Cattle

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Improving the Grass Cow Herd

A while back I wrote about seeking appropriate selection criteria when looking to build a herd from scratch.  I referenced 5 favorite books to come up with my criteria:
Comeback Farms by Greg Judy
Ranching Full-Time on Three Hours a Day by Cody Holmes
How to Not Go Broke Ranching by Walt Davis
Salad Bar Beef by Joel Salatin
Grass-Fed Cattle by Julius Ruechel

I included a bit of Success on the Small Farm by Haydn Pearson and today I’ll quote him further.  Also, I share a bit of advice I haven’t seen anywhere but on Throwback at Trapper Creek but have heard in conversation with old-timers.

For the most part these books assume you already have a herd and are looking to improve it.  Even if you don’t, play along by pretending you have a few and are looking at them with fresh eyes. Some animals are genetically predisposed to your climate, parasites, forages and management style.  You can’t always tell by looking which they are so fertility becomes a primary selection criteria.  If a cow doesn’t wean a calf she ate a year’s worth of food without paying for it.  The kinds of cows that need a year off between calves are not the kinds of cows we need to own. There are additional criteria involved here but this whole post really comes down to one action: Cull.

I’ll let Walt Davis start us off.

Fertility is a measure of the total well-being of an animal; it is not a single trait but rather the result of the many effects of many traits.

He goes on to say:

The simple way to select for fertility is to remove any animal with an obvious fault (prolapsed, bad udder, highly parasitized, crippled, or just hard doing), and then cull any animal that does not bring a live offspring to the weaning.  The heritability of fertility may be low, but if you sell all subfertile animals, you soon have a fertile herd.

Davis closes the chapter by discussing the culling method of a central Texas sheep farmer, Clifton Marek.

…after he has shipped lambs, he will call the sheep out of their paddock and take them for a walk down the road.  Whoever is leading the sheep sets a pretty quick pace, and Clifton watches as the flock stretches out; when he sees a distinct group of stragglers fall behind, he steps in and separates these sheep to be sold.  He will catch the animals that are heavily parasitized or have low-grade respiratory problems, bad feet, infections of any kind, foot rot, and just about any other condition that reduces the animal’s vitality; in a couple of hours, he has removed the vast majority of animals that either have problems or will have problems in the near future.

Here’s Greg Judy once again, this time on p. 247 of Comeback Farms:

If a cow misses calving, cull her.

If a cow gives you a runt calf, cull her.

Bad attitude or skittish cows should not be tolerated.  They will pass this same trait on to their offspring.

Cows that develop foot problems should be culled from the herd.

Cows that come through the winter with low body condition scores should be culled.

Cows that do not shed off early in the spring should be targedted for culling.

If a cow needs assistance calving, cull her from your herd.

He goes on to say that if you do not want to sell all of those cows immediately, simply mark down that you don’t want to keep any of their calves until your top producers provide your replacements.

Holmes describes the keeper cow this way on p. 11:

The best cow in the herd will raise exactly one calf every year and never miss.  She also will never eat a bite of grain, supplement, or require the use of machinery.  She will never require assistance at calving and will protect her calf from predators, but will not eat you for lunch when you bring her to the corrals.

All of this – and it will never be important that she wean off the biggest calf in the herd.  This will be the most profitable cow you could ever own.  Notice that I never mentioned hair color, genetics or EPDs.  That’s because if your cows meet the description I listed in the paragraph above, the rest doesn’t matter.

That sounds a lot like Judy’s list.  Holmes says it again on p. 13 ending with:

If you are culling consistently from within your herd, the oldest cows in your herd should have done all these good things and done them longer than any of the other cows.  This describes the cow that produces the heifers and bulls you will keep.

Salatin begins chapter 13: Choosing a Breed by saying breed doesn’t matter.  Each breed has good and bad points.

I think the ultimate goal is to find an animal “that works for me.”…obviously this can’t be done overnight, but by watching our animals we can gradually cull to the type that work under our program.

