The cattle market looks to be excellent in 2025 and a little planning now can make a big difference in your beef business. I think raising cattle should be profitable and fun. Making a plan can improve the chances of achieving both of these goals.

January – have a meeting with your herd health veterinarian to go over your vaccination plan. There are new vaccines on the market that are superior to the old ones. Your cattle deserve to have the best products. This meeting may also reveal areas where you can decrease your costs. Deworming every cow every year is likely not necessary, and this can be a big dollar saver.

February – contact a forage expert to develop a grazing plan. Is frost seeding red clover into your pastures around Valentine’s Day a way to improve your pastures? I know it was revolutionary on our farm many years ago. It takes more planning than tossing some seed on the ground. Call an expert – Natural Resources Conservation Service, extension, private consultant – and make a plan.

March – do the genetics of your herd fit your environment and your market? March is bull sale season for much of the Midwest and optimizing hybrid vigor should be a goal. If your cows are 75 percent or more of a single breed, they are essentially purebreds and lack heterosis.

The first research that showed that heterosis or hybrid vigor was beneficial to a beef business was done just over 100 years ago. Wow! In the 1970s, I started taking a keen interest in our beef business and read more and more about the benefits of crossbreeding – more live calves at weaning, higher weaning weights, improved health, cows that live 1-1.5 years longer, improved fertility – and I suggested to my father that we try one of those “new breeds” from Europe. The improvement the first year was tremendous and when we got those half-blood cows in the herd, that is where we really noticed the improvements.

April – if you have a spring calving herd, you should be processing your calves in May or June. You may have discussed the plan with your herd health veterinarian in January, and now is the time to order your vaccines and supplies.

Bull calves should be castrated at under 3 months of age. Don’t believe the ads that tell you to leave them bulls to get some extra growth. That is a fallacy. Talk to your herd health veterinarian about using a growth implant on your steers and heifers that are destined for the feedlot. The implant will add about 20# of weaning weight and at $250/cwt, that is $50 for a $2 investment. Implants are also very “green” in that they help the growing animal add more weight (primarily muscle) in a much more efficient manner. I explain this concept as the animal “squeezing more nutrition out of every bite they take.”

May – first cutting hay should be taken in mid-late May on many farms in our area. You don’t have to harvest “dairy quality” hay for a beef cow, but waiting too late is problematic. Tonnage goes up the longer you wait to take the first cutting, but the added weight is almost all in the stem. The leaves are the most nutritious part of the forage and cutting when you have a high leaf-stem ratio is key.

I helped a producer recently with a ration and the forage was extremely low in energy and slightly low in protein. We had to add 4# of cracked corn and 6# of dried distiller’s grains with solubles (DDGS) along with 30# of the poor-quality hay to meet the cow’s nutritional requirements. Cutting hay earlier in 2025 will greatly reduce his winer feed bill.

June – if you want to start calving on April 1, bull turn-out or AI will be scheduled for June 23. If you are using AI, a plan needs to be set up well in advance. There are numerous synchronization programs available, and each has its pros and cons. Some allow you to breed all your cows on one day without heat detection. Talking with your herd health veterinarian about which program is best for you is ideal.

If you are using bulls, they should have had a breeding soundness examination well ahead of turn-out. I just spoke with a producer that skipped this procedure last spring and at pregnancy check they found that all the cows were open. With bred cows selling for about $900 more than slaughter cows, his loss is about $22,000 in this 20-cow herd.

My initial plan was to make suggestions for the entire year, but as I look at the list, enough is enough. I’ll make my July issue the business plan for the last half of the year.

If your herd health veterinarian has questions on anything related to beef production medicine, I am glad to speak with them. Have them contact me at wmarkhilton@gmail.com

Happy New Year and success to you and your beef business in 2025.