MANAGEMENT...
Burned but Not Lost
Pasture management after wildfires can take many shapes.
Short-grass native prairie to Old World bluestem-seeded pastures, grazed and ungrazed pastures, herbicide-treated to untreated pastures — a traveling caravan made its way across the Panhandle five months after a March 6 wildfire to see how the burned land was healing.
Tim Steffens, Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service range management specialist in Canyon, traveled with the producers to discuss pastures in Roberts and Lipscomb counties.
“A wildfire is never a good thing, but we had good subsoil moisture and good follow-up moisture afterward, and the fire was moving swiftly, so it didn’t just cook plants, so recovery should be relatively quick,” Steffens said. “That’s what we want to look at: How is this land recovering?” Read more.
Justin Sexten
Marketing quality.
The day you make breeding choices, purchase bulls or buy bred heifers, marketing the calf crop begins. With those decisions in the rear view, it’s time to consider how to make the most of a great mating. Sale day for your spring-born calves grows closer as each day grows shorter, and that brings up weaning.
Three considerations dominate all related plans: when to wean, what to feed and how to keep them healthy.
Timing implies giving some thought to “the market,” along with local forage availability and cow body condition scores. Read more.
Managing Through the Drought
There are steps you can take to alleviate the stress of drought on you and your cattle.
As drought conditions continue to expand and worsen through the Dakotas and Montana, ranchers are faced with the stress and challenges of making the best decisions for their operations. There are multiple factors that play into the decision-making process, with some being more challenging than others. One of the factors that makes this process more difficult at times is being able to separate the emotion from the business. Often we see the ranch as more than a business, but focusing the basis of making decisions on what is best for the business will help persevere through tough times. Read more.
Early Weaning: Benefits and Drawbacks
Drought strategy to save cows benefits calves.
With drought in several regions this year, some producers are thinking about early weaning. As an industry, we are gaining more knowledge about this option. John Maddux of Maddux Cattle Co., Wauneta, Neb., has done a lot of early weaning.
“We run 2,000 to 2,500 cows on native range and a lot of cornstalks the cows can winter on,” he says. “We generally don’t have to feed our cows; they graze year-round.”
About 15 years ago, this ranch was feeding/finishing all its calves.
“We had a small feedlot where we fed our calves plus purchased calves. When the drought began, we started taking those March-born calves into the feedlot earlier, looking at ways to keep our cow herd together and not have to sell down,” explains Maddux. “At that point in time, the real driver for early weaning was to get the calf off the cow.”
Read more.
Growing Yearlings After Early Weaning
Movement from finishing light calves to a yearling perspective changes perspective on early weaning
John Maddux of Maddux Cattle Co., Wauneta, Neb., has done a lot of early weaning and had to adjust the ranch’s yearling program.
“We eliminated all feeding from the cow end of it as we moved to May calving — letting the cows winter on cornstalks,” he explains. “With a May calf, however, we were under pressure to wean those calves by at least the first of October so we could get our cows onto cornstalks. We did that for a few years, since we had decent moisture and good grass, just weaning the calves in the fall at 140 to 150 days of age and trying to winter them on pasture with supplement to make yearlings by the next year,” says Maddux.
With this program the calves were weighing 350-400 pounds at weaning, to go through the winter. Read more.
Kris Ringwall
Beef Talk
Producers need to think outside the box when looking for ways to reduce costs.
Cattle producers make hay because their cows need feed in winter.
Did you know about 76% of maintaining a cow is feed costs? That number is from the North Dakota Farm Management education program database and FINBIN from the Center for Farm Financial Management, University of Minnesota.
Their 2016 data showed beef producers had a gross margin of $633.61 and a total cost of feeding the cow of $348.87, with total direct costs at $458.68. Divide the $348.87 by the total direct costs. The answer rounds to 76%. Read more.
Angus Advisor
Click here for September herd management tips from cattle experts across the nation. Advice separated by region.
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