What criteria does Salatin use to cull?  For the rest of the chapter Salatin emphasizes the same list of cull criteria at some length.  I’ll summarize.  First he culls for fertility (calf every year).  Second, mothering instincts.  Third, parasite resistance.  Fourth, beauty (works hard, stays clean and shiny, doesn’t get fat).  Fifth, he culls for calf size (big enough to market, small enough to avoid health problems).  He ends the chapter with:

Let’s be committed to finding what “works for us,” and let that be the underpinnings of our “cow type.”

These people are serious about culling.

Matron (who knows all about culling cows) at Throwback at Trapper Creek wrote recently

I let the beef cows wean their calves, with the belief that if I keep heifers that weren’t weaned by their mothers, that I am moving my cow herd towards cows that need to have their calves weaned.

And much earlier:

Our cows wean the calves at about 8 months of age.

Matron has selected for cows wean their own calves.  Salatin talks about culling cows that allow last year’s calf to nurse.  There is always more you can do to improve a herd.  You work your whole life to get a group of efficient, fertile, healthy girls and realize it can be better still.

Haydn shared an anecdote about reaching the pinnacle of herd improvement that is worth bearing in mind.

At the beginning, the man had a herd of outstanding cows, a string of 15 or so that were a joy to behold – big, straight-backed cows with lots of capacity and large, well-swung udders.  But in any herd of good ones there are, of course, some that are better than others.  For years Bill R. had been building up his herd.  He liked cows and was a natural-born farmer.  He had made a point of always keeping his best cows and the best heifer calves from these topnotch producers.

One day an out-of-state buyer came along.  He offered Bill a big price for his half-dozen best cows.  He made an above-value offer for several two-year-olds and for the best calves.  It represented a lot of money.  Bill thought: “Suppose Buttercup fell and broke her leg.  Right now I can get $300 for her.  I guess I’d better take it.”

To condense a long and painful story, Bill sold off his best stock – after working many years to build himself a reputation as a breeder.  He had reached the point where farmers were coming from miles around to buy his calves and older cows.  That sale was 10 years ago.  Bill is on the way up again, but he isn’t at the top yet.  “The worst and most senseless thing I’ve done in 30 years of farming,” he said to me in commenting on the incident.

Keep the best.  Always keep the best.

Now, picture in your mind a whole herd of mixed cows. Some are fuzzy in July, some are slick. Some stand with their heads down and their eyes closed, some look at you alarmed, some continue to graze calmly. Some stand taller than you at the hip and spend all day eating grass, some are much smaller and are usually laying down chewing their cud. Some have a calf by their side, others don’t and don’t look pregnant. Do you see them? There is that one cow…she’s at least 14, you’ll have to check your notebook…she has always weaned a calf every year since she was 2. She is always in good condition and loses her winter coat by the end of April. You see that cow? The comparatively small one laying down over there? She is the future of your entire herd. Save her daughters and one of her sons. In a few years you will have a nice group of similar cows but there will still be some that stand out. Keep picking the very best.

As I said a months ago, I think you could do worse than to have all five of these books on your shelf. And Matron is pretty entertaining as well.

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Around the Farm in 80-ish Days

We are returning to pasture that was last grazed in early July. Through the summer we ran 10 cows on 13 acres of pasture. In that time we sold a heifer, borrowed and returned a bull and bought two new shorthorn heifers. 87 days ago our pasture looked like this:

Molly

Then it recovered.  What we found most interesting was the transition from fescue (a cool season grass) to bermudagrass (warm season). The cows like the bermuda grass much less than they like the fescue but that’s a little bit like picking which of two shoes to have for dinner. The fescue seems to trample better as it makes a dense mat and the bermudagrass leaves a standing tangle. We also overseeded with a mix of clovers, millet, cowpeas and sunflower. It gave us a nice crop.

SunflowersWe harvested the sunflower heads and, as usual, let the cows have the rest in small one-day pastures. Obviously we’re packing the cows in pretty tight to stretch 13 acres into three months…though I hope to do better next year. During that time we grazed our drought reserve for the first time this year.

