
What farmers have is multiperil crop insurance and essentially what that is insuring a revenue stream from a planted crop based on prior production. It's pretty easy to do actuarial stuff with yield. It is far more difficult to insure against death loss. It would probably have to be on each individual animal like a vehicle or something, and that would be problematic.
There is some money available in the USDA budget for Livestock disaster programs, but I don't know much about them and I have no idea how they would pay on a custom feeding job.
ghak is probably better suited to answer most of this than I am.