Are Beef herds rebuilding or not?

[ALLFARMER]

Reading Alberta farm express that the President
of Canada Beef Inc Robert Meijer expects the
Canadian herd to keep shrinking for 2 or 3 years.

With bred cows still able to be bought for $1400
and her fall calf worth near $1000 that would
indicate their is not a great rebuild underway.

[burnt]

One thought that came to me which may or may not be right is that the cow herd may have aged through the BSE years.

This would be because there were fewer replacements kept than usual AND the cull rate was down at the same time.

I certainly did not replace as many as I culled and also kept some cows around for another calf or two that I would normally have not kept.

Now my cows are older on average than they used to be. Not a good practice in the long run, but you do what you gotta do.

Not saying that others did this either, just presenting a possibility.

If that was the case, then there are more guys like me that have an older herd that is going to need to be replaced very soon. Ain't gonna happen here.

However, that situation would prolong the time required to rebuild the herd alone, let alone expand it.

[grassfarmer]

I think in Alberta there was a pretty good clean out of
older cows in 2009 with the drought then. I really
don't think an aging cow herd was much of an issue
after about 2006 once slaughter capacity came up.

[SADIE]

In Saskatchewan there is in general an older cow herd. Too many sold all the calves (heifers) to pay bills. We are meeting many people right now at different meetings on CAEPLA issues and talking to the cow-calf producers and the comments are the same. Too many old cows in the herds.

Another comment----A cow-herd dispersal of 100 cows being sold at a bred cow sale. How many of those 100 cows go back into other herds as breds??

Recent reports from the vets doing the work at my 2 closet markets is that 75-80 stay on as breds and 20-25 go as slaughter--limp, lump bag, eye, tooth?

What happens as the price of breds and open females appear to be rising into this spring market??? If breds reach 2000/cow (plain cow)---there is more reported rumblings of more cow-herd sell off.

Already predictions are out there by media and lending institutions that commercial bred heifers $2200-$2300 plus or minus this fall 2012.

Concern of the lack of snow cover and a possible D word and short of feed or pasture----more sell off and price increase just delayed going higher.

Cow-herd reduction---Death spiral???

[T.N.T.]

You are right on an older cow herd in saskatchewan.Our cow herd at the current time,has been going up steady since 2002.This fall we are planning on keeping a lot of heifer calves,and a lot of the older cows will be going for slaughter.They might say the herd is expanding by all the heifers being kept,but just watch how many more cows will be going for slaughter.

[kato]

Our herd got older over the years as well. And it darn near doubled in size, mainly due to buying bred cows, and overlooking former flaws that would cause a cow to be culled. We kept as many heifers as we could afford to, but we couldn't keep as many as we wanted to. The idea of going in for yet another loan was not something we wanted to do. We've become very very cautious about debt.

We culled a lot of those old girls over the past three years, so now our herd is getting back to a younger state, but it's also not as big as it was five years ago.

Hubby keeps saying, "Imagine how good things would be if we had as many cows as we did when culls weren't worth selling?" I keep saying, "At least we're making as much if not more money with we've got, with a lot less work." So I guess there's more than one way to look at it.

We sold some heifer calves yesterday, likely to feedlots, that we didn't feel were good enough to keep as replacements, and they went for close to $1,100.00 That's the kind of competition the replacement market is dealing with.

Do the cow calf people left in the business have the courage (or the funds), to jump in and expand right now? Personally, I think they're going to have to be more confident in the future before they make that kind of commitment. It's just as scary now as it was when prices were down, but in a different way.

[15444]

There were a number of producers in this area that shipped every single calf off of every cow from 2003 onwards and kept the cows. I'm not sure this scenario has ended in the industry. So yes, lots of old cows out there.

I was talking about this with a fellow producer a couple days ago. You can't fool yourself into thinking that all these cows are going back onto operations. Granted the average herd size has increased in the last 20 years, but there isn't enough young producers to keep all the cows that are coming off these old ranches.

