FEEDING FACTS
Marketing Fall-Born Calves As we get on into May, a good number of those fallborn calves will be weaned and decisions will have to be made on how they will be marketed. While many will be sold at weaning, a growing number of producers are seeing value in backgrounding those calves and taking advantage of marketing heavier calves in the fall. Most years this makes sense and will add dollars to the producer’s bottom line. There are many factors involved in making this type of decision including lightweight calf prices, feeder calf futures and feed costs. Other factors that tend to vary less are space or pasture, cash flow issues and time constraints. If these are all considered and the choice to hold the calves until fall is made, then the decision of what feed option is best comes up. Usually when making the choice of which feed to go with, a producer’s first question is how much does this cost per ton and while that is an important factor, it is generally not the most important factor. The absolute most important factor is what will this feed
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Cooperative Farming News
cost to add a pound of gain to the calf. That more than anything else will determine if backgrounding your calf crop makes sense and will be profitable. One of the cheapest ways to add pounds is simply having really good forages for them to graze. Calves grazing superior forages without any supplementation would likely gain from a half pound to 1.25 pounds per day if the weather is relatively mild and if they have access to high-quality tubs such as the Co-op Stimu-lyx. It is important to remember that good forages can be cheaper than some feeds but are not free. Seed and fertilizer are needed for high-quality forages and both seem to be at a premium this year. Another, more common option would be to feed by-products, commodities or the cheapest feed you can find. There are times and places where that makes some sense, though generally you will find that they are not efficient in many ways and will end up being the most expensive when the cost per pound of gain is
