Optimizing Gain During the Backgrounding Phase and Yearling Producer Panel

Dr. Jim MacDonald Author

08/29/2022 Added

19 Plays

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Dr. Jim MacDonald talks about management strategies to optimize yearling gains and moderates a yearling producer panel.

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[00:00:00.000](upbeat music)
[00:00:08.130]We are gonna kick off our afternoon session,
[00:00:11.670]learning a little bit more about
[00:00:12.870]our yearly production systems research.
[00:00:15.780]Our presenter is Dr. Jim MacDonald.
[00:00:18.330]He's a Ruminant Nutritionist based in Lincoln,
[00:00:21.330]teaches a number of our classes, nutrition classes,
[00:00:25.920]systems classes, in the department,
[00:00:29.040]and a lot of research around yearly production systems.
[00:00:31.920]So I will turn the floor over to you
[00:00:34.020]and we will kick off our afternoon session.
[00:00:37.440]Thanks, Casey.
[00:00:40.320]It is awesome to be in the Sandhills.
[00:00:43.380]This meeting is a bit of a problem for me every year
[00:00:45.780]because it is almost always the first week of class.
[00:00:50.910]But this year, I decided 'cause Travis asked me to come
[00:00:55.110]and I can't tell Travis no, that I would cancel class
[00:00:59.010]or do a video for class today and nobody complained.
[00:01:03.060]Josie didn't complain.
[00:01:04.230]Caitlin didn't complain.
[00:01:05.940]Everybody seemed to be okay with that plan,
[00:01:07.650]so it's it worked out well for everyone.
[00:01:09.690]Before I get started talking about
[00:01:10.920]yearling production systems...
[00:01:13.583]Oh, that's all right.
[00:01:16.260]Before I start talking about yearling production systems,
[00:01:19.170]I wanna address the students in the room.
[00:01:20.760]So if you're a student, raise your hand.
[00:01:22.170]Graduate student, Curtis student.
[00:01:25.060]If you're a student, raise your hand.
[00:01:26.910]We're glad you're here.
[00:01:28.650]My compliments to Doug, the staff at NCTA, Alan.
[00:01:36.090]I saw Alan earlier.
[00:01:38.610]NCTA students always show up.
[00:01:42.017]Like you go to feedlot round tables, they're there.
[00:01:43.920]You come to this meeting, they're there.
[00:01:45.210]You go to Nebraska cattlemen, they're there.
[00:01:46.950]So my compliments to the faculty on doing that.
[00:01:49.530]I wanna summarize what I hope you heard this morning.
[00:01:53.790]There is tremendous opportunity in this industry.
[00:01:57.090]We can get so bogged down with the news of the day
[00:02:01.350]that it can be depressing.
[00:02:03.510]I'm old enough now where I can give you
[00:02:05.190]a bit of a history lesson.
[00:02:06.660]I'm a child of the '80s and '90s.
[00:02:08.640]1980s, the beef industry was doomed
[00:02:11.160]because saturated fat was gonna kill you.
[00:02:14.670]And we've only it took a long time,
[00:02:16.680]but now we realize saturated fat's not that bad,
[00:02:19.890]but if you really wanna lose weight,
[00:02:21.120]maybe you should eat primarily beef.
[00:02:24.810]And then it was E. coli and food safety issues.
[00:02:28.680]And we tackled that head on and now we've got
[00:02:30.930]HASS procedures in place.
[00:02:32.640]We've got feeding Intergen strategies in place.
[00:02:35.310]And now we don't worry about E. coli.
[00:02:39.510]And then it was the cow that ruined Christmas, it was BSE.
[00:02:43.410]BSE is gonna demise the beef industry.
[00:02:46.890]Ruined our export market.
[00:02:50.220]What did you hear Elliott say this morning?
[00:02:52.860]Short term pain, long term gain.
[00:02:56.070]We actually expanded our total export market
[00:02:59.280]because of that.
[00:03:00.113]We made changes to our system,
[00:03:01.440]now you can't feed ruminant products back to ruminants.
[00:03:05.040]Nobody's really concerned about BSE.
[00:03:07.260]Today, it's environment.
[00:03:09.030]You are getting inundated with information that says that
[00:03:12.420]the cattle are ruining our planet and responsible
[00:03:14.880]for a climate change.
[00:03:17.790]What did Galen tell you?
[00:03:20.880]Not only are cattle carbon neutral,
[00:03:24.390]they're carbon positive.
[00:03:26.940]If you are using grasslands,
[00:03:29.310]you are net putting carbon into the ground.
[00:03:32.400]Small data set, couple of years,
[00:03:33.870]I understand we have a tremendous story to tell.
[00:03:37.440]If the Amazon rainforest is the lungs of the world,
[00:03:42.928]the Sandhills are the lungs of Nebraska.
[00:03:45.840]Take care of the Sandhills,
[00:03:47.580]there's a lot of opportunity in the beef industry.
[00:03:51.000]We want you, I'm talking to the students.
[00:03:52.890]We want you in this industry, we need you in this industry.
[00:03:57.030]Our biggest challenge is not, are we gonna overcome methane?
[00:04:01.680]It's we're halfway there.
[00:04:04.080]Our biggest challenge is are we going to recruit
[00:04:06.870]young people back into this industry?
[00:04:09.690]When I was young,
[00:04:11.550]ranching and the beef industry was a birthright.
[00:04:15.240]If you were born into a family that owned land,
[00:04:18.870]you had an opportunity.
[00:04:20.880]And if you didn't, you went and got a job.
[00:04:24.930]It's not that way anymore.
[00:04:26.910]It doesn't matter what your background is.
[00:04:28.800]Doesn't matter what your previous experience level is,
[00:04:31.350]there's a place for you in the industry.
[00:04:34.020]I just, as I was struck at, oh,
[00:04:37.380]one more thing about climate change and methane.
[00:04:41.760]Consumers want the product, that's what Elliot told you.
[00:04:45.690]Better taste good, it does.
[00:04:48.330]It's getting better.
[00:04:49.500]It better taste good and it better be safe.
[00:04:52.380]All of that other stuff is secondary.
[00:04:56.370]If you ask them directly, do you want cattle with hormones?
[00:04:59.670]They'll say, no.
[00:05:01.320]You ask them directly,
[00:05:02.280]do you want cattle that harm the environment?
[00:05:03.660]They'll say no, duh.
[00:05:06.510]But if you ask them, what are the most important things?
[00:05:09.090]It better taste good and it better be safe.
[00:05:12.120]Tremendous opportunity in this industry, great program.
[00:05:16.050]Travis Casey really enjoyed this morning.
[00:05:19.860]I'm gonna turn the page just a little bit
[00:05:21.570]and talk more about post weaning management,
[00:05:26.220]which is an area that I've been working in
[00:05:28.830]since I was a graduate student.
[00:05:31.920]And I got 30 minutes.
[00:05:34.260]So I really had to Galen, always jokes.
[00:05:36.900]I'm sorry, I wrote a long letter
[00:05:38.160]'cause I didn't have time to write a short one.
[00:05:40.440]So I really had to hone in on
[00:05:42.840]what I wanted to talk about today.
[00:05:45.570]And then we'll have a great producer panel
[00:05:47.271]where they can tell you how it really works after I'm done.
[00:05:50.910]So really three things that I wanna talk about.
[00:05:52.950]I wanna talk about compensatory gain
[00:05:55.888]and so that you understand when I discuss compensatory gain,
[00:05:59.610]what that means.
[00:06:01.350]And what those, it's compensatory gain is a comparison.
[00:06:04.467]And so understanding how we make those comparisons,
[00:06:06.840]I think is important.
[00:06:08.520]Most people understand that an animal that is fleshy
[00:06:11.760]is going to get discounted because they won't gain as well
[00:06:15.750]in the following segment.
[00:06:17.640]Well, that's like the opposite of compensatory gain.
[00:06:20.160]A cattle that is...
[00:06:20.993]An animal that's very green is expected to gain more.
[00:06:25.170]Oftentimes they'll pay, a buyer will pay more for those.
[00:06:29.910]If you've heard me talk about winter rate gain.
[00:06:32.760]We've been doing winter rate of gain work
[00:06:36.360]probably for 20 years.
[00:06:39.270]So I think we've got a lot of data in that area
[00:06:41.700]to the point where it's almost a control
[00:06:43.920]that we use in our research program.
[00:06:46.020]And then an area that is a little bit new to us,
[00:06:49.230]not in the feed lot sector,
[00:06:50.460]we've been doing implant work in the feedlot sector forever.
[00:06:53.370]But implant work in the backgrounding sector
[00:06:55.800]and really how it interacts with animal management
[00:06:59.190]is really what I wanna talk about.
[00:07:01.950]And this is a direct result, compliments to extension.
[00:07:05.850]But direct result of producers telling extension,
[00:07:09.270]we need more information in this area.
[00:07:12.240]Brandon Neuman is here from Merck.
[00:07:14.760]They sponsored, they put a fairly large investment
[00:07:17.130]in what I'm gonna show you today.
[00:07:19.260]And so we're excited to bring it back and share it with you.
[00:07:22.920]Before I start, I don't just wanna talk about the biology.
[00:07:28.080]Understand that this is a business
[00:07:30.510]and so we won't talk a lot about,
[00:07:33.390]we'll talk a lot about added gain
[00:07:34.980]and supplementation for added gain.
[00:07:37.320]Understand that there's a cost associated with that.
[00:07:40.560]So I like to use this slide.
[00:07:42.480]It just brings a common unit to very different feed stuff.
[00:07:47.430]So Sandhills range, 63 bucks a month for a cow-calf care
[00:07:53.310]published in 2021.
[00:07:54.450]That's probably 2020 data, I'm guessing.
[00:07:57.660]Anybody would buy hay for 100 bucks a ton right now,
[00:08:01.147]$15 an acre if you're from Western Nebraska,
[00:08:03.990]you think that's cheap.
[00:08:04.823]If you're from Eastern Nebraska, you think that's expensive.
[00:08:06.960]You get the point we have all these different
[00:08:08.970]dollars per ton, dollars per bushel.
[00:08:11.880]First thing we do is get that on a dry matter basis.
[00:08:14.880]So using AUMs,
[00:08:16.170]we can convert Sandhills range into dollars per ton basis.
