55 Years And Counting From The Tractor Seat

 By bill whitman

 Eastern cattle producers can compete with Western prices

In a previous article, I talked about what we need to do to produce cattle that can compete fairly in pricing with western cattle. I said we would talk about weaning times, breaking calves to the bunk, vaccination programs, and marketing.

In too many cases, Eastern producers wean calves when they sell their calves. Yes, it’s easier to just pull the calves and ship them to market, but it does come at a cost. In reality, pulling the calves at 4-5 months of age actually has multiple advantages. A significant advantage is to the cow, which will benefit by having an extra three months for her body to recover from calving and prepare for her next birth. The advantage to the calf is that it forces us to feed the calf, in effect “bunk breaking.” As I mentioned before, typically a 5-weight western calf will be eating 13-15 pounds of feed daily whereas the eastern calf will be lucky to be eating 9 pounds daily. Consumption and cost of gain are key factors when groups of cattle are being evaluated at sale barns by the buyer for profitability and what they can pay for incoming calves.

We can’t talk too much about vaccinating our calves according to an accepted program with 5-way or 7-way vaccines. Whether we want to admit it or not, calves being produced in the United States face viruses, bacterias and all manner of disease. The risk of disease is compounded when the joining of smaller groups of cattle are necessary to fill a pen. Growers like groups of 100 or more. Since the majority of eastern cattle raisers have herds of 15-50 cows, you can see that merging your cows with others will be necessary. Given that we’re talking about grouping calves from 5-9 different farms to make one marketable pen, having these calves vaccinated and prepared for grouping is essential. The number of deaths coming from unvaccinated calves being amassed in pens is generally 10 times the number of deaths in groups that have been vaccinated according to an accepted vaccine program. It goes without saying that for the purposes of this article, castration of male calves is assumed.

For so many years, our lives included one or two trips to the sale barn annually. I bet most of us remember hearing some version of the adage, “There’s two times in life when you need to be present, when your first child is born and when your cows sell at the sale barn.” Several years ago, I learned that the Joplin, Mo., sale barn was the second largest in the country. As such, it tends to set the bar for pricing in the Midwest and East. If you watch local eastern sale barns, on sale day you will see a limited number of buyers. These buyers will buy enough cattle to fill trucks and either background them or ship west. They generally operate on a very liberal margin and make good money doing what we should be doing for ourselves. It would be prudent to determine shipping costs to a major sale barn known to pay good prices. You know your neighbors who typically sell locally, put together your own truck loads and each of you will have the opportunity to make more money per head than locally. True, recent cattle prices make this easier to overlook but how many years have pennies per pound made the difference between profit and loss?

The bottom line here is that in order to get better prices for your cattle, you need to produce cattle on par with western cattle, otherwise you will continue to accept less for more. Frankly, it’s not hard to make these changes and to some extent RFID rules will force us to review some of our practices. I encourage a visit with your local extension office, veterinarian, and ask for recommendations on what you can do to improve the cattle you produce. Do your due diligence and nail down your ROI (return on investment) and make the changes… you’ll be glad you did. 

IndianaAg@bluemarble.net