We played with the producer numbers for this area. Assume 150 beef producers with an average herd size of 80 cows. 40 of those producers are under the age of 40 and about 3/4 are bachelors. The average age of the 150 producers in total is 56.

What happens in 20 years? Even if average herd size is doubled, how much will the cowherd number still drop?
And how different is this situation from the rest of the country?

[grassfarmer]

I guess it might help the discussion to define what
an old cow is as I have read so many reports of the
average herd age where its in reality little better
than the dairy industry with piles of cows dropping
out by 5 years old. I don't even think about cows
being old until they hit 10 although like everyone
else we have some dropouts pre 5, then they settle
down till about 10, more like 8 if there is Simmental
or more milk in them.
I'm sitting on the youngest herd I've ever had now
as we bought mature bred cows to establish a herd
through 01,02,03 and had a real clean out of older
ones in 09 to be replaced by greatly enhanced
numbers of homebred replacements. Our current
make up is 11% over 10yrs,
18% 7-10,
26% 4-7
41% 2-4
With our genetics for longevity I look forward to
getting back into 30 % of the herd being 10 and
older as those are the most profitable cows you ever
own.

[15444]

GF, what is the average age of your cull cow? This was a topic on another forum and after I crunched the numbers of culls since 2003 (~62 cows culled since then), the average age was about 7.8 years.

[grassfarmer]

I have never worked that out 15554. Wouldn't
be a true figure anyway as buying mature bred
cows you don't have the losses at a young age -
your already buying the survivors. Only when
you are breeding all your own can you work out
a true average culling age. Your average culling
age of 7.8 is a pretty high one I would think. Is
that horned herefords? they seem to have some
good longevity. I've seen figures quoted before
where under 5 was the average culling age.
In the past we had a herd that had over 30%
over 10 for many years, lots of late teen cows
and several over 20.

[15444]

Mix of horned and polled Hereford. I've never heard of 5 year cull rates in beef; dairy, yes; but not beef.

[T.N.T.]

I would highly doubt the beef cull rate is at 5 years of age.If that is the case then a lot producers better start raising better cows,so they can get better replacements!

[ASRG]

I think a lot of people are struggling with this very question (rebuilding) right now?
Do you keep the heifers or not? Lets face it a 700-750 lb heifer calf is worth close to $1100? And that is hard to pass up!
We've all seen what a wreck like BSE can do to high prices? We've all seen how our government will throw us to the wolves at the first opportunity?
On the other hand....500 lb. calves sneaking up on that $2/lb. mark, sure is tempting....if there was just some stability in this country!
I dither away about this everyday. I always said if cows got to $1500 I'd sell them. I'm way understocked right now....only 60 cows from a 150 in 2003...although like grassfarmer said I cleaned most of the old girls out in the 2009 drought. This nice winter has made feeding cows enjoyable...compared to that dirty winter last year!
I had intended to spend some time in the sunny south this winter.....until I got involved with politics! I sure wish that darned Alison Redford had a fixed election date! I don't start calving until April 15.

[SADIE]

SASKATOON AREA---Two weeks ago 600 bred cows & Heifers sold at SLS. Standing room only in the stands. Only 4 went for slaughter. Many were "old girls" and even in this winter--"poorer condition"---back out to calve out another one.

Today another Bred cow sale 600 head. I took in a selection of cows of my own. One with December calf at side. My excuse is trying to raise some extra cash to purchase the bull I want to produce females that I would keep for myself---2 years away.

I walked the alleys and spent time at the chute with my vet colleague doing the PTing. Alot of these cows from more complete herd dispersals --- a few packages of bred heifers (good condition) but alot of rougher looking cows.

As these prices keep strengthening more cows coming to town. Canola @ 12.50 per bushel and other grains climbing is certainly a driving force.

[ALLFARMER]

What were they selling for Sadie?