The Cattle Business

[Corley5]

  I grew up with a small cow calf herd.  We sold them in 1990 with no regrets    We took our calves to auction at weaning in Oct.  Some years we did good some years we didn't.  We did a bit better selling at the special beef breeder sales.  Lose a couple calves or have a piece of equipment breakdown and it was all for naught.  Grandpa retired from his herd at 70.  He didn't do it sooner because he didn't know what he'd do when they were gone.  It didn't take long for him to realize he should have gotten rid of them sooner    The one thing I really miss about them is having our own beef but I've got a deal with a guy.  I supply the hay he supplies us with beef.  Seems to work 

[Carpenter]

iv'e been thinking more about your operation, a few questions come to me.
1) why sell the heifers to keep the steers? a smaller framed animal will finish out faster than larger animals, you should go for target condition not target weight. less input costs
2)do you treat your pasture ground like a good producing hay ground?  do soil samples evry year put on the recommended fertilizer rotate pastures so they can rest.
3)at weaning what are you weights? 8 month olds should be weighing around 450 lbs on good hay at 10 months should be around 600lbs..all depends on your breed .  i run black angus
4) do you condition your cows before calving? if you could put about 200lbs on the cow in the winter, your weaning weight will go up noticably.i side feed my cows corn silage.

5) why gain fed? is that how its always been done ? have you rthought about other methods ,so you are not trying to sell animals to the same saturated  markets as thousands of other producers.
these are just my thoughts, 

 
1) Steers are worth more per pound and they are more feed efficient than heifers.  I don't finish the animals out and around here cattle are sold by the pound on the hoof.  Some years feeder heifers will work maybe even better than the steers.  Steers are a little easier to run though, I don't have to worry about them getting out with the neibors bull and they consistently bring the big dollars at auction in the fall.
2) No, we don't furtilize the pastures.  We do rotationally graze and spread the manure from the corrals.
3) Our cows are F1 Black baldies either breed Hereford or Angus.  Weaning weights are consistently around 450.  It's a little optimistic to expect 450lb calves to gain 2.5lbs/day on nothing but hay.
4)  We feed cake sometimes in the winter, some years when we had it they have gotten ear corn and cake.  Some years we feed silage.  Some years depending on feed availability and cost they just get hay.  This year I can guarantee they'll just get hay.  We've got plenty of that.
5)  Well, the markets aren't saturated.  When the buyers are in town looking to buy yearling cattle is when you want to have yearling cattle to sell.  You actually can get higher prices even with small bunches of cattle if you sell on a big sale.  You'd think it would be the other way around and that they'd fill all of their orders and go home but for some reason they just keep buying cattle like there's no tomorrow. Don't even try to figure out the cattle buyers, they're a different lot and all seem to drive nice vehicles.

Norm,
     yes we do have DDG in this area.  It is a cheap protein source, but it is not a very well balanced protein source.  I tried it with the calves one year and really didn't like the results.  I will have to look around for an alternative feed source though.  I had been buying ear corn from a local farmer and grinding it with an alfalfa pellet and soybean meal.  That works pretty well, but this year due to equipement breakdowns he only put up enough ear corn for his own use. I like feeding ear corn, there just aren't a lot of people still putting up ear corn.   

[sandhills]

Carpenter, how do you feed your cattle, do you have a mixer wagon or feed wagon of any type?  A few winters ago I watched my neighbor feeding some cows that were out running on cornstalks, he'd unroll big round bales for them and his son would follow right behind with the feed wagon dribbling out either DDG or gluten (can't remember which for sure) on the hay.  Those cows ate that hay right into the ground, I couldn't believe how well they cleaned it up and the hay was pretty marginal at best.  It was pretty tuff weather and a lot of snow but it kept those cows in real good shape.

[SwampDonkey]

At the time, about 32 years ago, the government was instituting Milk Marking Boards. This was nation wide. Dad had a herd of about 12 or 14 milk cows. He got an allocation of quota for the milk produced. Dad sold the cows and quota. The quota was worth more than all the cows could produce for milk revenues and more than the cows was worth. We had lots of work to do besides being tied to cattle. Dad never mentioned wanting another cow.

