Angus Cattle

[Willowcreek]

Just for information- some Montana Angus ranchs have started using some of the New Zealand angus bloodlines...Both Diamond D- and Houlds Angus....From what I understand they are right now the hot item.... J.Bob Houlds Pinebank Waigroup 41/97 bred heifer easily topped the bred heifer division at $6750 at the just completed Montana Supreme Female Angus sale.
A neighbor of mine, that has been using the Diamond D- Ohlde bloodlines for years, was at the Diamond D sale and was highly impressed with the NZ cattle- and their easy fleshing ability...He said the bred cows/heifers bred to the NZ bull were the most in demand...
The top selling Diamond D bull also went to Canada for $14,500....

[rkaiser]

The Canadian that bought the high priced bull was Olsen farms from Athabasca and the runner up was also a Canadian over by Lloydminister. The bull was not a Kiwi bull.

Damn good thing you have us positive, forward thinking Canadians proping up your prices hey Oldtimer.

[farmers_son]

I ran a couple of wintering rations through Cowbytes. A 1200 pound cow fed grass hay for 120 days would maintain her weight and cost $77 for feed. The same cow fed 22 pounds barley straw would loose 2.5 Body Condition Score over the 120 days, feed cost would be $54 for the period. If the cow was only fed 15 pounds straw she would loose ½ BCS every 22 days or 5.5 BCS over the 120 days. She would be very hungry and might even die if there were any weather or health challenges. Feed cost with this ration would be $37.50 for the 120 days. A total difference of $39.50.

While the ability of a cow to survive a winter on $40 less feed might be an important genetic trait (assuming there were no other offsetting disadvantages such as lower conception rates or poor milking) it seems like there are other places to improve genetics that offer more potential for profit. A cow that weans a calf every year and has longevity and if possible puts another 50 pounds on the calf at weaning time should be the more profitable cow even if she has to eat to do it.

[cswilson]

We used some New Zealand genetics years ago and some Ohlde which is the new flavour of the week but to be honest there's plenty of cattle born,bred and selected in Saskatchewan and Alberta will do as good a job of wintering and earning their keep as them.

[Willowcreek]

Kaiser- with old GW trying to get our dollar down to match the Peso so we can all become part of northern Mexico- we need all the loonie money we can get....

And I have also heard that there are still some Canadian herds that didn't chase the "bigger, better, faster" fad-- and that still have some good old functional genetics in them....

[PureCountry]

Agreed Cory. There's lots of good hardy genetics raised here can do the job..... in any breed, to be honest.

F_S - with Cowbytes, you reminded me of my "ration". Barry Yaremcio from the Ag-Info Center in Stettler worked my numbers through Cowbytes. My cows are still out on grass, and I had done a cross-section of clippings from the pasture. Protein of course was low, so he came up with supplementing 10lbs of hay/head/day, to fill the gap. He also recommended a vitamin program based on the analysis of the grass clippings, and I've added that. When he runs it through Cowbytes, with grass, hay & salt/vitamins, it costs about 63cents/head/day.

Of course that's an approximate value. The cows are licking snow, so there's no cost there, but I spend 1 hour/day taking them a bale. That adds another 10cents/hd on.(150 head @ $15/hr) It's still cheap enough for me, the cows are healthy, so it's working. If I can go year round for 73cents/day, I'll be mighty happy. As cswilson said, whatever works for YOU, on YOUR operation.

[kato]

We've got more than a few cows who may qualify for driver's licences. One especially, we bought in 1996 as a mature cow, and have no idea how old she is. LOL.

Maybe the cows do eat more than some, but in our opinion they pay us back with interest. It's not always the same cows who have twins either, but we've never figured out why. We haven't seen the calves slowing the cows down yet. In our part of the country we don't have the rough pastures that show up in the short grass areas either, so we figure we might as well take advantage of the good grass by using cattle that can utilize it.

I guess the trend today is to calve late on pasture, wean in early spring or late winter, rough them through to pasture, then sell the calves in the fall. Has anyone done the math on all this extra time that this takes? Don't forget interest costs that add up over the extra winter for the calves.

Our cows cost about 50 cents a day on corn, and $1.25 for hay. This works out to about $200 for the winter feed. Summer pasture was $68.00 last year. Add some mineral, and that's it for the cows. Even with a cushion for bad weather, I don't think our feed costs are out of line. The calves get some creep in the spring, mainly as a coccidiosis prevention, and that's about it for them. They eat about a creep feeder full, and a handful of hay bales.

If this system produces calves that can be sold a whole year earlier, then exactly how is it a more expensive way to do things? Time is money.

I guess I'm playing the role of Cowman today... LOL I wonder where he is???

[Willowcreek]

Kato-- what I'm seeing in our country is a trend away from the smaller family farms/ranchs and more to the larger multi-family or corporate owned ranchs that run 1000 to 10,000 head...Most these are places that care not so much for their cattle as what the bottom dollar comes out to be...
With the high costs of labor and equipment- they are trying to get by with putting up as little hay/feed as possible- and feeding as little as possible- calving in May and June with little or no manpower- making their money off lbs made by quantity of animals, not lbs made by quantity of lbs per animal...When you are selling a couple hundred 700 lb calves- they are selling a couple thousand 500 lb calves- with maybe less work input than you had... Or they are running the calves back as feeders on grass the next summer...This is what the business folks tell us is "efficiency"!!! And these are the folks, now with the high grain/feed costs and the trend for the consumers to want "grass fed", that are looking for "efficiency" and ability to fatten on grass in their cattle genetics....

