Just how big are your cows?

[kato]

That's true. We usually figure half the cows weight is a good target. More than half is a candidate for giving us replacement heifers.

We are suspicious of any cow that comes home fat and shiny, no matter what her size. It means she was keeping it all for herself instead of giving it to the calf.

A big cow should have a big enough calf to make her work a bit. If she's not, then she's not worth keeping.

Ours average around the 1400 pounds, unless they've made a big mistake and found themselves on feed with the steers! Then they can put on a couple of hundred more if we want to stuff it to them. In normal times we don't though, we just sell them.

[kato]

Most of this 60% of cow weight or even 50% of cow weight comes from cow calf folk who are looking at the economics of their cow calf operation alone. This is, of course, rational thinking.

How about that 800lb.
(50%) calf coming from a 1600 pound cow, and his potential to be a 1300 pound finished steer with a triple A grade?

[cswilson]

It's allhow you do the numbers anyways-does a Feb. born creep fed calf off a 1500 lbs cow make u more money than a later calf off a smaller cow. I used to weigh all our calves and select on WW-now we wean at 4 months or so -so it's kind of meaningless as we retain ownership on all our calves to finish. RP these two guys might have some galloways for u-Newton@236-3815 or George at 236-5085(these steers are at Highland Feeders)

[cswilson]

It's allhow you do the numbers anyways-does a Feb. born creep fed calf off a 1500 lbs cow make u more money than a later calf off a smaller cow. I used to weigh all our calves and select on WW-now we wean at 4 months or so -so it's kind of meaningless as we retain ownership on all our calves to finish. RP these two guys might have some galloways for u-Newton@236-3815 or George at 236-5085(these steers are at Highland Feeders)

[cowman]

cswilson: It all depends on how you want to do it? At one time I would say you definitely could make a lot more money off that Feb. calf from the big cow! Especially if you were straight cow/calf and had no interest in backgrounding.
It seems that in the last dozen years or so a lot of the guys who specialized in backgrounding have gone? Perhaps that is because they either got too old or went on to better things, or couldn't/wouldn't compete with larger backgrounders?
I also suspect that with the trend in cow/calf to move to late spring calving and the demise of the heavy exotic cattle, that a lot of the profit went out of backgrounding?
For many people that mid winter calving worked very well. Especially the mixed farmer? No way has he got time to be messing around with cows when he's trying to get his crop in? You know how it is....trying to get the wheat in before a three day monsoon hits and a darned heifer picks that time to have some major trouble!
I never was a fan of creep feeding but you get those big exotic calves on a creep in the fall and do they ever rock and roll! When they hit the ring they just shine!

[kato]

We buy calves to background, and now that the trend is toward later calving, are finding those 4 weight calves a lot easier to find. We can buy 400 pound calves that are from the top of the bunch instead of 400 pound calves that are the laggers.

As for our own, we like to wean bigger calves. We don't creep feed. The big boys need to come off the cow and go on feed as soon as practical. No backgrounding at all, it only makes them more framey.

[cswilson]

I have some friends who run big Simmy cows then use Char. bulls on them-calve in late January-they made out like bandits for awhile-they started creeping those calves and the lot that was buying their calves saw the performance on feed start to slide so the premiums were gone. To me if your running big high milking cows creep feeding is absurd-unless your in a drought or something. To my mind a cow shouldn't weigh more than her steer calf will when he's finished.

[grassfarmer]

I like the grassfed mantra that says a grassfed steer should finish at 100lbs more than hid dams weight. One problem with selecting replacements from only your cows that wean over say 60% of their weight is that it is largely single trait selection. If you did it for a few years I suspect you would finish up with a real milky herd but one with many cows that couldn't maintain winter condition because they milked too hard. We need a more balanced approach and a stockmans eye to select replacements.
cswilson, what are Highland predicting cost of gain to be this winter? I haven't spoken to Bern since February.

[smcgrath76]

Interesting one. I see all kinds in my job. Big, small or in between cows can make and or lose money.
At home we looked at the cost of facilities, our management practices, our planned future management and our cows have gotten somewhat smaller. That 1200 to 1350 range is about right for us, as we graze nearly year round (300 days). We have only so many animal unit months on our place, so we have started calving later and weaning earlier. Trying to match cows to grass. Our cows typically are in the second trimester of pregnancy with no calf on them when they are turned out on winter grazing (native range) in NE AB. We have found smaller cows can maintain good condition and they breed like rabbits when they hit that fresh grass in the later spring. No swath or bale grazing yet. That is something we are playing with this winter, so we may never start a tractor in the winter again (other than to hopefully push snow in the yard).
For us it is risk/reward. Big early calves entail more risk for us with higher feed bills and more $ in facilities (as opposed to our 1916 built barn).
To each his own, and if you are making money (or at least losing little) you probably have a good system and the right size of cow.

[cswilson]

GrassFarmer I haven't asked for this year but the cattle we closed in June the total cost of gain was 70.94/cwt. These were all natural so no implants were used which probably raised cost a bit-we got $90 premium per head on grid so it kind of balanced out. They were our 3rd cut too so didn't do too bad.We keep cattle at Highland year around so not too worried but Bernie's COG cause he'll be competitive with anybody-I really like the service I get there. Some of these guys that background or feed cows just on a garanteed price per day are a recipe for disaster-they don't charge enough to keep themselves in business. Were thinking of taking on a bunch of cows to custom winter-I'd do it for cost of feed with no yardage-if I can feed them across my pastures that gives me a manure benefit that outweigh yardage.