[00:08:21.240]We think about the energy or the nutrient density in that
[00:08:24.300]and we divide and now I've gone from tons to pounds,
[00:08:27.510]but to really compare these,
[00:08:30.150]get them on a dollar per pound of TDN.
[00:08:34.380]What is the nutrient that's gonna provide you with the gain?
[00:08:37.440]And as you look through those, this changes,
[00:08:40.380]but Sandhills range is often not the cheapest.
[00:08:44.160]At times it's the most expensive,
[00:08:47.580]cost for unit of energy.
[00:08:50.070]Typically, what is the cheapest unit of energy?
[00:08:52.770]Is grazed corn residue.
[00:08:55.350]And then as you look at supplemental energy and protein,
[00:08:59.010]distillers grains often comes in as the cheapest.
[00:09:03.240]So you will hear me talk about Gray's corn residue
[00:09:05.910]and distillers grain supplementation.
[00:09:08.310]And the reason I bring this up is that is not the only way
[00:09:10.650]to achieve gain, it's one of the most common ways.
[00:09:14.550]And the reason that it's one of the most common ways
[00:09:16.350]is because it's the most cost effective.
[00:09:18.570]So I just wanna set the stage that cost of gain
[00:09:22.080]is gonna drive the system and I understand that.
[00:09:26.250]The other thing that I wanna point out,
[00:09:29.509]my dad's been gone for about nine years now,
[00:09:32.460]but I always said he should have been a dairy producer
[00:09:35.700]'cause he loved to feed cows.
[00:09:38.070]He had beef cattle, but...
[00:09:40.710]And full disclosure, I grew up in North Dakota
[00:09:43.620]and winters in North Dakota are a little bit different,
[00:09:46.470]but he loved cows with a lot of flesh on.
[00:09:49.230]Loved to feed cows.
[00:09:52.290]Many yearling producers are also cow-calf producers.
[00:09:56.970]And what's the drive home profitability thing
[00:10:01.380]that you think about as a cow-calf producer?
[00:10:04.320]Low cost, right?
[00:10:05.820]Low cost, low cost, low cost.
[00:10:07.140]Low cost producer wins.
[00:10:10.620]I agree with that.
[00:10:11.970]But a year or a wean calf is not a cow.
[00:10:15.360]Nutrient requirements are very different.
[00:10:18.150]That calf is going to require
[00:10:20.520]especially supplemental protein.
[00:10:22.920]So this is an oversimplification
[00:10:24.420]of the metabolize protein system.
[00:10:26.880]We know that first, any protein that the animal consumes
[00:10:29.760]is degraded in the rumen.
[00:10:31.650]They have fermentable energy, I.E grass.
[00:10:35.250]Put together the protein and the energy.
[00:10:37.560]The bacteria have the same nutrient requirements.
[00:10:39.450]They require energy and protein.
[00:10:41.790]Produce microbial protein that flushes out of the rumen,
[00:10:46.200]gets absorbed in the small intestine.
[00:10:47.910]And if you're a mature cow,
[00:10:49.740]especially if you're a non lactating pregnant, mature cow,
[00:10:53.790]you don't need a lot of supplemental feed
[00:10:56.250]beyond the forage resource in order to make that work.
[00:10:59.220]If you're a lightweight calf or a feedlot steer,
[00:11:03.090]and you're limited in how much you can consume,
[00:11:06.480]you can't get enough bacterial protein to meet
[00:11:08.910]the amino acid requirements for growth.
[00:11:12.090]I have a 14 year old son.
[00:11:14.970]The intake starting to go up.
[00:11:18.390]It's like a limitless requirement for protein for that kid.
[00:11:23.070]Wean calf is the same thing.
[00:11:25.890]Gonna require more amino acids.
[00:11:27.600]And in this case, more amino acids than what the bacteria
[00:11:32.190]are able to provide.
[00:11:33.180]And that's different than the mature cow situation.
[00:11:36.390]So some supplementation is probably going to be required.
[00:11:41.040]There's different ways to get there.
[00:11:42.930]Eventually we've gotta get some rumen undergradable protein.
[00:11:47.310]Again, we use distillers grains most often
[00:11:49.710]in our research program, simply because that's the most
[00:11:52.890]common and the most cost effective way to accomplish that.
[00:11:57.090]So let me demonstrate that to you.
[00:11:59.250]This is Rick Dunston's fault.
[00:12:01.200]He wanted to do this a few years ago.
[00:12:04.200]Calves grazing corn residue, receiving no supplement.
[00:12:08.520]From an extension standpoint,
[00:12:10.350]people ask, can I just feed him corn?
[00:12:13.710]We balance the rumen degradable nitrogen requirement
[00:12:17.490]with urea, we fed distillers grains,
[00:12:20.190]and then we created kind of a perfect,
[00:12:22.050]not an economically perfect,
[00:12:23.520]but a nutritionally perfect scenario with a combination
[00:12:26.340]of soypass, which is RUP.
[00:12:28.976]Rumen upgradable protein and soybean meal,
[00:12:31.020]which provides protein to the rumen.
[00:12:33.990]What you'll notice here is that the intake was different.
[00:12:38.010]They got different pounds of supplement, but the TDN intake,
[00:12:42.420]the energy intake was the same
[00:12:44.670]or we attempted to make it the same.
[00:12:46.500]So that the gain response was due to protein
[00:12:48.870]and not due to energy.
[00:12:50.250]So we tried to separate those two things.
[00:12:54.600]I don't wanna spend a lot of time on this,
[00:12:56.250]but what I would tell you is calves on corn residue
[00:12:59.670]that don't get any supplement, don't get any weight.
[00:13:03.480]What I think is interesting is we're very close to
[00:13:05.220]maintenance here and you can put a mature, pregnant,
[00:13:07.560]non lactating cow on corn residue without any supplement.
[00:13:10.470]And she maintains herself, which is always amazing to me.
[00:13:13.950]Can you feed them corn? Yeah.
[00:13:15.150]You can feed them your own corn.
[00:13:16.740]Get about a third of a pound of average daily gain.
[00:13:19.770]You provide the supplemental urea to provide the nitrogen
[00:13:23.100]with adequate or provide the rumen, sorry.
[00:13:25.470]With adequate nitrogen that increases to a half a pound.
[00:13:28.920]Distillers grains, 1.32 pounds.
[00:13:31.710]The perfect protein scenario that we created
[00:13:33.780]was a pound and a half.
[00:13:34.830]And each of these are statistically different.
[00:13:37.710]So we have a lot of control over how much that calf gains
[00:13:40.830]in the background,
[00:13:41.663]in period based on our supplementation strategy.
[00:13:44.820]So that is driven by economics,
[00:13:47.160]I wanna set the stage with that.
[00:13:48.840]Protein is gonna drive lightweight calf gain.
[00:13:52.770]I wanted to set the stage with that.
[00:13:55.230]Let's talk about compensation.
[00:13:57.180]Compensation is a term that we throw around a lot.
[00:14:01.830]You have to understand that it is a comparison.
[00:14:05.389]And so when you say this calf is or isn't compensating,
[00:14:08.250]it needs to be relative to something.
[00:14:11.310]So in this example that I'm giving you,
[00:14:14.730]a five and a half weight wean calf,
[00:14:18.025]send it into a backgrounding program.
[00:14:20.910]And at the end of that, there's 100 pound difference.
[00:14:26.010]So these calves gain more, they weigh 800 pounds
[00:14:28.440]at the end of the background in program.
[00:14:30.150]700 pounds at the end of the background program,
[00:14:32.340]if they're restricted.
[00:14:34.110]Final body weight, 1270, 1300.
[00:14:37.470]So that the difference at the end of restriction,
[00:14:40.260]which is here is 100 pounds.
[00:14:43.050]The difference for this comparison at the end of the feeding
[00:14:47.970]period is now 30 pounds.
[00:14:50.490]That means that this animal made up 70 pounds
[00:14:55.290]of the original 100 pounds.
[00:14:56.970]Does that make sense?
[00:14:58.170]So we would call that 70% compensation.
[00:15:01.740]That calf compensated 70% of that weight difference
[00:15:05.400]that it started with.
[00:15:07.860]One of the most important things
[00:15:09.270]that when we talk about compensation,
[00:15:11.040]you have to remember it's a comparison.
[00:15:13.140]And it matters what you're comparing it to.
[00:15:18.000]So if you've heard me talk, you've probably seen this.
[00:15:20.760]This is one of my favorite data sets.
[00:15:22.710]Dr. Terry Cobbstein, would've done this Carrie Gillespie,
[00:15:26.850]Carrie Lewis now.
[00:15:29.250]It's interesting we graduate students,
[00:15:31.410]female graduate students come and study in the Sandhills.
[00:15:33.600]And I mean, they tend to get married off.
[00:15:36.060]I don't know it's kind of funny.
[00:15:37.170]Send them up here, they stay.
[00:15:39.210]Carrie did the opposite.
[00:15:40.170]She took a Sandhills boy and moved him to Montana.
[00:15:42.480]So she married a Sandhills kid,
[00:15:43.770]but they live in Montana now.
[00:15:45.660]This was her master's program, two rates of winter gain.
[00:15:52.410]And I'm being critical of ourselves here.
[00:15:56.520]Low and high, you need to need to be able to quantify those.
[00:16:00.720]Because I could set a calf to gain a pound and a half.
[00:16:05.820]And if the comparison is to three pound,
[00:16:07.650]the pound and a half is low.
[00:16:09.480]If the comparison is to a three quarters of a pound,
[00:16:11.850]the pound and a half is high.
[00:16:13.260]Does that make sense?
[00:16:14.160]So you gotta understand what those comparisons are.
[00:16:16.110]I'll get to that in just a second.
[00:16:17.580]And then summer, she factorized this summer supplementation.
[00:16:22.020]So received supplement during the summer,
[00:16:24.270]or did not receive supplement during the summer.
[00:16:27.630]We'll talk about summer supplementation
[00:16:29.670]in just a little bit.
[00:16:31.290]So what is that comparison?
[00:16:32.490]So the low cattle gained,
[00:16:37.560]I'm gonna say about three quarters of a pound.
[00:16:39.780]8/10 of a pound, but under a pound per head per day.
[00:16:42.690]And that was accomplished with a couple pounds
[00:16:44.520]of distillers grains increased that five, you got 1.37.
[00:16:48.717]So these calves weighed just under five,
[00:16:51.510]and then you ended up with roughly an 80 pound difference
[00:16:55.860]at the end of the winter period.