Sandhills, Good hay beats corn for a healthy cow. In areas of poor hay ground I saw in travels south of the border the ribs was sticking out of the cows as they grazed. Some of the stuff looked like straw they was eating, but it was not. Dad always had good hay here. Some people around here now just cut weeds year after year. Poor stuff.

[zopi]

There is alot of poor turf management in haying...at least around here..

[red oaks lumber]

high quality forage is the best tool for growing healthy animals yet, it also is the most overlooked area for improvement.

[sandhills]

SD, I'm not going to argue with you on that one bit, but a little grain goes a long way in keeping cows in shape, quality in hay does make a huge difference, the point I was making was that the quality of that hay wasn't very good and the DDG made up for that and also helped with the palatability of the feed at a reduced cost, and kept the cattle in very good shape.  I have to add that it was alfalfa and not native hay that was being fed (sorry, left that out) but I still think a little grain goes a long way  .

P.S.
I raise and sell both beef and grain so I'm pretty much up a crick no matter what 

[Kansas]

DDG has its place and works well at lower levels. You can usually get by using it for a protein source for overwintering calves, if have some decent quality hay. They have a lot of programs for figuring rations. Most any feed company will run scenarios for you. The State of Nebraska may well have a program for you to use yourself.

Not all protein is created equal. Soybean meal is an excellent source of protein for hogs. Not so much for cattle. Different animals need different levels of the building blocks of protein, and different food sources vary on those levels. Back in the feed mill days, we used to get a lot of loads of sunflower meal. That was an outstanding source of protein for cattle. Some of it came from a processing plant somewhere up in your area. Can't remember the name of the town anymore. I would look to DDG and possibly sunflower meal for your protein source. Seems to me you didn't want to go more than about 3 lbs or so of DDG. So much depends on availability and cost per unit of protein. Every year may be different.Sometimes a commercial protein pellet having some urea in it makes financial sense. When I backgrounded calves, I would shy away from that choice when I bought flyweight calves. Once they hit 500-600 lbs, I wasn't scared to use it. I had alfalfa, oats hay, and brome hay, along with some native so protein wasn't too much of an issue. I love alfalfa for cattle, but alfalfa pellets are usually a higher priced source of protein. Might be different in your area.

200 dollars for grain per head seems high. At one lb per 100 lbs of body weight, figuring an average of 7 lbs, you should be around 100 dollars with an expected sale time of May 1. You will have to feed a bit more than that to get the 2.5 lb gain, but I'm not sure its worth it. Fleshy yearlings might bring more per head, but it doesn't pay most of the time. Being corn is cheaper in western Kansas and Nebraska, makes more sense to let the big boys out west fatten them out. And they discount for flesh at the sale barn on yearlings.

I don't know what you have for shelter and facilities, so maybe it takes more grain up there. A good nutrition program should be able to factor all that in.

[Carpenter]

Kansas, this isn't my first day on the job.

A bovine needs 9 essential ammino acids.  They are called essential ammino acids because the bovine cannot synthesize them fast enough to meet its needs.  I can't remember all of the essential ammino acids off hand but they are PVTIMHALL.  I'll try to do this from memory.  Pheonalthalyne, Tryptophan, Lysine with Lysine being the most limiting, OK thats 3 out of nine, maybe I should dust off my college textbooks. 

 As far as figuring rations I have known how to do that since highschool.  I've taken several feeds classes at the college level and wrote a computer spreadsheat to help me balance rations.  It is better than the one at the local feedstore and I know because I worked at the local feedstore for a couple of years when we first moved back here.  All of that has been a while ago.  At any rate I did balance my last ration for ammino acids and vitamins and it was pretty good on paper and worked fairly well in a real life situation.  I also checked an equivilant DDG ration and it fell short on certain ammino acids.  I never have checked sunflower meal, we don't have sunflowers around here as far as I know, but there is some alfalfa available and alfalfa is a very well balanced protein source for a bovine.  As I recall it's calcium phosphorus level is approximately 2:1 which also just happens to be the ratio in milk and bones. 