EarlyMorningMoveThen the cows moved on. As the weather allowed we grazed open ground away from the shade. Fortunately we had unseasonably cool weather the first week or so of August and we could graze some ground I had written off until fall. We also stretched our pasture by grazing around the odd edges of the hay field and the pond.

OctoberGrazing

3 months is more than enough time to break the pathogen cycles. More than enough opportunity to rest the ground, more than enough time for the grass to fully recover. But recovery is coming to an end. Grass will continue to grow, though slowly, through mid-December. Every inch of grass that grows is a day I don’t have to feed hay. This is a week’s worth of fescue growth.

FastRecovery

The plan now is to continue the slow rotation on everything but the stockpiled ground as long as it lasts. If things go well, that will take me to December 1st. However, after we get a solid freeze that kills the alfalfa I plan to graze through the alfalfa stand. That could tack on a month of grazing…so now we’re looking at January 1st. There are also a few acres of reserve hay ground that we couldn’t mow this year. If we could graze that I could gain yet another month. So now we’re looking at February 1st. At that point, we’ll put the cows on the stockpile which is conveniently located near the hay barn. By strip grazing the stockpile a little each day we should be looking at March 1st…maybe a little less. Then we’re in the heart of mud season and the hay feeding will begin in earnest, though much of our farm will have standing forage that has been recovering since October. When the thaw completes we’ll hit that recovering ground before moving on. Who knows when that will be though.

GrazedAndUngrazed

Grass in the foreground was grazed a week ago.

March 1st is an important date for us as that’s the date our tenant will remove his cattle from the additional 40 acres we purchased. That ground will need to recover until at least April 5th before we start moving the cows quickly across large pastures. Then we’ll set aside a portion of farm to rest for the year (probably planted with a number of new trees), a portion of the farm we’ll only use during calving, a portion we’ll stockpile for drought and winter, a portion we will cut hay from…you get the idea. I have a lot of plans for how to utilize 60 acres but 11 cows and their calves can’t do it alone. I’ll share more of next year’s grazing plan in detail as I firm it up but it really won’t take shape until I’m stuck inside this winter. For now my focus is on grazing from now until March 1, leaving as much hay in the barn as I can in case next summer is a doozey.

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Zen Cows, Intense Pigs

Cows and Pigs are the two favorite parts of my farm day. Chickens? Meh.

Pigs are just crazy. Pigs learn about things with their mouths. They bite to feel. I had a pig feel the wrist of my Carhartt jacket when I was about 18 and dang if he didn’t just pull it right off of me, dragging it through the hog lot. I never wore it again. Pigs want to explore you. They want to rub on you and be scratched. They want to smell you, make noises at you and they will never leave you alone. It’s fun but pretty intense. I know the pigs would just love to eat me. It goes both ways. I do think the pig below (Newton) is smiling.

IntensePigsCows on the other hand want little to do with me. The milk cows may want me to scratch them on their poll and the steer may be a little too tame for his own good but otherwise, the cows are content to do their thing and let me do my thing. It’s peaceful. They don’t bellow at me the way the neighbor cows do when a tractor starts. They just munch away at their cud. Maybe get a drink of water. Maybe a lick of salt or kelp. When it’s time to move, we move. No big whoop. It’s all very zen. Nobody is trying to eat me.

ZenCowsI could sit in the shade and watch the cows all day.

 

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…and Then There Were 60

Why so many posts about the budget recently?  Because yesterday was the day.  We bought another 40 acres to complete the property purchase.  I literally bought the farm.  I have to tell you, it’s weighing on me.  It isn’t enough to simply pay the note on the loan, we have to build several businesses AND keep a job in town AND raise children AND remain somewhat socially involved all at the same time.  The first goal is to get to 30 cows.  30 cows and we’ll raise their calves, always keeping the best heifers.  60 acres.  That way we can de-stock the farm if the weather turns sour without impacting our core breeding herd.  Then, someday, we’ll rent more ground and increase the core breeding herd.  First things first.

