CITI heifer reallocation schedules

[grassfarmer]

Received these today and am wondering what to do with them. I profess a distaste and ignorance of most things CAIS related but appreciate the views of farmers_son and others who are better versed on these things than I am.
This was the program that was covered at our ABP producer meeting but I'm rather disappointed with the wording of the letter we received. It tells you that reallocating bred cows to bred heifers may result in additional CITI benefits. It goes on to state that on the other hand it may also reduce your overall benefits for CAIS, CITI and AME resulting in you having to make a repayment with interest.
What kind of government program is this? one that is designed to scare people off from applying for by the threat of having to return some money?
Are there any obvious rules that would indicate whether you would be in a benefit or deficit situation by applying? I received a substantial payout from CAIS for 2003 and have had nothing since. In 2003 I also had quite a large number of bred heifers - so do I win or lose by submitting the reallocation schedules? Any advice appreciated, thanks.

[farmers_son]

If you received no CAIS payment in 2003 or 2004 but did in 2005 you might want to check carefully before sending back the forms as I believe bred heifers actually gained value in 2005 and the resulting increased inventory valuation may reduce your previous payments resulting in the overpayment situation described. However that is not me and I am sending in my forms with the corrected numbers. I am expecting a nice cheque for about $5000. The expected payouts for opening 2003, 2004 and 2005 inventory are $104/head, $30/head and $0/head, respectively. Without knowing your situation I would expect if you had a large number of bred heifers in 2003 you will certainly see a benefit by sending in the corrected numbers. Multiply the number of heifers by $104 and look for your cheque to arrive in the mail.

Hardly any cattle producers received CAIS payments in 2005 so the described problem would only apply to a very few cattle producers at most.

[grassfarmer]

Thank you, that answers my question.

[Cattleman]

You are really only at risk of hurting yourself if you have feeder heifers, or fat heifers that are higher value than the bred heifers, and you are transferring from these feeder heifers to bred heifers. Transferring from cows to bred heifers is good to go. Assuming you or someone else has not already broken out the bred heifers from the cows when the original CITI program was issuing cheques, as this was part of the rules all along, and we did ours back then. If the bred heifers were already broken out you can't do anything more. But that also shows up on your statement whether the bred heifers are broken out from the cows.