how much should this cost?

[phil@thesidehill]

How much should a 25lb bag of a mix of the following cost if you were putting it together yourself as opposed to buying it as a mix in a pretty bag?

Alice White Clover
Freedom MR Red Clover
Forage Feast Chicory
Regal Graze Ladino Clover

The seed tag calls out that 55.4% is pure seed and 43.77% is innoculant and coating.

Freedom MR is about 25%
Alice White is about 23%
Regal Graze is about 5%
Chicory is about 5%

 

[BuckSutherland]

The best way to do it is pay nothing.


Make your brother buy it cause you always have to bring your crappy boat up north so you have a way to go fishing.

 

[phil@thesidehill]

The best way to do it is pay nothing.


Make your brother buy it cause you always have to bring your crappy boat up north so you have a way to go fishing.

thats a good strategy....lol. But i dont have a brother or a boat!

In all seriousness though....this is not a mix i am considering purchasing...it just doesnt fit into my plotting plan. When i saw the mix and then i saw the price tag....i thought it was a steep price. I started doing some math and came up with a smaller cost to do it myself. I'm questioning my math....i just want to get some additional input on what others (cost savings savy) plotters think this could be put together for.

 

[wiscwhip]

I assumed about 14.5lbs of actual seed in the bag and I used the first per lb price I found(not necessarily the cheapest) and I come up with around $88. What price did you find the mix for?

 

[phil@thesidehill]

I assumed about 14.5lbs of actual seed in the bag and I used the first per lb price I found(not necessarily the cheapest) and I come up with around $88. What price did you find the mix for?

the mix as listed by the company that is peddling it is $158.00/25lb bag.

When i listed out the %'s of variety above i rounded up to nearest whole number for the sake whole numbers.

when i planned out the cost to do it myself i used the actual percentages as listed on the seed tag....but that shouldnt make a HUGE difference...we are talking rounding up 2 decimal spaces.

55.4% pure seed out of 25lbs comes to 13.85lbs of seed. However most seed prices i am seeing are seeds that are also coated. But i dont have any break down of pure seed to coating for those seeds so i'm not sure on an apples to apples comparison.

I found the following prices online for the seed varieties listed in the mix. i didnt look too long or hard for the cheapest....i compared 2 sources each and went with the cheapest option i found.

Forage Feast Chicory = $7.02/lb
Alice = $5.25/lb
Regal = $4.19/lb
Freedom MR = $4.12/lb

So if....i factor that the seeds that i found have a similar coating percentage of weight in a lb.

here is what i find.

FF Chicory would be 1.25 lbs of coated mix. or $8.78
Alice would be 5.75lbs of coated mix or $30.19
Regal would be 1.25lbs of coated mix or $5.24
Freedom MR would be 6.25lbs of coated mix or $25.75

Total coated mix cost would be $69.97

Does that logic/math add up?

So i'm thinking i could put the same thing in a bag for $69.97, and i'm seeing it for sale for $158.00. That is a savings of $88.03 without shipping costs factored in if i purchased it online. So even after shipping costs i would still be quite a bit ahead.

One would also have to consider that this company is most likely getting a quantitative discount on their per/lb price from their suppliers and that the prices per/lb I found would be at the retail cost which would have the highest mark up, since were are talking only buying at per/lb rate and not in any quantity like a "food plot" seed company would be.

So it appears to me this company has a pretty good margin built in there or their overhead costs are really out of line and this is what they have to charge to get close to making a marginal profit.

Thoughts?

 

[wiscwhip]

That is just about the same math I used, but it is flawed in the fact that the person buying the BOB will see 25lbs on the bag and by our math, you would only be getting 14lbs. Somehow you would have to figure a way to get the totals(both weight and cost) to reflect 25lbs of actual weight. Figure 11lbs of non-seed weight, and calculate the coatings to add into the 6.25lbs of MR and I come up with another 4.55lbs for the MR for a total of 10.8lbs of coated MR seed weight x $4.12 = $44.50 for the MR. Doing those same calculations on the Alice, you would have 8.28lbs of coated seed, not 5.75. So 8.28lbs x $5.25 = $43.47. The Regal would work out to around 2lbs and would be 2 x $4.19 = $8.38. Same 2lbs for the chicory, so 2 x $7.02 = $14.04. This would give you around 23lbs of seed weight and a total cost of about $110.39 If you are going to use coated seed cost, you have to adjust the weights for the coating accordingly or you will not cover the same area. Make sense?

 

[phil@thesidehill]

That is just about the same math I used, but it is flawed in the fact that the person buying the BOB will see 25lbs on the bag and by our math, you would only be getting 14lbs. Somehow you would have to figure a way to get the totals(both weight and cost) to reflect 25lbs of actual weight. Figure 11lbs of non-seed weight, and calculate the coatings to add into the 6.25lbs of MR and I come up with another 4.55lbs for the MR for a total of 10.8lbs of coated MR seed weight x $4.12 = $44.50 for the MR. Doing those same calculations on the Alice, you would have 8.28lbs of coated seed, not 5.75. So 8.28lbs x $5.25 = $43.47. The Regal would work out to around 2lbs and would be 2 x $4.19 = $8.38. Same 2lbs for the chicory, so 2 x $7.02 = $14.04. This would give you around 23lbs of seed weight and a total cost of about $110.39 If you are going to use coated seed cost, you have to adjust the weights for the coating accordingly or you will not cover the same area. Make sense?

yep...that is what i was struggling with. The seed prices i got were for coated seed though. So the real unkown is what is the total weight per lb of seed and coating for those seed prices i found?
I used 25lbs for my seed variety calculation not 14lbs. I pointed out that i was making an assumption that the coated seed that i priced had the same ratio of seed to coating in the total weight as the mix in question.

but i see where i neglected to calculate the ratio of coating to seed.

 

[wiscwhip]

All you can do is assume that if the MR is 25% of the seed in the mix, that it would also be 25% of the coating weight and so on with the rest of the mix? No real way to know how accurate that assumption is, so you just have to fly with it.

 

[scott44]

Sounds quite pricey to me.

 

[phil@thesidehill]

All you can do is assume that if the MR is 25% of the seed in the mix, that it would also be 25% of the coating weight and so on with the rest of the mix? No real way to know how accurate that assumption is, so you just have to fly with it.

thats kinda what i was thinking. either way...still seems to have a decent mark up.

 

[wiscwhip]

Yup, looks like about a $50 fee to weigh it out and put it in a fancy bag.