30 cows.  I have 10 now.  I need 20 more.  This year we should have 4 heifer calves.  16 more $900 heifers.  $14,400.  Where is that going to come from?

And we need more eggs.  Many, many more eggs.  Customers are demanding more eggs.  More chickens.  More fencing.  More money.

And we need to raise more pigs.  Maybe start farrowing.  That will require additional infrastructure.

And the current farm infrastructure needs a LOT of repair.

I’m going to stop talking now.  How about a tour of the new land instead?  Let’s just see what’s out there with a little commentary.

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Looking Through the Calving Window

Our borrowed bull arrived on July 29th.  He has been a good boy and we’re just about finished with him.  In fact, I believe he has completed his work…we’ll just keep him around for a couple more weeks for insurance.  It was interesting to watch him pair up with a different heifer every few days though he was fairly discreet about his work.

July 29 he was not discreet.  That means we should be ready for a calf around or before May 7th.  So, realistically, our calving window is all of May and most of June.  That puts calving a little…maybe a lot…later than I would like but we should be safe.  It’s late enough for good grass for the last 30 days of gestation, early enough to avoid the punishing heat…well, most years.

2012 was an unusually warm year and it started early.  My cousin planted corn on St. Patrick’s day, the same time I was planting potatoes.  It was lucky he planted early as that corn made where later plantings either didn’t make or were affected by aflatoxin.  By April 10 of 2012 our pastures were growing very well.

NewPasture1Compare that to April 9 of 2013 in nearly the same location from a different angle:

AprilPasture10I would love the early spring of 2012 if I could retain the mild summer of 2013 along with it.  Otherwise I’m content to hold off a little bit.

Moving forward a month we can compare again.  Basically the same stretch of ground on May 6,2012 but facing South this time:

PastureWalk3Once again, the same ground, same angle on May 4,2013.

TopOfHillIt looks like there is not as much forage available in the 2012 picture but you should know the goats and chickens both grazed across it that spring before the picture was taken as well as the tenant’s cows.  In the cow picture from 2013 the cows are running across for the first time, though I did feed hay on pasture the month prior.

Based on what we have recorded of our own pastures, it looks like we’ll have a terrific quantity of high-quality forage just in time for calving next spring, even if spring comes a little early.  Let’s push this out into June.  By June 11, 2012 the same spot in the picture above had reverted to a big thistle patch.

PastureCompare that to June 2 of 2013.  The thistle and weeds couldn’t establish in such high density because of our grazing practices and the increased soil health.  Just mountains of fescue.

TrampleSo May 7 may be a week later than I really want but if there’s a late spring I’ll be glad for it.  Going forward I think I’ll shoot for May 1st.  I am also anxious to tighten up the calving window from 6 weeks down to 3 or 4.  but I know that will be hard on the first-calf heifers.  Guess that’s part of the program.

Now I have to plan where to calve next year.  Where indeed!

Are you planning your pasture usage on an annual basis?  Did you plan for that weekend you’ll be in Sheboygan for a wedding?  Did you make room for a drought reserve?  Where will you put the cows during hot weather?  During deer season?  Better yet, do you have any tips to help me plan my own schedule?

After writing this post I have to pause to reflect on two things.  First, I’m really happy I took the time to document the state of my pastures on at least a monthly basis for the last 18 months.  I can see changes, though, the changes may simply be due to weather patterns rather than grazing patterns.  A few more years should really prove the grazing method out.

Second, I seem to spend a lot of blog time focusing on cows, an enterprise I don’t believe will carry the farm.  Why do I do this?  I feel it is necessary to give the cattle a lot of attention BECAUSE the margins are so tight.  I need the cows to cycle nutrients…to utilize a low-value resource (grass) and trample plant material, seeds and manure into the soil building the soil organic matter, water-holding capacity and soil life over time.  The cows are uniquely suited for these purposes.  They are the foundation on which I can build the rest of our farm’s future.  I have to keep my pencil sharp or my foundation become shaky.

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So..Why Cows?

SO, I ask myself over lunch at work one day, “Why Cows?”