[00:16:59.310]Based on what I just showed you,
[00:17:00.540]what do we expect these cattle to do?
[00:17:04.020]You're supposed to say compensate.
[00:17:05.910]We expect them to gain more in the subsequent phase
[00:17:09.330]and I'm going to point out because this,
[00:17:12.540]it gets a little bit confusing because we have supplemented
[00:17:14.730]cattle and non supplemented cattle.
[00:17:16.380]So the most common system would be to winter them
[00:17:20.220]and then not provide supplement during the summer.
[00:17:22.950]They go out on Sandhills range during the summer,
[00:17:25.080]most of you are not going to provide supplement.
[00:17:26.910]So let's look at that comparison.
[00:17:29.850]Was there compensation?
[00:17:31.170]Yes, the cattle on the higher rate of winter gain,
[00:17:33.570]gained a pound during the summer.
[00:17:35.280]All of these probably look low to some of you
[00:17:38.220]and those that were on the low rate
[00:17:41.611]of winter supplementation, sorry.
[00:17:43.140]Gained 1.23.
[00:17:45.570]So there was an 80 pound difference
[00:17:47.520]and now there's about a 57 pound difference.
[00:17:52.200]So you see where those weight comparisons come from.
[00:17:54.960]Now let's look at those.
[00:17:58.262]Did we get additional average daily gain from providing
[00:18:01.560]distillers grain supplementation during the summer?
[00:18:03.900]Absolutely. Yes, we did.
[00:18:05.760]Did we also get that if they were backgrounded
[00:18:08.648]at a high rate of winter gain?
[00:18:10.890]Yeah, we did.
[00:18:12.180]And about the same amount.
[00:18:14.670]So the difference between there is about the same.
[00:18:18.480]And in fact, when I do the compensation calculations,
[00:18:21.600]which I just showed you in both instances
[00:18:24.780]relative to this weight difference
[00:18:26.700]at the end of the winter period,
[00:18:28.230]they compensated 37%.
[00:18:31.860]So you had more gain with the summer supplementation.
[00:18:35.940]You had 37%, what does that mean?
[00:18:37.890]You have 37% compensation.
[00:18:39.540]Well, if I'm gonna spend $200 a ton on distillers grains
[00:18:42.150]or whatever the price is,
[00:18:44.910]and then I'm gonna send them to grass.
[00:18:46.860]If they compensate 100% and they weigh the same at the end,
[00:18:51.180]that was a complete waste of money.
[00:18:54.780]If they compensate zero
[00:18:56.700]and they maintain all of that body weight difference,
[00:18:59.940]that was probably a pretty good investment.
[00:19:03.150]So part of the challenge here is predicting how much of this
[00:19:07.290]are you going to get?
[00:19:09.360]And when does this no longer become profitable?
[00:19:13.260]I have some biases,
[00:19:14.940]but under 40% compensation in most situations,
[00:19:19.230]supplementation tends to be profitable.
[00:19:21.330]You get up above 50, 60% compensation and then not so much.
[00:19:27.150]So this is the finishing period.
[00:19:28.470]I'm not here to talk about finishing data.
[00:19:30.840]They did maintain some weight differences
[00:19:32.610]in their final body weight.
[00:19:33.990]I won't get into the rest of that.
[00:19:35.340]But what I will tell you is that summer supplementation
[00:19:38.730]when they got into the feed lot,
[00:19:40.290]so these may have been fleshy.
[00:19:42.060]They might have had a discount because they were fleshy.
[00:19:44.790]The cattle that did not receive supplement compensated 85%.
[00:19:49.647]That means 85% of that weight difference
[00:19:51.300]that I created by supplementing them, went away.
[00:19:54.870]That's likely not profitable.
[00:20:00.150]We've got a lot of data.
[00:20:01.410]So this is a summary of data.
[00:20:03.480]Just to show you a couple pounds of distillers grains,
[00:20:06.060]get you roughly a half a pound or over half
[00:20:09.030]to three quarters of a pound of gain versus 1.3 to 1.5.
[00:20:13.140]With five pounds of distillers grains.
[00:20:15.210]You clearly have summer compensation here.
[00:20:17.700]So, if we wanna talk about summer gains at the coffee shop,
[00:20:21.060]just don't let them gain very much.
[00:20:22.290]I'll tell you a story really quick.
[00:20:23.430]I like stories, but I'll tell you a story really quick.
[00:20:25.590]And I'm a little embarrassed by it.
[00:20:28.320]When I was in Texas, I got to know a guy,
[00:20:30.240]I won't say what feed company he worked for,
[00:20:31.800]but he also raised bulls on the side.
[00:20:33.720]And you like to take these bulls to bull tests.
[00:20:36.660]And he's like, Jim, I want you to develop a program for me
[00:20:39.240]so that I can compete in bull tests.
[00:20:41.162]And I say, and I was like, mocking the whole thing kind of.
[00:20:44.593]I was like, that is easy.
[00:20:47.400]I can win any bull test.
[00:20:49.560]Just get him to gain less than a pound in a day
[00:20:51.330]before you take them and they're gonna win the bull test.
[00:20:54.810]And that was kind of the end of the conversation.
[00:20:58.140]About six months later, he sends me a text
[00:21:00.540]with a picture of a plaque.
[00:21:01.650]He had won the bull test that he...
[00:21:04.740]My point is you can set these cattle up to do
[00:21:07.200]kind of whatever you want them to do in the next phase,
[00:21:10.380]if you get the nutrition right.
[00:21:12.540]And then what happens?
[00:21:14.430]The cattle that compensated during the summer period,
[00:21:17.970]they tend to compensate in the,
[00:21:20.130]or reverse compensate in the feed lot period.
[00:21:23.130]And most of the data suggests that we get a little better
[00:21:25.950]performance if they were wintered at a higher rate of gain.
[00:21:30.060]Understand most of you, if you've got stocker cattle
[00:21:32.100]are probably selling them.
[00:21:33.510]In the summertime,
[00:21:34.343]you're not following through the feed lot.
[00:21:36.180]But this advantage to winter rate of gain
[00:21:38.820]follows all the way through the feed lot.
[00:21:41.130]This is 2000, Carrie did this in 2014,
[00:21:44.460]but at that time that was a $55 difference.
[00:21:47.070]I'll show you updated information in a little bit.
[00:21:50.370]I'm not gonna talk more about summer supplementation.
[00:21:53.610]I spent most of my PhD program working on
[00:21:57.120]summer supplementation programs,
[00:21:59.550]and I was really excited about my data.
[00:22:02.430]Went with Dr. Cobbstein to a producer meeting,
[00:22:05.280]had a really nice producer tell me, Jim,
[00:22:08.100]really nice data set, appreciate what you're doing,
[00:22:10.830]but we're never gonna do that.
[00:22:12.840]We're not gonna invest in the infrastructure,
[00:22:14.790]the equipment to be able to deliver it.
[00:22:16.710]I don't have the labor to deliver it every day.
[00:22:19.440]And Jeremy, I would say that's probably a normal sentiment.
[00:22:23.010]You're not gonna get a lot of people really excited about
[00:22:25.770]supplementing daily supplementation during the summer.
[00:22:30.420]It's variable. I'm making progress.
[00:22:32.610]That's what you're saying.
[00:22:34.380]Here's my summary of summer supplementation.
[00:22:37.140]Summer supplementation can be profitable,
[00:22:40.200]and we know that supplement displaces forage.
[00:22:44.880]Terry worked a lot of years to come up with this number.
[00:22:48.510]You can increase stocking rate by roughly 20%
[00:22:53.280]because the supplement's displacing the forage.
[00:22:55.410]And if you do that, in other words,
[00:22:57.630]if you run a few more animals on the same land base,
[00:23:00.870]that can become a profitable enterprise.
[00:23:02.940]Counting on the additional gain,
[00:23:04.410]and especially the compensation that follows the extra gain
[00:23:08.970]by itself is probably not profitable
[00:23:12.330]because they compensate.
[00:23:13.410]The data set that I just showed you said 85%
[00:23:16.260]and it adds complexity.
[00:23:17.700]You've gotta have some equipment labor time,
[00:23:19.740]things that certain people have limitations to.
[00:23:23.130]The other thing that I have tried to adapt to
[00:23:28.140]maybe stubbornly is most of the research work
[00:23:30.480]that we've done in the past has been season long grazing.
[00:23:34.980]And it's really popular to sell cattle in July.
[00:23:39.210]Sell stocker cattle in July.
[00:23:41.220]So Mary Drewnowski was the faculty member
[00:23:44.820]who did this analysis and looked at marketing backgrounded
[00:23:49.350]calves at the end of the winter period.
[00:23:52.590]At a high rate of gain, she called that fast.
[00:23:55.440]And a low rate of gain.
[00:23:56.640]So this would be about pound and a half.
[00:23:59.280]This would be about a pound, to quantify that.
[00:24:03.480]Going to grass until July kind of hitting
[00:24:05.790]that barbecue sale in July,
[00:24:07.920]and then keeping them season long.
[00:24:10.440]And then calculated the average net profit,
[00:24:14.070]the maximum net profit, the minimum net profit.
[00:24:16.110]I won't focus very much on those.
[00:24:18.360]And then over an 18 year period,
[00:24:20.280]how many years was that system profitable?
[00:24:23.760]And I have to admit, okay, so here's the debate.
[00:24:29.220]I have always focused on this number and said,
[00:24:32.760]season long grazing with fast winter rate of gain
[00:24:35.430]gives you the greatest net profitability.
[00:24:38.340]Never mind, it's also probably the most variable.
[00:24:40.890]These two are the most variable, but that July system,
[00:24:46.278]16 out of 18 years was profitable.
[00:24:49.470]So if I hang around Jay Parsons now a little bit
[00:24:53.190]more and it's more than just net revenue,
[00:24:55.770]it's aversion to risk.
[00:24:58.080]So there may be a little less risk associated
[00:25:01.680]with this system, but that's why every producer
[00:25:05.100]gets to decide what they're going to do.
[00:25:07.500]So this is the latest project that we have.
[00:25:11.490]You'll notice this looks familiar.
[00:25:12.870]So a low rate of winter gain and a high rate of winter gain.
[00:25:17.790]Winter period of about 150 days.
[00:25:19.710]What's different about this is we marketed them
[00:25:22.680]about the 4th of July.
