Looking for opinions and advice

[Windrift]

My name is David Frazier and I’m totally new to the sell/buy concept. A little bit of context:
I live in SW Michigan and I have about 65 acres of pasture at the moment. We get lots of moisture and the grass is thick and tall for most of the summer. I’ve been running a small herd of cattle about 10 years but I hadn’t been serious the business side until recently after coming across John Haskel’s podcast and listening to you on several other podcast. Up until then cattle were my therapy and basically just a hobby but with the amounts of money involved now, it is no longer a hobby and I need to figure this thing out!
Originally I purchased a group of angus/simmental females and one registered angus bull about 10yrs ago. Each year I have sold a few calves and grew out the rest to direct market beef with the rest of each calf crop. I swapped out the bull every second year and saved only the very best heifers as I needed to replace a few cows. Last year I decided to slowly phase out the direct market beef.
Right now I have a fairly diverse age structure in my cow herd: 6 hd of 5-6 year olds, 4 hd of 10-14 yr olds?, 10 heifers that will be preg checked today, 7 heifer calves, and 4 steer calves.
So one of my main questions is what should I do with the older cows? They are the best producers in the herd, hence why they are still with me. I’m not sure how old they are but I assume over 12 because they produced at least a calf or two before I ever got them. They are in great flesh, they are always among the very first to calve out, they always calve around a 275-280 days, and generally raise the best calves out of the entire herd. That kind of cow is hard to part with but I think you will suggest that I sell them and replace them with heifer calves. They will be preg checked today and I know they are pregnant, so the question is do I run them another year and get calf? Do I sell them now and replace with heifers? Short bred cows in our sale barns are running 2900-3100. Open heifers weighing 700-800# are running 2200-2500. Heifer calves weighing 500-600 are 1900-2200. (I’m thinking about selling some of my heifer calves also)
I am planning to attend one of the SIM trainings as soon as I can arrange my schedule but this situation needs to be dealt with now. I’d be very interested to hear any advice or insight you m

 

[Windrift]

Did I post this in the wrong section? Just wondering