A: That’s a great question, self.  I’ll tell you.  First, because I’m lazy.  Cows don’t need much in terms of time or inputs.  No feed grinding, no extravagant fences…just grass, water and wire.  Second, because I don’t want to mow (see Lazy) and need a way to cycle nutrients.

Q: So what does that mean in terms of annual revenue?  Go ahead.  Answer me as if I’m naive.

A: That’s not such an easy question to answer.  We have gone over some of this before but let’s do it again.  I’ll try to break this out a little bit to make the math easier and I’ll go ahead and make it personal…ish.

Income:
Let’s assume I have 1 cow per acre on my 60 acres.  I could, on average, sell calves for $1.55.  (Now look, I know calves are selling for $2 right now but that’s largely because corn prices fell and feedlots are buying calves again.  Prices change.  Stick with the $1.55.)  That’s $697 for every 450# calf I sell each year.  Not all 60 cows are going to calve.  Let’s say we average 54 calves at weaning.  So we’re looking at $37,665 of income if the weather is perfect and I’m completely stocked on my 60 acres.  But still, that’s gross and I have to keep 6 heifers (-$4,185) as replacements, selling 6 open cows(+$6,000) taking us to $39,480 of gross income.

Expenses:
Cows don’t need much but they do need a little.  They’ll need salt ($5/head), minerals ($50/head) and hay ($100/head if we feed for 60 days) and will have to pay for the ground (pasture rents around here for $50/acre…just happens that we get enough rain to support 1 cow/acre).  Then there’s a cost for my labor (8 hours/week priced at minimum wage divided over the number of cows in the herd…not much difference in labor for 6 cows and 60 cows but it’s $7/cow at 60 or $70/cow at 6).  That all roughly adds up to $212/cow/year for 60 cows.  Gordon Hazard says to add in another $100 for vet bills and hope it goes unspent.  That takes us to $312 per cow per year or $18,720.

Minerals

With gross income of $39,480 and expenses of $18,720 (we already accounted for kept heifers worth $4,185) we’re down to $20,760 ($346 per acre)…before we pay tax.  Now, in truth, my farm expenses are higher than what we have accounted for but the cows, as an enterprise, command market price for pasture rent and don’t need me to own a tractor, build big barns or to watch cable TV.  I could dream of charging my cattle business $20/hour for my time but they would fire me in favor of $7/hour labor.  From a business perspective, I’ve outlined what a cow costs, not what a farm costs and certainly not what a family costs.  My farm payment isn’t the cow’s problem.  My lifestyle isn’t the cow’s problem.  See the difference there?  As a business unit, the cows can earn their keep…it just isn’t hugely profitable.

So, again, after paying myself minimum wage to move cows (because we’re limited by the market, not my desires), the farm kept $20,760 from the cattle operation.  That’s about a 6% return on the farm’s investment.  10% is a magic number.  It’s high enough to attract interest in business, not so high as to attract too much attention.  It’s enough to maintain fences and infrastructure, enough to help fund additional enterprises on the farm, and enough to help save up for a rainy day.  But I’m looking at a 6% return…assuming I can keep my farm fully stocked.  By the way, we’re not fully stocked.

Herd

Now, to help out a bit, land ownership is separate from cattle ownership.  Gordon Hazard says his cows pay him for pasture usage and all of that money goes directly into an account for buying more land, that he paid for the original land and herd with his off-farm work.  That sounds familiar.  The farm income is just enough to cover the farm payment each year.  There is little left.  I made $7/hour for working a little over an hour/day…but, after 30 years the farm is mine…along with a pretty nice herd of grass-genetic cattle.  It is important that the land carries the debt and not the cattle as I can take the cows with me if things go bad.

So the cows can carry the farm.  Those cows don’t need much from me for that money…but it’s not a whole lot of money.  And the income would not be steady, it’s highly variable.  Some years I’ll need more hay.  Some years I’ll have to sell stock to stand a drought.  Then I’ll face a few years of reduced profits as I rebuild herd numbers.  But the math seems to work…it’s just not going to make us millionaires any time soon…and I’m probably not going to quit my day job.

