the
BEEFMASTER Pay Weight
a publication dedicated to serving commercial cattlemen and produced by Beefmaster Breeders United FALL 2018
Vol. 4, No. 2
Section 1
www.beefmasters.org
Marketing Calves to Improve Profitability for Small, Medium, and Large Producers By Joe C. Paschal, Texas AgriLife Extension Since I have less than 50 cows, I don’t know if I classify as a small or a medium cow calf producer. I do know that, according to USDA, folks that own less than 100 beef cows have about 46% of the US cow herd. About 38% of US beef cows are in herds of 100-499 and 16% in herds over 500 head. In terms of a rough ratio, for every large herd, there are two medium and three small herds. I know this is supposed to be about marketing but when I look at cow calf production figures, one of the areas many of us all need to work on is weaned calf percentage per cow exposed. We all sell/market calves from our cowherd, most of us at weaning and the rest at later stages of production. Many of the articles we all
read emphasize selling more pounds of weight, but instead of increasing weaning weight, I propose we work on increasing numbers of calves sold. Having said that, back to my topic. For smaller producers, those of us with 49 cows or less, the local livestock auction/marketing/ commission company is most likely our best marketing option. It is also likely our easiest, but we should not be content to be merely price takers. Most of these are professionals with contacts throughout the cattle industry; but most of those orders will not pay top prices for anything that walks in front of the buyers. Calves that are healthy, muscular, and at least in appearance have the “look” to grow on grass or feed are generally
price toppers in their weight and sex class. At these markets, appearance of the calf plays a significant role in value determination. Calves that are off color (regardless of what the final carcass may look like), light muscled, fat/ fleshy, or intact (still bulls), are perceived to be worth less (and mostly with good reason). Working with your
local livestock commission company to produce the type of calves that don’t get severe discounts will go a long way to improving your returns from this type of market. Many of these markets hold special feeder cattle sales that can be of benefit for smaller producers, especially if you are already working to improve the marketability continued on page 4
Cattle Records Matter
By Lance Bauer, Beefmaster Breeders United Requested in-home September 15-20, 2018
What is one thing all successful businesses have in common? It isn’t the products they sell, you won’t find a steak at Best Buy and you won’t find an iPad at your local butcher shop. It’s record keeping, most all successful businesses keep records that are relevant to the product or service they provide. In order to improve anything, there has to be records so that progress or movement backwards can be measured. The only way to make improvements and
keep ahead of the game is to take measurements and record them, the old saying is “you can’t improve what you don’t measure.” The cattle business is no different than any other business and records should be kept on anything that can help a producer make more money, after all this is a business. Records are very useful in many decisions to keep or cull animals and progress an operation. The first record that many producers focus on is
birth weight. Birth weight is important to most because heavier birth weights are correlated with dystocia or calving difficulties, and no one wants to deal with calving difficulties. Dystocia is a problem that has large economic costs associated with it, lost calves and possible damage to reproductive tracts causing infertility in cows. Calves that are born to cows that had dystocia are more likely to die before weaning than continued on page 7