[00:25:24.030]So we tried to adapt to what many, many people are doing
[00:25:28.860]and marketing them for that barbecue sale in the summer.
[00:25:32.520]So we've got a lot of information on this.
[00:25:34.440]So this is almost becomes a control,
[00:25:36.540]this one or two pounds per day.
[00:25:39.390]The other difference here is these did not graze corn
[00:25:41.340]residue, they were fed in pans.
[00:25:43.200]This is bromegrass hay with 10% distillers grains
[00:25:46.140]and bromegrass hay with 30% distillers grains.
[00:25:48.990]And then we factorized that.
[00:25:51.510]And I don't wanna think about these as factors.
[00:25:53.490]I want you to think about these as decision points.
[00:25:56.040]So the first decision point is,
[00:25:57.540]how much do I want them to gain?
[00:25:59.550]The next decision point is,
[00:26:01.380]am I gonna put an implant in them during the winter?
[00:26:04.020]Yes or no.
[00:26:05.790]And then am I going to put an implant in them
[00:26:08.790]when they go to grass?
[00:26:09.990]Yes or no?
[00:26:11.040]We didn't believe that producers would choose to put
[00:26:14.100]a Ralgro in them and then not put a REV-G in them.
[00:26:17.430]If they were going to grasp them.
[00:26:18.840]We were limited on how many treatments we could look at.
[00:26:20.777]And so that's the one that we chose to drop.
[00:26:23.310]And then we did follow them through the finishing period.
[00:26:25.620]I'm for the sake of time,
[00:26:27.270]I'm not going to share the finishing period with you today.
[00:26:32.640]Lots of numbers up there.
[00:26:34.200]Understand and so I'm gonna highlight
[00:26:35.640]a couple things for you.
[00:26:36.990]So this is low rate of gain, no implants.
[00:26:40.230]High rate of gain, no implants.
[00:26:42.270]So this is our control.
[00:26:43.590]We have all kinds of data backing up into this.
[00:26:47.790]I'm fairly proud I got,
[00:26:51.000]we were shooting for two.
[00:26:51.840]I got 194 that made me feel pretty good.
[00:26:54.420]Couldn't quite get them down to a pound.
[00:26:56.760]Kind of have this problem with cows, dry lotting cows.
[00:26:59.910]Too they tend to gain just a little bit more than
[00:27:01.590]what you think they do,
[00:27:02.460]but we hit our targets pretty closely.
[00:27:04.710]So five 50 weight calf took them through 150 day
[00:27:07.773]backgrounding period at these two different rates again.
[00:27:11.310]And they ended up at 728 and 840.
[00:27:15.120]The other thing that I wanna highlight for you
[00:27:18.660]is the impact of the Ralgro.
[00:27:21.210]So this strong treatment is a two implant treatment.
[00:27:26.910]So at the end of the winter period,
[00:27:28.590]the only difference here are that these cattle
[00:27:32.010]received Ralgro and these cattle did not.
[00:27:35.940]Same thing at the high rate gain.
[00:27:37.260]These cattle re did not receive Ralgro, these did.
[00:27:41.040]So did we get some response to the Ralgro?
[00:27:43.410]Yeah, that there's quite a bit known about that response.
[00:27:47.790]And so just to summarize that this is the same data,
[00:27:50.820]this is body weights at the end of the period.
[00:27:54.090]So in the low getting a Ralgro,
[00:27:56.190]moved them from 728 to 751, so 23 pounds.
[00:27:59.970]And as a percentage.
[00:28:01.560]So when you think about implant response
[00:28:03.300]and backgrounding period,
[00:28:04.710]you should think about an increase in gain
[00:28:07.260]as a percentage of what they would've gained.
[00:28:10.140]Here, let me explain that a different way.
[00:28:12.810]The pounds of gain are not the same.
[00:28:15.900]The higher the plan and nutrition,
[00:28:17.730]the more pounds of gain we got from the Ralgro.
[00:28:20.670]But as a percentage, they're roughly the same.
[00:28:23.460]It increased gain by about 13%.
[00:28:28.590]Then, oh, my slides didn't work.
[00:28:30.690]That's okay.
[00:28:33.660]If I compare the impact of the REV-G only,
[00:28:38.490]these medium cattle would not have received a Ralgro,
[00:28:42.030]but received a REV-G.
[00:28:43.650]Did we get a response to the REV-G?
[00:28:45.930]And the answer to that is yes, we did.
[00:28:48.240]A 14% response for the low cattle.
[00:28:53.100]And this is interesting to me,
[00:28:55.170]a 25% response to the high cattle.
[00:28:59.070]The other thing to look at is, was there compensation?
[00:29:02.010]Yes, there was compensation.
[00:29:03.660]So if I look at my controls, no implants, high, low gain.
[00:29:08.130]The low gains gained 1.42.
[00:29:10.500]The high gains gained about a pound during the summer.
[00:29:14.100]The question is,
[00:29:15.900]do these other two implant treatments compensate similarly?
[00:29:20.400]That's where we really get into some of the fun stuff.
[00:29:23.070]And so this is the math,
[00:29:25.860]and I wanna be very clear about the comparisons.
[00:29:28.050]I convinced you, I hope that compensation is a comparison.
[00:29:31.680]The comparisons that I'm making are low gain, no implant,
[00:29:35.070]high gain, no implant.
[00:29:36.900]Low gain REV-G.
[00:29:37.980]High gain REV-G.
[00:29:39.360]Low gain Ralgro plus REV-G,
[00:29:42.090]high gain Ralgro plus REV-G.
[00:29:44.400]So all you're going to see on this slide
[00:29:46.950]is no implant, REV-G, Ralgro plus REV-G.
[00:29:50.520]And that's because the compensation is the comparison
[00:29:53.190]between that low and high rate of winter average daily gain.
[00:29:59.040]A little bit less compensation than what I showed you
[00:30:02.220]previously, but only 56 days.
[00:30:05.310]We went from a five or six month grazing period
[00:30:08.100]down to two month grazing period.
[00:30:10.587]And so it's not surprising to me that they compensated less.
[00:30:14.100]This is surprising to me.
[00:30:16.560]Those cattle that we had at a high rate gain maintained,
[00:30:22.170]they had 128 pounds difference in body weight
[00:30:24.600]at the end of the winter period.
[00:30:27.420]At the end of the grazing period,
[00:30:29.400]they maintained 117 pounds of that difference.
[00:30:33.630]So less than 10% compensation in that system.
[00:30:37.740]We won't go through the finishing.
[00:30:39.990]But what I would tell you is those differences persisted
[00:30:42.660]through the finishing period.
[00:30:43.710]So this is hot carcass weight, 954.
[00:30:47.730]That's 75 ish pounds of hot carcass weight,
[00:30:52.050]the same five and a half weight calf.
[00:30:54.300]We set them up differently at the same fat end point.
[00:30:59.010]And we ended up increasing carcass weight
[00:31:01.110]from roughly 880 pounds to 950 pounds.
[00:31:04.830]There's not very many things that I've done in my research
[00:31:06.810]career that have created that large of a difference
[00:31:09.420]in hot carcass weight.
[00:31:13.350]How much time do I have left Casey?
[00:31:19.380]Seeing this is the best stuff.
[00:31:20.520]So I gotta give Mary Drewnowski credit for this.
[00:31:23.940]She went back through the last 20 years
[00:31:28.689]and the advantage to doing this is,
[00:31:30.300]she captured the variation in supplement price.
[00:31:33.180]She captured the variation in what you would pay
[00:31:36.030]for the calf and what you would sell for the calf.
[00:31:38.490]And looked at the difference in profitability,
[00:31:41.790]this is at the end of the grazing season.
[00:31:43.800]So if you were trying to hit that barbecue sale in July
[00:31:46.710]using the data that I just showed you,
[00:31:48.780]looked at the profitability of a higher rate
[00:31:51.270]of winter gain compared to a lower rate of winter gain.
[00:31:54.360]And this is pretty close to the average numbers
[00:31:57.720]that we would've seen previously.
[00:31:59.010]I'm gonna call that about 25 bucks.
[00:32:01.950]And it was positive 15 out of the 20 years.
[00:32:04.800]There was one year, it was really not positive.
[00:32:06.720]The other three years were awfully close to being dead even.
[00:32:10.770]So other than 2012, which was a drought year,
[00:32:13.590]by the way, that was a positive.
[00:32:15.900]And I've always felt really good about that.
[00:32:17.940]Making that recommendation to producers.
[00:32:22.860]So what about the implants?
[00:32:24.930]This is,
[00:32:27.480]should you put in a REV-G if you backgrounded them
[00:32:32.339]at a low rate of winter gain, what is that implant worth
[00:32:35.865]if you background them at a low rate of winter gain?
[00:32:41.310]As I think through this logically,
[00:32:42.930]use the implant when you have access to the most nutrients.
[00:32:46.170]So we've restricted them in the winter period,
[00:32:48.630]'cause we only allowed them to gain a pound.
[00:32:52.440]We're not restricting them during the summer
[00:32:54.780]that REV-G is worth 33, $35.
[00:32:58.410]So the REV-G's worth 30 bucks, which by the way, if you're,
[00:33:02.190]we talked, heard about NHTC,
[00:33:04.740]if you're in a natural program means you probably
[00:33:07.480]ought be getting paid 30 bucks ahead for that program.
[00:33:10.860]Because you're giving that up in revenue.
[00:33:13.920]Ralgro on top of that was worth a couple of bucks and yes,
[00:33:18.150]this includes the cost of the implant in there.
[00:33:22.050]Positive 20 out of 20 years.
[00:33:23.840]So I feel very pretty confident in recommending
[00:33:26.010]if you're targeting kind of a low input pound,
[00:33:29.190]pound and a quarter per head in the background in period,
[00:33:33.300]use an implant.
[00:33:34.290]You don't use an implant during the winter,
[00:33:35.640]but man, you really need to have implant in them
[00:33:37.650]when they go to grass.
[00:33:40.260]You've already seen this, now I'm switching gears
[00:33:42.390]and I'm making comparisons to the high rate of winter game.
[00:33:48.330]So this is the line that I showed you
[00:33:49.740]that I felt pretty good about,
[00:33:51.150]about 20 bucks positive 15 outta 20 years.
[00:33:54.690]If I put a REV-G, so this is what I just showed you
[00:33:58.650]that increased from $25 to $40
[00:34:01.920]and it became positive 18 out of the 20 years.