Q:  How can I make it better?

A:  Well, I can work to cut costs.  That might help.  A little.  Going without hay would be a big boost…can you imagine if I had to feed hay for 120 days instead of 60?  Maybe if I had permanent paddocks I could simply subdivide.  Then I could spend less time building fence…but that only goes so far as my labor costs are already quite low.  What if I grazed somebody else’s cattle and they bought the hay?  Now there’s an idea.  I’ll have to put a pencil to that.

There are other enterprises I can pursue to add to the bottom line but pimpin’ eggs ain’t easy.  Nothing is easy…and nothing takes as little time as the cows.

Q:  So is that it?

A:  I don’t know.  I really don’t.  I have customers asking me for pastured beef.  I’ll have to raise some of those calves to slaughter weight.  That cuts down on the number of cows I can carry but it enables me to de-stock my farm quickly during a drought.  My revenue will be lower but I would be more flexible.

Q:  So, Mr. Steward, how long till you retire and farm full-time?

A:  I think this all shows that cattle are not likely to be a primary source of revenue on my 60 acre farm but they are the primary tool we will use for nutrient cycling and the foundation from which our other operations launch.  We work to run a truly diverse farm as the more uses I have for each acre, the more profit I can derive per acre.  Add in timber, hogs, sheep, chickens and recreational value and we might start getting somewhere but something has to mow the grass.  So we have our solar-powered lawn mowers that need attention for about an hour/day and pay the rent.

So I guess that’s that.  The cows will pay the rent and cycle the nutrients but won’t, by themselves, allow me to quit my day job…at least as long as I’m limited to 60 head.  Now the hard part: Getting to 60 head!

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Pasture Litter …Again

For the last few days the cows grazed in front of the family cemetery.  This was a thick stand of bermudagrass with cowpeas, millet and a few other things mixed in.  There was also a mowed path to the cemetery gate.  In fact, it looked like this about 6 weeks ago:

JulyGrazing6Notice the mowed area in the foreground.  With me?

One of our goals in using cattle for rotational grazing is to cover, protect and feed the soil with litter.  This keeps the soil cooler and traps more moisture than just bare ground.  Where is the litter going to come from in the foreground?  It ain’t.  I mean, you would think some portion of the grass clippings would stick around and blanket the ground but there just isn’t enough mass…the soil biota eat through it too quickly.

So the cows grazed it.  Here’s what the mowed area looks like now:

GrazingShort1

Not much for litter covering the soil.  The cows ate it right down to the nubbins…horses would have eaten it to dirt.  But the rest of the pasture looks pretty good.

GrazingLitter1

We had them packed in pretty tightly and we got good trampling and manure coverage.

GrazingLitter3The cows did a pretty good job.  I can see the benefits of packing them even tighter.  Maybe someday…

Again, there is very little left where the pasture had been mowed (a necessity for cemetery access).  That area will be a little slower to recover.  I expect the trampled grass to come back quickly…in time for fall grazing.  Hopefully we’ll get to graze it twice more this year.

GrazingLitter2

 

Most of the neighbor’s pastures look like the foreground in this picture…except they also have clumps of weeds.  If they don’t they have been mowed.  From the road they look OK just like this picture looks OK.  It’s only when you go in close to investigate that you realize how damaging it is.  Hot, baked, dead earth is not conducive to future grass crops.

 

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1,000 Cows on the Move

I have to believe this is more than 1,000 head.

These cattle are managed by Neil Dennis in Saskatchewan.  Based on a presentation he did for PowerFlex fence that is posted on Youtube, he packs cows into a half-acre and moves them throughout the day, overnighting them in the larger area, then starts small again the next morning.  To match his stocking density (1.3 million pounds per acre) I would start my 10 cows in an 18×18 area.  6 steps by 6 steps.

Anyway, I think it’s just amazing.  I can’t imagine what the neighbors would think if I took 1,000 cows down the road on a Sunday morning.

3 things to take away from the presentation linked above (and I should caution you, it’s pretty hardcore grazing stuff.  You can skip the first video, really.)

