Just how big are your cows?

[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.

[grassfarmer]

cswilson,I was kind of hoping to take some cows on like that this winter too but it seems everyone round here has lots of feed available which doesn't create a lot of demand plus there are too many of them winter calving which I don't fancy. Fair chance we will background all our calves instead and possibly put them into a custom feedlot in the spring. I can "buy" plenty manure from neighbours just by hiring the spreading team to move it. Not cheap but I prefer it to fertiliser as it adds so much back to depleted land. We ploughed 40tons/acre into land in 2001 and finally got the return this year - second year seeds that have produced 90 AUDs/acre under intensive grazing.

[cswilson]

Ohhh it's unbelievable the yield increases-if you can feed across your pastures there is never a need to reseed.

[cowman]

Grassfarmer: Just a few questions? How did your land get so depleted? And what type of soil is it? Will manure supply enough N?
Personally I've always found you get a whole lot more bang for your buck using chemical fertilizer? Well, I'm talking about on grainland or high producing hayland, not pasture. Chemical fertilizer seldom pays on pasture land unless it has high producing varieties, such as meadow brome or orchard grass.
Maybe I have a different attitude in that I believe high quality land should be used for growing grain crops and the poorer stuff is for cows. Somehow it is strange to me to see cows out grazing land that can grow that 100 bushel crop.

[cswilson]

Doesn't bother me a bit but just like you were never a cowboy I was never a plow jockey. Actually marginal land vs better land pencils pretty close when you figure every thing in. Mind you poor Alberta land brings more than best Saskatchewan.

[grassfarmer]

Cowman, The piece of land I mentioned got depleted by ignorant grain farming. Previous owner sold grain/hay crops off it for 25 years and used no fertiliser in that time - occasionally it got some manure but even that was stopped about 10 years ago. A point to bear in mind when you talk of land that is good enough to grow grain - the farming has to be good enough to sustain it or it will deplete even quicker than a pasture system.
Our land is predominately black loam, sandy in places with a little grey wooded on the fringes.This land is the only part I have reseeded and is a meadow brome/orchard/clover/cicer milk vetch/quack/fescue mix.
I'm not against using chemical fertiliser but see it's role as a top up of the natural fertility created by animal manure and grazing management. I put on around 40lbs of N per acre which is the maximum level that doesn't "burn up" the organic matter.
Your ongoing argument that land that can grow 100 bushel grain crops shouldn't carry grass and cattle doesn't really mean much to me - it's like saying land that can wean 650lb calves shouldn't be growing grain. Without evidence of relative profitability of the different enterprises there is no argument -merely comparing apples with oranges.
Although my Hutterite neighbours grow excellent grain crops I would say this area here is better suited to grass growing than grain - in my mind it is climatically marginal grain land with late wet springs and early frosts.

[nerves]

Grassfarmer this type of system is what we have also adapted to. If we need organic matter we will swath graze. All our cows are wintered on the crop land. We like to see all the energy that is produce off the land go back into the land. Our pastures are clover, Alfalfa, and orchard grass. Most of the neighbors can"t believe that we don"t hay them. Put the organic matter back into the ground and these pastures don't seem to weaken.

[cakadu]

Isn't the truth of the matter that we have been pushing the land to do what it was never meant to do i.e. grain production. Granted, we have just been trying to do sustainable grazing management for a short time - and of course we tried to start doing it in a drought and then the grasshoppers - but it seems to me what I've learned is that we need to let the land do what it can do best.

I'm curious to know if the land could grow 100 bushel crops on it's own without inputs? The thing I look at is that this continual, almost monoculture, cropping can't be sustainable for much longer especially with the costs of all the equipment and the other inputs such as chemical fertilizers.

[cswilson]

A lot of mixed farmers retired pretty well off in this neck of the woods-they maybe grew some canola and wheat to sell but fed most of what they produced on farm. Rotated some forages through their land and silaged out the weedy spots. It's starting to go back that way abit except everything is on a much bigger scale.

[cowman]

Well perhaps you are all correct. The only problem is what in the heck do we do with all this darned beef? Seemed to be working pretty well when the border was open but not so good now. I don't think we could convert all of Canada over to grass?
And Linda, without those crop inputs, we couldn't grow a lot...at least not how we've been doing it. I actually went to a seminar thing that had an organic farmer up by Camrose(Little Red Hen Farms) who was growing some pretty fair crops using no chemical or manure inputs! However he was making it by getting some pretty premium prices!
I have also visited a guy who was doing a rotational grazing thing with 100 cow/calf pairs on 90 acres and his figures were pretty impressive!
In the big picture why do we keep producing more food so we can sell it for less? Put more inputs into the land and recieve less profit per acre? Collectively we are cutting our own throats? Something isn't quite right here?
And cswilson, I make a poor plow jockey! I truly enjoy field work...for about two days a year! Just hate going around and around for very long! Now I will admit that I do enjoy those two days, but after that it starts to wear!I like running the combine or hauling grain too...for a few hours!
Variety is the spice of life, and I knew at a young age, I would never be cut out to do any one thing! However I will admit I love working in the shop and building things and I think I could have been content doing that all my life.

[cowman]

Oh, one other thing grassfarmer:Perhaps the previous owner did all right on his 25 year old business venture? I mean he probably bought the land fairly cheap, milked it for all it was worth and sold it for a considerable capital gain?
Might not be the best thing for the land but maybe the best thing for his pocket book?
I know you don't look at it this way as you obviously have a love of the land kind of thing, but maybe he was just in it for the money? People look at these things in many ways and have many motivations and I think that is a good thing? It would be a pretty boring old world if we all thought the same?