[00:34:05.310]And if I give them a high rate of winter gain,
[00:34:09.150]I put a Ralgro in them,
[00:34:10.800]followed by a REV-G when they went to to grass.
[00:34:14.520]And I will be perfectly honest with you.
[00:34:17.310]I struggle with this number,
[00:34:19.080]but it's what the biology says
[00:34:20.910]because they don't compensate.
[00:34:22.920]Less than 10% compensation,
[00:34:25.560]that whole system's worth 100 bucks
[00:34:27.750]over a low rate of winter gain, no implant.
[00:34:31.567]$100 difference on average, over the course of 20 years,
[00:34:35.910]when you compare high rate of winter gain to implant system
[00:34:40.560]to a low rate of winter gain, no implants.
[00:34:44.880]Background in management is huge.
[00:34:51.300]I'll leave you with this.
[00:34:53.610]Beef system is about accumulation of weight.
[00:34:57.510]Producer who accumulates weight
[00:34:59.220]at the lowest cost to gain wins.
[00:35:02.160]So I've just broken up.
[00:35:03.180]I've taken our data set and I've just broken them up.
[00:35:05.340]So this is cow-calf.
[00:35:08.190]Corn color is feed lot finishing.
[00:35:11.700]How much weight you capture in this low input system,
[00:35:15.840]low rate of gain, no implants.
[00:35:17.670]You're capturing 19% of that total system weight.
[00:35:22.026]If you increase that increase your rate of winter gain
[00:35:24.300]and they maintain it, you use implants.
[00:35:26.340]You're increasing that,
[00:35:27.780]not quite to a third but 27% of the total system.
[00:35:31.740]And that's with 56 days of grazing,
[00:35:33.510]a couple months of grazing and selling them early
[00:35:35.899]in the summer.
[00:35:38.490]Just for fun, I calculated ROI.
[00:35:40.830]So about a buck and a half from the added supplement,
[00:35:45.330]throw a REV-G in them, you get return of 1890 per dollar
[00:35:50.040]and two implants high gain.
[00:35:51.690]That return is about $27 per dollar invested.
[00:35:56.070]I don't work for Merck,
[00:35:58.890]but the economics suggests that using an implant,
[00:36:03.090]especially during the summers,
[00:36:04.200]probably provides you with one of the greatest returns
[00:36:07.290]that you can find.
[00:36:10.620]Casey, do you wanna do questions?
[00:36:11.940]This has nothing to do with my talk, I just really like it.
[00:36:15.600]Love it. Questions.
[00:36:19.110]We've got a mic and...
[00:36:22.140]Jim, I'm curious, and you may,
[00:36:23.850]and you never mentioned at all in your presentation,
[00:36:26.610]but have you ever looked at quality grades
[00:36:29.670]versus the various systems you have
[00:36:31.590]if one shows a big difference in quality grades?
[00:36:35.310]Yeah. Great question.
[00:36:37.800]We do receive, we get quality grade data.
[00:36:41.790]I think at this point I would have to, well,
[00:36:43.860]first of all, with the numbers that we have in our system,
[00:36:48.930]those numbers are targeted to find performance differences.
[00:36:53.910]So sometimes you see things in carcass data,
[00:36:57.210]like you'll see a difference in rib eye area or something
[00:36:59.190]that just doesn't make sense.
[00:37:00.023]Well it's 'cause we don't have the power
[00:37:01.380]to be able to pick it up and marbling's kind of in between.
[00:37:04.170]So we're limited on power to be able to truly see
[00:37:07.320]differences unless they're big.
[00:37:09.870]There are some indications that the high rate of winter
[00:37:11.850]gain, you get a little bit more marbling in that system,
[00:37:15.120]but it's inconsistent.
[00:37:16.890]So I'm not really willing to stick my neck out and say, yes,
[00:37:19.020]you're gonna increase marbling.
[00:37:20.160]Especially when we're already at 80% choice, 85% choice.
[00:37:24.840]We got John (indistinct).
[00:37:27.180]We'll catch over there.
[00:37:31.615]In a year like this year with higher price grain,
[00:37:36.570]if one can put the winter backgrounding pounds
[00:37:42.660]on cheaper or more cheaply,
[00:37:45.180]then they would go on in the feed lot later,
[00:37:48.690]is that justify a higher rate of game?
[00:37:52.650]So going, so just to make sure I understand
[00:37:54.600]what you're saying.
[00:37:55.470]Skipping the summer phase,
[00:37:56.730]skipping the grass phase, 'cause you don't have it,
[00:37:58.950]but backgrounding them longer.
[00:38:01.050]Well, I was think I was thinking about
[00:38:04.710]the weaning and the wintering of them.
[00:38:06.360]But yes, I guess if a guy kept him to July, that would,
[00:38:12.390]that maybe that would be.
[00:38:13.720]Yeah, you're gonna,
[00:38:14.700]they're going to compensate in the next phase.
[00:38:17.550]So if you skip the summer phase,
[00:38:21.030]the cattle on a high rate of gain will probably not gain
[00:38:23.130]quite as well in the feed lot.
[00:38:26.190]Kind of the beauty of that three phase system
[00:38:28.320]is that kind of all washes out in the summer phase.
[00:38:32.462]But there actually is the silver bullet,
[00:38:34.200]then when the price corn is high.
[00:38:36.930]I'm sorry. That is the silver bullet.
[00:38:39.420]The grass. If, when the price of corn
[00:38:41.370]is high, that's the answer.
[00:38:45.090]In the short term probably, my,
[00:38:49.080]so I moved to back to Nebraska in 2012,
[00:38:51.840]I was accused of bringing the drought with me from Texas
[00:38:55.920]and grass prices followed corn price.
[00:38:59.250]It got really, really expensive.
[00:39:00.810]And then they didn't come down as fast as corn came down.
[00:39:03.420]So in the short term, yeah.
[00:39:04.740]In the long term, those prices tend to equilibrate.
[00:39:10.050]Thank you.
[00:39:14.250]Jim, I have a question to follow up
[00:39:15.750]on commerce question.
[00:39:18.180]As far as the carcass data,
[00:39:19.350]my concern on the high rate gain steers over the winter
[00:39:23.790]with two implants is whether you see
[00:39:25.440]more overweight carcasses.
[00:39:29.580]Okay, overweight carcasses.
[00:39:32.850]Is there such a thing?
[00:39:35.400]What's the break now?
[00:39:41.310]I struggle with overweight carcasses.
[00:39:43.462]I will say this, Jeremy and you would've seen this data.
[00:39:46.860]If you go back to the old sorting data,
[00:39:48.930]the yearling systems, the risk is in overweight carcasses.
[00:39:51.837]The Calfed systems, the risk is in high yield grades.
[00:39:55.920]And so I'm just spitballing here.
[00:40:00.630]But yes, but you could manage your way out of that
[00:40:05.520]if you could, by sorting cattle.
[00:40:07.410]And we know that you can sort them up based on the weight,
[00:40:09.720]entering the feed lot and know that that does a decent job.
[00:40:13.860]So that's probably not a perfect answer.
[00:40:16.170]I struggle with overweights because it's a moving target.
[00:40:19.320]Depending on they tell you,
[00:40:20.760]give all these reasons why overweights are bad,
[00:40:22.800]but then they get a little short on cattle,
[00:40:24.750]then they move it.
[00:40:26.580]But yes, that's potentially a risk.
[00:40:29.400]Did you have something?
[00:40:31.500]Well, it's related to your bull test thing.
[00:40:33.690]I'm gonna win the bull test.
[00:40:35.043]'Cause I just won't feed them for a couple days
[00:40:36.960]before I send them.
[00:40:37.950]But so my question is on your compensation stuff,
[00:40:43.380]is that all just weight because they were eating different
[00:40:46.140]amounts in fill or how do you know that's compensation?
[00:40:48.780]Okay, so Galen's given me a leading question
[00:40:52.260]because we do things very specifically to avoid
[00:40:55.740]challenges with gut fill.
[00:40:57.880]So we know that that, if you have a pencil shrink
[00:41:03.270]and you're bringing cattle off grass
[00:41:04.980]and you gotta trail them three or four miles,
[00:41:09.870]that may be a disadvantage to the seller
[00:41:12.030]and an advantage to the buyer.
[00:41:14.220]Because they're losing gut contents along the way.
[00:41:17.130]We spend a lot of time worrying about
[00:41:18.930]and thinking about controlling that.
[00:41:20.250]So these cattle in every, in between every phase
[00:41:23.190]with the exception of the end of the finishing period,
[00:41:25.860]they would've been limit fed for five days and weighed
[00:41:28.620]for at least two,
[00:41:29.640]so that we take care of that gut fill issue.
[00:41:32.070]That's what Galen want was reminding me to tell you.
[00:41:36.600]Wonderful. All right.
[00:41:37.650]So we have an opportunity now we're gonna pull a couple
[00:41:40.500]of our producers up for our panel
[00:41:43.200]and Jim is going to moderate that session for us.
[00:41:46.560]And so we will get set up here
[00:41:50.130]and we will get this wrapped up for our producer panel.
[00:41:55.950]All right, so I'm super stoked
[00:41:58.800]because these are two guys that I have a lot of respect.
[00:42:04.283]For Logan Pribbenow, Wine Glass Ranch, Imperial Nebraska.
[00:42:11.220]Logan, in my opinion is one of the brightest young minds
[00:42:15.900]that we have in this industry.
[00:42:20.460]I'll lead you a little bit, okay.
[00:42:22.590]But, Logan's thought process is countercurrent
[00:42:25.770]to what the industry is doing
[00:42:27.570]and I'll let him describe that.
[00:42:29.310]But he's got both the cow-calf operation
[00:42:31.380]and a yearly operation.
[00:42:33.060]And I haven't asked him,
[00:42:34.500]but I would bet that when we come out of this drought
[00:42:39.300]and bred cows are really, really expensive,
[00:42:42.840]he's probably gonna have some for sale.
[00:42:45.720]So I'll let him describe that.
[00:42:48.030]Homer Buell, south of Bassett probably takes advantage
[00:42:51.330]of that barbecue sale.
[00:42:52.770]I would guess Shovel Dot Ranch,
[00:42:58.920]beefs stocker producer of the year, several years ago.
[00:43:03.300]Now I don't remember what year.
[00:43:04.560]2015. 2015.
[00:43:07.890]So story to tell you about Homer.