  • Never have more cows than your wife can look after.
  • Neil Dennis says he can’t afford to own cattle.  He just grazes them for other people.  Might be a lesson for me in that…
  • Neil does a lot of testing to see what works on his land.  It’s surprising which techniques fail to measure up to the propaganda on his farm.
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Raising Cattle that Fit the Box

“Fit the box”.  I’m sure it means cattle that conform to a certain set of criteria but let’s take it literally as it will serve the rest of the post.  Cattle that fit the slaughter box.

Click image for source.

Mechanization requires standardization.  Anything that deviates from what is expected lowers the efficiency of production.  Cattle slaughter is, largely, a mechanical process.  You can see much of the detail on Youtube.  I’ll give you a link in a second but only click if you feel like you should.  There are some rough places in this video that are challenging to our modern cultural norms.  If you do click through, pay attention to how similarly sized every animal is.  They all look the same hanging in the cooler.  Again, don’t click this if you just ate breakfast (Jeff).  You should watch the whole video but the important part starts at the 5 minute mark.  Here’s the link.

I may not produce for the commodity market but it pays to produce what the most common buyer will consume.  The most common buyer wants more of the same.  (Because their customers want whatever they see pictured in the magazine.  I think this is because nobody knows how to cook…they just know how to follow instructions.  It has to look like it does in the book or they get lost.  That’s another discussion.)  To fit the dis-assembly line the packer wants generally the same size of animal.  If there is little difference from one cow to the next, there is little need for adjustment.  They may buy larger or smaller animals but only at a discounted price.  Imagine if a plant was set up for the 650-900 pound carcass and we brought them a monster 3,500 pound bull!  They wouldn’t want it.  It wouldn’t fit in the conveyor from the video above.  Similarly, if we take them a 600 pound steer…that’s too small.  It might turn around in their handling equipment.  They may be more willing to take the steer over the bull but either one will be sold at a discount.  It doesn’t fit their program.  It doesn’t fit the box.

So what prompted this post?  Why can’t you ship dexter cattle to stockyards?

The lower body weight of a dexter equates to a lower feed requirement for maintenance. That means you can pack more in per acre. But we run into a problem when we ship a frame 00 cow to a packer that is used to seeing frame 6 or frame 7 cows…nearly 20 inches of difference. Cattle typically slaughter at 65% of live weight.  That means a 500 pound frame 00 heifer will yield a 325 pound carcass.  An 1100 pound frame 6 heifer will yield a 715 pound carcass.  The smaller has half the t-bone…half the hamburger per kill!  The cuts themselves are smaller.  It may taste great, it may grow well, it may be feed-efficient raising more overall pounds per acre but…what do you do with the ones you don’t direct retail or sell as breeding stock? Here in Illinois I have to pay a fee (tax) per head of livestock slaughtered. The more pounds of beef I can divide that cost over, the lower the percentage cost. So, as a businessman and a grazer, I have to find that happy medium between an elephant cow that can’t eat enough forage to re-breed and a mouse cow that is fat, slick and fertile but won’t fit the box. I’m content to stay with frame 3-4 cows and keep looking for frame 2 bulls.

What is all this Frame Score nonsense?

I’ll let the American Angus Association take care of that as they were the first search result.  Look through the table and compare a mature frame 4 cow to a mature frame 4 bull.  The cow is 50″ at the hip, the bull is 54″.  Go down basically 2 inches on each and we’re at frame 3.  You understand?  So there’s a 4 inch difference between a frame 4 bull and a frame 2 bull.  Now, keep going down on the scale at this site and you’ll see where dexters usually come in.  Here’s an illustration of overall size differences between cattle (click the image for another, slightly different breakdown of frame scores by hip height).

Click image for source.