     I'll do some more checking around, I just don't really have the time to do it right now.  If I could get some alfalfa I could cut their grain significantly and probably use a cheaper mix as well.  My $200 estimate was high, I rounded up a lot but also I am feeding the replacement heifers and the bred yearling heifers and will only have the steers to sell, so I was taking the total cost of the feed divided by the number of steer calves to be sold, it really works out to about $165/hd per steer calf, but if I figured just the steers on an enterprise budget it would be considerably less than that.  At any rate yes the steers themselves will make money.  Everything as a whole will make money as well, and as usual just barely enough to make it worth while but enough to keep me hoping that next year will be better.  So, situation normal.

[red oaks lumber]

why are you feeding grain to feeder cattle? i know you think my gains are optimistic but, they are realistic. i could push some grain through them, in reality all that does is cost more money.
 the 2 areas that return the most money 1) genetcis 2)feeding the highest quality hay or grass possible.
 my calves from weaning time get 3rd & 4th crop alafalfa long stem hay also every day they get 1st crop halage. they have acess to free choice balanced mineral.
 if your not making money now with high cattle prices, i would look at making changes to how things are done.

[Carpenter]

OK Red Oaks.  I can see those gains on alfalfa.  Alfalfa makes a very good cattle feed on paper and in real life.  It's got plenty of energy, protein, calcium and phosphorus at a 2:1 ratio if I remember correctly.  And from what I remember on an ammino acid level it's got a lot of the right ammino acids for the cattle.  So, I'll unwave the BS flag. 
     Were in different parts of the country.  There is some alfalfa around here but not a lot.  I tried to grow alfalfa and got hit with a few dry years and it didn't amount to much.  When I first started balancing rations I came to the conclusion that I could just about substitute alfalfa for the grain mix.  At any rate the hay that we have around here is native grass hay.  It's called prairie hay for a reason.  The cows do pretty well on it and it's good for maintenance but the 450lb calf rumen is not developed enough to gain much weight on it.  I do feed the calves free choice prairie hay but if that's all I fed they wouldn't weigh much more in the spring than they do at weaning.  I don't feed them enough grain mix to make them fat either, its mostly just a protein supplement with a little extra energy.  And, extra energy is never a bad thing especially in the winter.  Our winters can be severe. 
     Don't worry about my operation.  I've got things under control.  We preg checked the cows a few days ago and had a really good breed up rate.  So next year may be even better.
     I appreciate the advice everyone, but I really didn't start this thread to be a pick on the poor guy from Nebraska thread.  Nebraska used to be called the beef state, now it's called the cornhusker state for the football team.  The only state that produces more pounds of beef per year is Texas.  This is ranching country, this is not farming country and there is a difference. 

[red oaks lumber]

i don't think any one was pickin on the husker   just trying to give some outside perspective.
 the cornhusker got their name from the early farming days  corn was husked by hand. they had an annual celebration when i lived in lincoln.

[paul case]

We feed our replacement heifers and herd bulls a little grain along with free choice hay through the winter. Would alfalfa be better? maybe but it is almost as expensive to get as the grain and not as easy to get.We dont want our heifers to get fat but continue to grow through the winter. We only grain them 3 days a week, since cattle can store protiens for up to 3 days. They only get about 3 pounds per head per feeding. Some would say this is not enough to make a difference, But it does!

I have learned to put the pencil to any operation at least yearly to look for a better way to make it more profitable, and I think that is what Jeff is trying to do here. I applaud your efforts Jeff.
I truly don't think we are making as much profit as we think most of the time.  Cattle prices may be at an all time high, but so is gasoline, feed, and hay.
I personally think as long as we can keep the goverment out of the cattle business we will continue to do ok. Watch the bottom line Carpenter. I am pulling for ya, we are all in this thing together. PC