[00:43:10.620]Remember I said, I spent all my time on PhD work
[00:43:13.170]working on summer supplementation.
[00:43:14.910]And I had this really nice guy who told me
[00:43:16.470]he just wasn't gonna do that.
[00:43:17.970]That was Homer Buell and I've never forgotten it.
[00:43:21.900]And so I really am careful about
[00:43:23.910]how much I emphasize summer supplementation,
[00:43:26.040]recognizing that there are limitations to that adoption.
[00:43:30.120]Logan, by the way is probably the best Twitter follow
[00:43:33.660]since fake Pokollini.
[00:43:35.610]So if you're on Twitter,
[00:43:37.050]make sure that you follow Logan
[00:43:38.370]because he's got a pretty strong Twitter game.
[00:43:41.670]So I don't really wanna spend time me asking you
[00:43:46.260]questions, but I think let's take five or so minutes,
[00:43:50.070]five to 10 minutes each and just explain your system
[00:43:54.060]and then hopefully we'll take questions from the audience.
[00:44:00.750]As Jim saw, lavishly bestowed upon me.
[00:44:06.330]I thank a little bit,
[00:44:07.590]and I guess that gives just quite the praise
[00:44:11.490]and the Sandhills, I suppose,
[00:44:14.340]fifth generation with Wine Glass Ranch.
[00:44:17.640]They're in Southwest Nebraska
[00:44:19.170]where we are incredibly dry.
[00:44:22.290]Drier than 2012 or 2013.
[00:44:24.390]So it's thrown us for a loop for sure.
[00:44:27.570]We do have a dry land farm.
[00:44:29.730]And so we're grazing our failed crops with yearland.
[00:44:32.970]So we did have them locked up for the grass phase,
[00:44:35.910]but you know, as the corn started drying up,
[00:44:39.660]they were pretty handy animal class to have.
[00:44:43.260]So yeah, 2022 has definitely thrown us for a loop for sure.
[00:44:48.390]We're rolling,
[00:44:51.000]our rolling rainfall right now is nine inches for 12 months,
[00:44:56.250]which is, it's pretty bad.
[00:44:58.800]It was very nice to drive north into the Hills
[00:45:00.990]and see some green grass on the way up.
[00:45:04.470]But as Jim pointed out, we've done this.
[00:45:07.999]My dad did it as well.
[00:45:09.030]This would be kind of our third turn.
[00:45:12.000]We fluctuate the class of animals that we run
[00:45:15.690]and we try to not focus on the seasonals
[00:45:17.730]or try to focus on the macro, the cow cycle,
[00:45:21.090]which it's easier.
[00:45:27.180]It's easier looking back than it is looking forward.
[00:45:29.910]It's hard to hit the high.
[00:45:31.650]Everyone looks back at 2014 or 2015 kind of depending
[00:45:35.430]on the month and you think, well,
[00:45:36.924]everyone know you should have sold cows.
[00:45:39.090]Then no one knew in 2014 or 2015, it was,
[00:45:43.200]everyone was saying,
[00:45:44.033]there's gonna be two more good years left.
[00:45:46.080]We've got the charts that prove it basically.
[00:45:49.800]So we're pretty adaptive.
[00:45:52.740]So right now we're in cowherd growth mode.
[00:45:56.460]We're growing the cowherd and we'll sell about
[00:46:00.240]half the cowherd here at the top of the cycle.
[00:46:04.020]I think this is gonna be the year that we get it.
[00:46:06.030]We're gonna nail the top this time and be heroes.
[00:46:10.890]So that's in a nutshell what we do.
[00:46:13.110]And when we sell those cows, we'll go right back in
[00:46:16.140]and go more than 50% stalkers in particular steers.
[00:46:21.390]And then we transition to heifer to develop heifer.
[00:46:23.400]So in a nutshell, that's what we do.
[00:46:27.150]We're pretty flexible and try to follow macro trends.
[00:46:31.680]I'll pass it over to Homer.
[00:46:36.570]I am fourth generation, Logan fifth.
[00:46:39.660]So we're both been around it or been around systems
[00:46:43.170]for a lot of years.
[00:46:44.880]I ranch with my son, Chad and his wife.
[00:46:48.875]And Darlon and I, and our family,
[00:46:50.640]my brother, Larry sitting here,
[00:46:52.320]we were partners for over 40 some years
[00:46:54.600]and worked very well for both of us.
[00:46:57.150]We made the transition to the next generation.
[00:47:00.090]So we split the ranch and we thought it was best
[00:47:03.090]that we do it rather than wait
[00:47:04.710]and let something happen to one of us.
[00:47:06.810]But we have all through the years that I've been home,
[00:47:10.800]which is over 50 years now, cow-calf,
[00:47:15.360]and then also a backgrounding.
[00:47:18.210]We buy calves and background them
[00:47:19.860]as well as backgrounding our own calves.
[00:47:22.770]And then we run cattle on grass.
[00:47:25.380]We have interesting to listen to some of the gains
[00:47:29.280]and stuff that Jim's done.
[00:47:31.237]We've always believed very much in targeted marketing
[00:47:35.365]and targeted gains.
[00:47:37.110]So when we weighed all our calves, our home rage calves,
[00:47:39.960]when we brought them back into our backgrounding system.
[00:47:45.900]We knew what they weighed.
[00:47:47.790]We knew what we wanted them to weigh in July and August,
[00:47:50.760]is over the primary times that we sold.
[00:47:53.631]So we targeted gains.
[00:47:55.020]We would split those cattle up,
[00:47:56.400]whether they base steers in heifers
[00:47:58.230]and then split the weight groups within those two groups
[00:48:01.500]and then make them feed them to gain what we wanted
[00:48:04.860]them to weigh when we sold.
[00:48:06.690]And we might have some cattle
[00:48:08.940]that would gain two pounds a day.
[00:48:12.780]We've always cabbed pretty late at times.
[00:48:14.610]We've got where we didn't start calve until the 1st of May.
[00:48:17.370]And then we wean in October.
[00:48:18.810]So we might be weaning calves that only weighed 400
[00:48:21.807]and whatever pounds.
[00:48:23.580]So we to get those weights that we wanted to get to
[00:48:27.090]in the summer, we would have some cattle maybe gaining pound
[00:48:30.900]a quarter and some gain around two or a touch over.
[00:48:34.170]So, but we never, I mean, we always thought that,
[00:48:37.980]I've questioned that maybe a little bit and listening
[00:48:39.990]to Jim, but we didn't ever give implants in the winter
[00:48:45.467]'cause we just didn't feel like it was really good
[00:48:48.960]with the amount of gains that we were getting.
[00:48:51.270]Now, I said, we had them gain those weights.
[00:48:54.390]This, we usually wean, like I said in October,
[00:48:57.720]but we would leave the cattle on grass until,
[00:49:02.580]sometime in late November.
[00:49:04.260]And when they were out on grass and I say grass,
[00:49:06.810]they were on sub irrigated Meadows.
[00:49:08.880]So they were still gaining maybe three quarters
[00:49:11.820]to even up close to a pound today.
[00:49:13.860]And then we did them with these other games I talked about
[00:49:16.530]after we brought him into our bunk feeding system
[00:49:19.350]throughout most of the winter.
[00:49:21.150]So then the cattle would gain on in the summer,
[00:49:24.720]depending on how soon we sold them anywhere
[00:49:27.360]from maybe two, three for early sales
[00:49:31.890]and then something last later on.
[00:49:34.680]So that basically, our two systems, like I said,
[00:49:38.430]we do that with both purchase cattle
[00:49:43.530]as well as its home raise cattle.
[00:49:45.900]Now I wanted to highlight just a couple other things
[00:49:48.720]before I turn it over to questions.
[00:49:51.630]I do think having a really good
[00:49:56.100]record keeping system is extremely important.
[00:49:59.130]Now my brother, Larry sometimes disagreed with me on that,
[00:50:02.340]which made us a good mix to work together.
[00:50:06.300]But I think if you're gonna know your cost of gains,
[00:50:09.270]if you're gonna know how you compare
[00:50:12.330]to a lot of the industry,
[00:50:14.040]you just have to have a good record keeping system
[00:50:17.130]and know your cost.
[00:50:18.750]And I think the other thing that I thought was extremely
[00:50:21.780]important was target marketing and then targeted weights.
[00:50:26.010]Those three things together,
[00:50:27.600]as far as our yearling operation were extremely important.
[00:50:32.760]I wrote down a couple other things.
[00:50:34.230]I mean, and some of you have heard me speak
[00:50:37.007]in other times.
[00:50:40.080]A good team, having good people around you
[00:50:42.510]is always important.
[00:50:43.980]And then I think you always keep learning.
[00:50:47.520]You're here because you wanna learn.
[00:50:49.770]And then number one thing for me,
[00:50:52.617]and I think I've really learned this through the years.
[00:50:55.160]At the end of the day is take care of the land.
[00:50:58.800]Thank you. Questions.
[00:51:10.350]John in the back has one.
[00:51:23.460]Logan, how much do you expect the calves
[00:51:27.240]to gain over the winter?
[00:51:31.290]Very good question.
[00:51:34.590]We've experimented with different wintering techniques.
[00:51:39.510]We have tried grazing among cornstalk.
[00:51:43.350]We feed some in the winter.
[00:51:46.470]I like the,
[00:51:47.303]I love feeding them in the winter because you can sit there
[00:51:50.640]in November and kind of dial in your brash in
[00:51:55.620]and know what they're gonna weigh.
[00:51:58.620]Cornstalk when they disappoint,
[00:52:02.730]they are very disappointing
[00:52:04.620]and we've targeted this four pounds
[00:52:08.280]and the cold snowy winter just offsets those gains
[00:52:13.140]and it can be very frustrating
[00:52:15.390]and then you'll have a very good winner
[00:52:19.740]or you'll get a lot of excessive grain
[00:52:21.660]that comes off on those corn stock fields.
[00:52:23.970]And we've had one winter where we did a 2.0
[00:52:28.140]and we've struggled at times to do a 1.0.
[00:52:31.860]So in a grazing system, no surprise,
[00:52:35.400]mother nature bats last.
[00:52:39.174]And man, you feel like you hit a home run when you hit a 2.0
[00:52:41.217]and you feel like a loser when you're struggling
[00:52:43.650]for that 1.0.
[00:52:45.480]Did you say 1.4 was the goal though?
[00:52:49.380]Yeah, 1.4 would be the goal.