Maybe somewhere between what you do- and what they do is probably where the happy medium is....

[greybeard]

I don’t have the benefit of the original article, but I recently read the newsletters written by Gavin Falloon on Pinebank Angus website. I can’t say I saw anything there promoting restricting feed to your herd. What I got from his newsletters was you have to have your stock genetically adapted to the environment they are expected to survive in.When les than Ideal conditions are encountered you don't sell the herd.
At first glance his website looks like a Kit Pharo clone, but I’m sure he wouldn’t appreciate the comparison.
Kit entered the low input seed stock market less than 20 years ago by introducing some “thick made” Tarantese to his herd. He has developed that into a bull sale with 600 “selected “bulls this year.
Falloon has been breeding cattle since the 50’s with some very definite goals in mind. His feeding program revolves around compensatory growth.
I found reading his newsletters time well spent. They describe his program more clearly than anything in the above debate.
http://www.anguspinebank.co.nz/index.html
I am quit sure he’s not on the calve in the summer, wean in the late winter program.
You must have been saving that one, Kato!

[PureCountry]

"....the role of Cowman." HA! That brings back memories. Thanks Kato. I'd like to hear from the old boy again. Glad to hear you have the longevity in your herd. As for the twins, it's the same with my Grandad's herd. It's not always the same cows, but out of 70 head, he'll get 7-8 sets a year. Although he does have one cow that's 6, and has had 4 sets of twins. Even I can't argue the profit in her, because she's raised everyone of them through to weaning.

[victoire]

Doesn't a cow build about 200 #s of body fluid & calf weight by the time she calves ? therefore she can,t lose 350#
beside this .

[cswilson]

Our country used to run three year olds on grass not all that long ago-the older ranchers still talk about gathering a couple thousand three year old steers off the Sweetgrass reserve. There is more to a cow/yearling outfit than just being too lazy to calve in the snow. Alot of places that calve late are in harsher country-the south has droughts and we have floods-grass yearlings give you a class of cattle that can be sold or moved to other pasture pretty darn easily. It's hard to find a home for a cowherd when a midsummer flood is coming up. Yearlings are used as a shock absorber you run them to fall-if things are bad you can sell or move to a feedlot. ourselves we try and have cattle seling throughout the year either off grass or out of the fedlot. To be honest I'm not sure the next generation of cowboys on my outfit would even consider ranching if we went back to winter calving-we calved out 190 heifers in March of '04 and it didn't get real rave reviews. As for needing big cattle to utilize good grass-it's amazing but moderate size cows actually find good pasture quite refreshing too.

[farmers_son]

Cow size (or breed) has nothing to do with it. Moderate size is the buzz word of this decade but profitability has little to with the actual size of the cow. Reproductive efficiency, not feed efficiency is number one determinant of profitability and lowering feed requirements per cow will not improve the bottom line as much as lowering labour costs per cow.

If you disagree about labour costs consider two identical 200 cow herds. One family works full time on the farm looking after their cows. The other family works off farm and ways are found that the cows look after themselves for the most part. Assuming the off farm employment pays a decent wage that operation is going to look a lot more profitable even if their winter feed costs might be higher. As well a 600 cow herd will be more profitable on a per cow basis than a 200 cow herd because labour costs will be spread amongst more cows.

The efficient cow of the future will not necessarily be the one that can survive on nothing during the winter but may well be the cow that looks after herself while the boss is out working. The ability to calve by herself, get back in calf and not need a lot of attention along the way while weaning a good calf will be the genetics that should be sought after. Winter feed is neither here nor there and cow size is only important as it relates to reproductive efficiency, not feed efficiency.

[smcgrath76]

LOL. You mean some people value their time? This is the argument for doing less or running more cows with the same time commitment. This does not just pertain to small herds. I see this with a lot with outfits that run a lot of cows, but have a lot of labour. A herd of 600 cows may have a large labour component when there are brothers and kids involved.
The most useful tool we use at home to address this issue are the 5 whys. This is where you ask yourself why you do something, and then continue to ask why. If you can answer this 5 times then it is usually a pretty good practice. For example, we calve in May and June. Why? lower labour and feed costs. Why?... because we have other enterprises on the go and not a lot of available labour. Why?...

We either need to spend very little time on our cows or get very big (cows per person) to justify the time spent. There is a personal enjoyment component, but there is also business reality as well. The balance is an individual choice.

[greybeard]

I see feed efficiency as a cow’s ability to thrive when supplied with a less than ideal source of forage. Ideally, she will winter on about 3 bales of good quality hay and all the straw she wants to eat. No limit, she can sleep on the waste.
My neighbors offer me more straw than I care to bale within 2 miles of home. I can bale it and get it home at a rate of about 10 bales / man hour. I put it into my feed program at $15 a ton.
The cow has to look like a tank when she is full or that second group that FS is rightly suggesting will get big quick when the weather gets cold and the wind blows.
I won’t cull hard for size at these prices, but try to purchase bulls that won’t add size. I will be interested to see prodigy from the Kiwi bull.
Sorry to see you have a change of heart on the working out FS.