There is no way a frame 7 bull would last on fescue and weeds at my farm.  He would need more concentrated fuel to keep weight on.  Without concentrated feed the poor animal will spend most of the day just trying to ingest enough forage to maintain weight, robbing it of valuable time ruminating and digesting that forage.  It could be possible if I maintain very high quality forage in all paddocks but by doing so we’re giving up our unfair advantage…cheap grass.  At the other end of the spectrum are the miniature breeds.  They will quickly fill their rumen and lie down to work on digestion.

But, wouldn’t it be fun to run fifty 2,200 pound frame 7 bulldozers across my pastures!  It might also be fun to run 2 dexters per acre through a grazing dairy…if I could find appropriately adjusted attitudes.  But the most fun of all is paying my bills with cash to spare.  To come out ahead grazing, I need a cow that will raise a calf every year on minimal inputs, eating medium-quality grass and needing a minimum of labor.  The calf has to be sized to sell to the widest possible consumer base for the sake of price stability and market predictability.  The cowmen near me who have done this successfully for years suggest I should be shopping for frame 3 to 5 cows.  I’m inclined to take their advice.

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Interview With David Hall Part 3

Parts one and two of this series focused largely on cows.  In this post I’ll wrap up with a focus on business and some final tips.  I didn’t want to pry into David Hall’s personal finances.  I asked him for the top-down view of his farm.  David said they run 400 head of cattle on top of a couple of off-farm businesses.  400 cows and he has time to pursue other interests in town!  So, where is the farm income?  He sells 150 bulls each year.  He sells culls at the local sale barn.  When he ran hair sheep (something he suggests strongly, more later) he sold lambs and cull ewes at the local sale barn.  They are into commodity production, seeking a high tonnage of medium-quality forage for a cow/calf operation instead of high-quality forage for a finishing operation.  That distinction is key.

“To maintain profitability each cow has to bring in a calf at weaning time.  Cows that are too hairy, too big or produce too much milk won’t last in a grazing operation.”

He breeds for fall calving.  Cows are most fertile in the fall, the temperatures are cooler which helps when grazing fescue, those calves help soak up the spring flush of grass and he gets another flush of grass in the fall just as the cows are calving.  He sells 18 month old bulls in the spring as well as weaned calves, just when both the local calf market and the bull market are at their peak.

Hall likes to feed hay.  “Land costs are high.  Feeding hay puts more head on the farm but you have to manage it carefully.”  For 2-3 years he won’t need any hay.  For 2-3 years he’ll need a little hay.  For 2-3 years he’ll need lots of hay.  Hall says to buy hay off-farm.  This went well with his whole theme of allowing specialists to specialize.  For example, someone else raises the stockers, he raises calves.  Allowing someone else to put up hay and own the equipment frees up your time and capital.  One less tractor could easily be 15 more cows.  He drove home how important he thought this was by telling me his family had owned a green farm equipment dealership for 30 years.  “Buying the hay off-farm may have $18-22 worth of fertilizer value (if you just roll out a round bale) we just rolled out for $25.”  Once the cows eat it, the fertilizer value goes up and he doesn’t have to de-stock his farm when forage becomes scarce.  I asked him how long he fed hay last winter (coming out of drought) and he said, “5 months.  But each day I only fed the cows 20% of their diet in hay instead of feeding them 100% hay for 30 days.”  That helped him stretch his stockpiled forage and increase recovery times.  “Feeding hay can make you profitable.”

David, I’m just getting started, next year I’ll have 60 acres and 10 cows.  What would you suggest to help me get stocked?  Here are his quick tips:

“Think about a marketing plan for calves.  Raise good heifers for the next few years as they will be in demand.”

“Buy 10-20 sale barn cows, 100 ewes (hair sheep), spend heavily on getting fencing and water ready and buy in all hay.  You’ll need a dog and better fencing to protect the sheep but sheep can be quite profitable and will utilize forage the cows ignore.  Parasites can be a real issue with sheep so you will need to lengthen the time between grazings.”

“Manage grazing as well as you can.  Whatever happens, do your best…but push for diversity.”  (I think he meant both in livestock and in landscape.)

Livestock are employees.  “Fire employees that don’t work.”

“A short, defined breeding season will push things forward faster than anything you can do.”

Thanks David.