[00:52:52.860]I've never hit the goal with corn stock grazing.
[00:52:55.980]It's always really good or really bad.
[00:53:00.390]And then you would more if you had rain,
[00:53:02.520]you'd go to grass. Correct.
[00:53:04.440]And then what would you get on grass?
[00:53:06.660]Oh, again, highly variable.
[00:53:08.940]We do supplement on the grass.
[00:53:11.670]We weigh with scales,
[00:53:14.430]we sort and wake cattle all the time.
[00:53:16.710]So it's kind of a little bit different
[00:53:18.120]of a management technique.
[00:53:19.560]We are sorting in weighing a group a week.
[00:53:24.600]So we kind of dial in our gains to we sell on the video
[00:53:28.740]and we gotta know where we're at.
[00:53:30.900]It's even more important when you sell on the video
[00:53:33.180]that you know exactly what your weight stop is gonna be.
[00:53:37.350]So we will supplement,
[00:53:39.900]move cattle and sort cattle to hit the weights.
[00:53:44.160]So it's a dynamic system is a different way to put it.
[00:53:51.810]And then what,
[00:53:52.643]which video do you sell for July?
[00:53:55.470]We sell on the Western video in July for deliveries.
[00:54:00.780]We start to sell the big end in July.
[00:54:02.910]And in a typical year, we'll sell the light end
[00:54:05.700]as a nine weight in September.
[00:54:10.980]What's your target end weights?
[00:54:12.390]Sorry for both of you.
[00:54:13.620]Yeah, target end weight for us.
[00:54:15.720]We are selling light this year.
[00:54:16.860]We sold light last year, which is a low nine weight.
[00:54:19.560]So 900 pound animal,
[00:54:22.200]the heavy end kind of went in July at 925.
[00:54:25.620]In a good year, we'll sell a 10 weight.
[00:54:27.840]So I really wanna sell a nine weighted at a minimum.
[00:54:30.990]And if man, if I can sell a 10 weight,
[00:54:33.960]I'm doing pretty good that year.
[00:54:35.910]And many of these calves are Northern calves
[00:54:38.970]that are pretty light, aren't they?
[00:54:40.920]Correct, for us, they're all Northern calves
[00:54:43.830]that we would buy as ballers out of the mountains
[00:54:48.690]and receive them in the fall.
[00:54:50.910]I'll let you Homer.
[00:54:52.740]So for Homer, can you answer the same questions?
[00:54:57.150]For us, targeted in weights have been 900 some pounds.
[00:55:01.590]We would have some purchased steers
[00:55:03.300]because they're usually a little bigger,
[00:55:05.220]at least in the beginning than our home rate steers.
[00:55:07.590]So we might have some of them that'd be close to a thousand.
[00:55:11.340]And then a lot of our home raised steers would be
[00:55:14.820]from nine and a quarter up to 950, somewhere in there.
[00:55:17.170]Maybe a little lower depending on the year.
[00:55:19.860]But we've always thought that if we got cattle
[00:55:23.730]over a thousand pounds, we would meet resistance.
[00:55:26.610]That's not true.
[00:55:28.260]I mean, you can sell cattle away over a thousand.
[00:55:30.660]That seems like the buyers.
[00:55:32.820]And then the weights they'll take them to acceptance
[00:55:35.730]within the industry.
[00:55:37.809]So our heifers to mention them a little less,
[00:55:42.660]maybe some high eight to low nines on them.
[00:55:45.840]Did you say that you leave them on meadow
[00:55:49.440]for a month and you get about a pound?
[00:55:52.230]Yeah, when we wean them in October
[00:55:55.950]and then we go to these Meadows for maybe a month,
[00:55:58.230]or maybe even 45 days, we could get from a pound.
[00:56:01.830]From maybe three quarter pound up to a pound, top end.
[00:56:04.740]And then with no supplementation,
[00:56:06.270]we tried at times to supplement a little bit
[00:56:10.080]when we were on Meadows, but we could never get.
[00:56:11.970]We tried taking them a little,
[00:56:13.170]but we could never get the calves to eat.
[00:56:14.820]And then you would lock them up
[00:56:16.680]and go two or two and a quarter or two and a half.
[00:56:19.170]Depending on the group.
[00:56:20.460]Some of them would be two to two and a quarter.
[00:56:22.740]Some of them might be as from one and a quarter to one,
[00:56:26.340]four or something.
[00:56:27.510]Both of them trying to have in products within all of them
[00:56:31.620]that's fairly similar.
[00:56:33.060]Oh, in wades and. Okay.
[00:56:45.273](indistinct) Grass quality difference.
[00:56:50.880]You'll have to repeat that
[00:56:52.620]'cause I couldn't hear it.
[00:56:53.453]The question was between the two locations,
[00:56:55.830]either Logan or ours,
[00:56:57.390]what's the difference in quality of grass.
[00:56:59.700]And I'll give some perceptions that I would have.
[00:57:03.137]And then, and some of it comes about from visiting
[00:57:05.550]with Logan's dad through the years.
[00:57:09.600]Where we are in the Sandhills is,
[00:57:11.880]they have a little harder grass there.
[00:57:14.130]I mean our gains though, we can,
[00:57:16.620]and we've tried to develop cattle,
[00:57:18.240]especially with our home raised cattle.
[00:57:20.640]Our home raised cattle will gain better
[00:57:23.280]than our purchase cattle, usually on grass.
[00:57:25.680]And a lot of times our purchase cattle maybe
[00:57:27.720]came out of South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana.
[00:57:32.040]And I don't think they're quite as well developed maybe
[00:57:35.580]to perform on grass in the Nebraska Sandhills.
[00:57:38.460]Because we have our grass is a pretty soft grass.
[00:57:41.520]But I think with the cattle we've developed
[00:57:43.410]and I'm talking about gains primarily
[00:57:45.210]with our home raise cattle.
[00:57:46.380]When I said from two, three,
[00:57:48.330]maybe on those cattle are sold in July to something last
[00:57:52.710]and the cattle sold in August.
[00:57:54.630]Now our purchase cattle don't gain that good on grass,
[00:57:57.960]but that's, I would think they have a little harder grass
[00:58:00.957]and what I've seen a year area than we do
[00:58:03.686]in the Sandhill where we are.
[00:58:13.170]It's hard for me to really,
[00:58:14.522]could I have not seen much of that type of information
[00:58:16.920]of their grass out there.
[00:58:19.590]I would assume that his would be a little better on protein,
[00:58:22.260]but I don't all really.
[00:58:26.070]I'd say the question was,
[00:58:30.420]in terms of quality, in terms of energy and protein,
[00:58:33.180]what are the differences?
[00:58:34.543]In my opinion,
[00:58:37.200]we fall off a little bit quicker than the Sandhills
[00:58:39.390]because of our heat.
[00:58:40.223]In Southwest Nebraska grass quality,
[00:58:45.660]I think it's very similar.
[00:58:46.830]And I think it's very similar to all the Sandhills.
[00:58:50.960]Gosh, you have really outstanding grass May and June.
[00:58:55.860]And then after about the 4th of July,
[00:58:58.350]protein drops off and then the next month
[00:59:01.615]TDN starts to drop off.
[00:59:03.990]So our system, we utilize wheat pasture
[00:59:08.190]and we utilize cover crops.
[00:59:10.290]I try to have a lot of steers on the grass in May, June,
[00:59:14.670]when it's really good quality and as few as we can,
[00:59:18.300]after that, to manage kind of the spring flush.
[00:59:22.440]But I'd say we probably do have a little bit better grass
[00:59:26.940]early on, and then a little bit worse later off,
[00:59:29.400]just 'cause we're hotter.
[00:59:32.430]I might make one more comment.
[00:59:33.990]This would just be based upon the grass
[00:59:35.880]that we have on the Shovel Dot Ranch.
[00:59:38.010]And you know, the Sandhills grass won't vary a lot,
[00:59:42.600]but they do vary some 'cause we even saw that we used
[00:59:45.810]to have a particular area on the ranch
[00:59:47.940]where we would run yearling cattle, almost always.
[00:59:50.880]And never cows and calves in that area
[00:59:53.520]because we could get a little higher gains
[00:59:55.560]on those yearlings.
[00:59:56.910]And so even within our place,
[00:59:59.160]we had grass that I think must have been a little stronger.
[01:00:01.650]There's a little different type of ground and soil there.
[01:00:05.070]And so there a little variance but not a lot.
[01:00:12.900]My questions on you clearly have some marketing
[01:00:16.650]strategies that you're trying to hit
[01:00:19.800]with weight and sorting.
[01:00:22.080]And could you comment on, what your marketing strategies
[01:00:27.270]specifically lot sizes and what advantage you think
[01:00:30.960]you're getting dollar wise by doing that?
[01:00:37.500]So the marketing advantage,
[01:00:42.913]there's a premium for lot loads in our industry.
[01:00:48.570]There are large corporate feeders.
[01:00:50.100]We typically sell the very, very large corporate feeders
[01:00:53.940]who very much appreciate being able to fill
[01:00:57.720]multiple pins with a bid.
[01:01:01.920]Another premium that we would be seeking out would be like
[01:01:06.008]a program portion of our cattle every year,
[01:01:08.580]our program cattle, not all of them,
[01:01:11.220]typically half to two thirds would be program cattle.
[01:01:14.910]That's another premium that we'd be seeking.
[01:01:17.130]Seems to come and go and flow.
[01:01:21.840]Some years you feel real good about it,
[01:01:23.400]other years you don't.
[01:01:25.950]Sorting.
[01:01:29.880]One thing I've learned in my 11 years is you can get,
[01:01:35.640]the sort premium is substantial.
[01:01:39.840]And once you can get your eye set to sort cattle right,
[01:01:45.780]there's not a better premium to be hard in the market.
[01:01:48.746]And that's been one of my biggest realizations
[01:01:53.430]is to be a steerman or a stalkerman,
[01:01:57.030]you're gonna have to have a sort stick
[01:01:59.190]and you're gonna have to use it fairly frequently
[01:02:02.775]to capture the full dollar.
[01:02:06.510]I would agree with Logan as far as the load lots
[01:02:08.910]and sorting or the two most important things.
[01:02:12.330]I mean, we've marketed cattle a lot of different ways
[01:02:15.180]through the years.
[01:02:16.013]When my brother and I first went back to the ranch,
[01:02:18.000]we each to sell a lot of cattle privately
[01:02:20.250]and sold some through sale barns, either Burwell or Bassett,
[01:02:24.660]but it sold privately.
[01:02:25.980]And then we got to the point where we had a hard time
[01:02:28.830]arriving at price discovery.
[01:02:30.900]We would have them price at a certain level
[01:02:33.330]and the guys would think we had them too high,
[01:02:35.070]but usually we'd go to the sale barn
[01:02:36.420]and they'd be even higher.
[01:02:37.710]And would pay for our cost of selling there
[01:02:39.687]and a weight loss and things like that.
[01:02:42.150]So, we've sold cattle through Nebraska Corn Fed Beef
[01:02:46.620]when that program was going
[01:02:48.030]We sold NHTC, but in the end,
[01:02:51.000]because I mean in Bassett, in Burwell,
[01:02:54.930]I think some of that whole area,
[01:02:56.460]some of the best markets and I probably out
[01:02:58.830]in Alma and within Nebraska,
[01:03:00.660]some of the best markets anywhere in the world.
[01:03:03.390]And so we sell primarily now through Bassett livestock,
[01:03:07.410]try to have them sorted and load lots
[01:03:10.080]and cattle that look alike.
[01:03:12.210]And I think that's worked well for us.
[01:03:18.270]So I'm curious, you both have steers and heifers.
[01:03:22.500]So lots of questions in there,
[01:03:24.810]are some of those heifers retained, are you hitting,
[01:03:28.920]are you running them separately or in a different type
[01:03:31.380]of program or are you targeting the same gain
[01:03:34.170]or do you think gain is optimized at a different point
[01:03:37.080]in backgrounding heifers and steers?
[01:03:40.950]We've done some different things
[01:03:42.660]with our steers and heifers through the years.
[01:03:45.450]When Larry and I were together,
[01:03:47.850]we would always sort the steers and heifers separately,
[01:03:52.140]probably I'd say generally speaking through the years
[01:03:54.990]and they can shake their head if they don't agree.
[01:03:57.660]We have went for maybe a little less gain on our heifers,
[01:04:01.230]just because we thought when they,
[01:04:04.350]we want them a certain weight when they go to grass,
[01:04:06.870]but maybe a little lighter weight than our steers.
[01:04:10.710]But then we want half heifers especially we used to pre,
[01:04:14.070]and I'm talking about the ones we were gonna breed.
[01:04:16.940]We would weigh them individually when they'd go to grass.
[01:04:20.010]And then we'd weigh them individually would preg test.
[01:04:22.860]And we could have some of our biggest heifers,
[01:04:25.260]maybe wouldn't breed,
[01:04:26.910]but you could see if you looked at their gains
[01:04:29.850]through the summer were down.
[01:04:31.290]So I think extremely important what cattle gaining
[01:04:33.660]when you breed them.
[01:04:34.860]But so we've usually handled our heifers
[01:04:38.490]pretty much together.
[01:04:40.530]And then when we sorted, then we maybe would then actually
[01:04:43.890]feed for little more gains than the ones
[01:04:45.450]we were gonna sell through as feeder cattle
[01:04:48.180]and then less gains on the ones we were gonna bring.
[01:04:51.060]So we've in recent years actually, 'cause we would always,
[01:04:55.290]when Larry and I were in partnership
[01:04:56.550]would have our steers and heifers separate.
[01:04:58.140]But part of it was about numbers
[01:05:00.270]and well, a lot of it was about numbers.
[01:05:01.770]We started running our heifers and steers together
[01:05:04.920]through the early part,
[01:05:06.750]some of them through the early part of the winter
[01:05:09.060]just to have one last group.
[01:05:10.830]So that was more about sorting bases.
[01:05:14.430]When we had them separate, when bigger groups,
[01:05:18.240]whether they're steers and heifers mixed together.
[01:05:20.010]And once we separated them.
[01:05:24.960]Similar Buell, different heifer program, for sure.
[01:05:29.100]Low and slow with the heifers
[01:05:32.340]and quick and fast with the steers.
[01:05:37.050]Heifers, if you are a cowman in the Sandhills
[01:05:41.430]and you're thinking about branching out to yearlings,
[01:05:43.950]I would recommend heifers.
[01:05:47.070]You're going to feel more comfortable around them.
[01:05:50.700]If you're a cow-calf man and they will respond
[01:05:54.120]to tougher systems better.
[01:05:55.650]Steers, if you got great feed, you've got great management,
[01:05:59.700]you've got great, everything,
[01:06:02.220]they're gonna do and perform better.
[01:06:04.440]A heifer is gonna do better in a rougher system.
[01:06:07.350]And so we challenge our heifers.
[01:06:09.810]When we have good feed, like our cover crops,
[01:06:13.380]the steers get the first stab at it because it's great feed
[01:06:18.300]and they're gonna do a little bit better at it.
[01:06:22.050]Yeah, the biggest piece of advice I could give anyone
[01:06:25.320]in this room is if you wanna start messing with (indistinct)
[01:06:27.840]start with heifers.
[01:06:30.439]I've looked back over the the years
[01:06:33.150]and you know I'm still a young man,
[01:06:35.100]so it's only a decade or so.
[01:06:38.608]And every night before I sell a heifer, I'm excited
[01:06:42.300]and I know that we're gonna make money off of them.
[01:06:45.000]And the night before I sell a steer,
[01:06:46.980]I can't sleep because I'm like, I need X amount.
[01:06:52.410]Let's hope we get it.
[01:06:54.840]But just to follow up, Logan, you specifically,
[01:06:58.860]you're, it's the same group that you're retained.
[01:07:03.240]You don't, I'm not explaining myself very well.
[01:07:06.090]I have wondered, I don't have any data to back this up.
[01:07:08.220]But I have wondered in a combined system steers,
[01:07:13.890]feeder heifers, replacement heifers,
[01:07:16.620]if those are three different groups
[01:07:18.450]and you guys are both kind of agreeing with me
[01:07:20.400]that the heifers and the steers are probably different.
[01:07:22.770]Maybe heifers have a lower rate of gain,
[01:07:24.540]I don't have data to back that up,
[01:07:25.890]but it's kind of fits with my bias.
[01:07:28.770]But the feeder heifers and the replacement heifers,
[01:07:33.660]they're the same group.
[01:07:34.493]And you just delay decision on which ones you're gonna keep.
[01:07:38.040]That is correct.
[01:07:38.910]When we are developing heifers in cow growth mode,
[01:07:43.200]we will, I mean, you know it depends on the year, I guess.
[01:07:47.790]But we will, we always have a heifer development herd
[01:07:52.080]that we keep separate.
[01:07:53.790]And in years like this,
[01:07:55.620]all of our heifers are up for development
[01:07:58.470]and we put the bulls in for one cycle, 21 days,
[01:08:01.830]really rough on them,
[01:08:02.820]we'll get 50% of them bred.
[01:08:04.500]And that's kind of our heifer program.
[01:08:06.930]We'll sell the other half as opens.
[01:08:10.200]An open the first week of October
[01:08:13.050]as about an 850 pound animal.
[01:08:17.700]Okay.
[01:08:22.590]To add a little bit to, as far as how we handle the half.
[01:08:26.400]Like I mentioned, when we run them all together,
[01:08:29.580]generally speaking until maybe March
[01:08:33.870]is when we'll make the decision on which ones
[01:08:35.910]we're gonna pick for replacement heifers.
[01:08:38.190]And that's when we'll feed the ones a little better,
[01:08:40.980]maybe that we're gonna go to go to in the feed lots
[01:08:44.280]with or sell as feeder heifers.
[01:08:46.560]And then we've done different ways through the years.
[01:08:50.610]I might just briefly we would go,
[01:08:54.480]at times would sell our bigger heifers
[01:08:57.510]and then sell our smaller heifers, but keep a middle group.
[01:09:00.060]'Cause we're concerned about,
[01:09:01.440]we didn't wanna get our cow herd too big.
[01:09:03.930]And so we would weigh all the cattle to start with
[01:09:06.990]and we'd sort them out that way.
[01:09:08.280]Then we would go through and sort them visually.
[01:09:12.600]I mean I still like the an animal that I like to look at
[01:09:16.530]and so we would look at them phenotypically
[01:09:18.780]and pick them that way.
[01:09:20.430]But we also used age because we felt like to be at
[01:09:24.090]a certain age, they would breed better.
[01:09:27.655]But just to mention the last probably seven years,
[01:09:30.270]we have AI breeding heifers with no bull turnout.
[01:09:35.340]I've seen through the years, so many people
[01:09:37.648]with AI and then they'd turn out about the same number
[01:09:40.650]of bulls or close to it.
[01:09:42.420]And so you've got those cost of that semen
[01:09:44.820]and all that process.
[01:09:46.110]And then you throw in the cost of bulls,
[01:09:47.670]your cost per cow can get up pretty high.
[01:09:51.390]So we decided we would just,
[01:09:53.160]we knew about what our percentage would be.
[01:09:55.650]So we would AI over a day period.
[01:09:58.440]And then whatever didn't settle
[01:10:01.710]would just go as feed or heifers.
[01:10:02.997]And the rest would be what we would use
[01:10:05.220]to keep for our heifers.
[01:10:08.430]Excellent burning questions.
[01:10:10.020]We're about out of time.
[01:10:10.860]So I don't wanna hold up the rest of the program.
[01:10:22.740]When we're in cow sell mode,
[01:10:24.690]we like to sell the herd out of them.
[01:10:26.700]So we will work with Alma typically in the years
[01:10:29.910]that we've done it.
[01:10:30.743]And we're already talking with Jay Nord house
[01:10:32.580]about what we're gonna be selling here in 2024 ish.
[01:10:36.210]We like to sell the young running age cows.
[01:10:38.340]And he goes there and sorts up the nice black baldies
[01:10:41.460]and the red baldies.
[01:10:46.010]You get a discount for the feather neck.
[01:10:47.580]So we keep those at home,
[01:10:49.770]but we do like to sell the one iron, good ones,
[01:10:54.900]get the good ones gone and get those ones
[01:10:56.850]that aren't gonna depreciate much.
[01:10:58.380]Leave those back on the ranch.
[01:11:03.390]Gentlemen. Thank you.
[01:11:05.010]Excellent. Excellent discussion.
[01:11:06.895](audience applauds)

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Optimizing Gain During the Backgrounding Phase and Yearling Producer Panel

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