Beef Market Update - Yearlings Are Done But Where Are the Calves? - Anne Dunford

[shaney]

This year will be remembered as the year of expecting the unexpected. Whether you are farming, cattle feeding or ranching the weather and the market has been very wicked and harsh at times.

This week on the Beef Market Update with Anne Dunford, we discuss the fact the yearling run is over but we are still waiting for the calves to come to town. What impact will last weeks cattle on feed report have on the market for the next two weeks and are packers getting more current with the kill? All this and more in this weeks Beef Market Update with Anne Dunford.

If you cannot see the below embedded video, [URL="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaTt-rZOFPU"]click here[/URL]

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[Kathy]

Yearling sales not quite done yet.

We are selling tomorrow (Sept 27) and there should be a good bunch selling along with our 79 head.

We decided to go with the Dryland Cattle trading co. in Veteran this time.

If your looking for some excellent yearlings, this is the sale to hit.

Ours are mostly heifers, with a dozen steers. They have no growth hormones and none in this bunch have received any antibiotics. Only had to treat one steer last winter, and he sold in March.

Limo cross yearlings with lots of frame and pretty darn good looking if I say so myself.

[smcgrath76]

We have a few going there today too. I
think my dad is heading down today.

[burnt]

Good luck at the sale, I hope they make you some good money this time around.

[per]

How did they do?

[Kathy]

We were happy with the results of the sale. We shipped 65 heifers that sold in "two" bunches. Other auction markets would have let the buyers pick and choose (based on color), but Veteran kept them grouped by weight - weighed of truck with a 2.5% shrink. (shrink varies according to distance from Veteran) The steers sold in two bunches with one group of two, the other 10. The group of 10 was a mix of colors. They were weighed off truck with 2.5% shrink, also. Only the two larger steers were weighed at time of sale.

For more details, you can check out the Dryland Cattle Trading Corporations website, the prices are up on their market report.

The same buyer of many of our steers in the past, bought them all again. The heifers looked good with the smaller bunch 806lbs and the bigger group 912lbs. (For privacy reasons, I don't want to give up the prices we recieved on line), but we did well and we will definitely do business with Veteran again. They did a good job sorting and after the pre-weighed animals are sorted, they are put on feed and water to reduce stress.

[smcgrath76]

We had a few steers we got back from a
cow leasing deal that did not sell too
well. Our home raised cattle did pretty
good. Bull and cows sold well too. The
market is a bit softer this week, but
when you look at the $, the price of
corn, etc. it is not too surprising.
Veteran has always been good to us,
although our neighbours wonder why we
would haul 100 miles to sell cattle.
They sort well, the pre-weigh is a great
option, and the mart has "real" buyers.
There is no funny stuff going on, they
are there to buy cattle. The ownership
is a nice bonus too...

[kato]

We backgrounded some steers this summer and sold them last week. We were happy too. Only problem was there weren't enough of them! Last spring we bought everything we could in the price we wanted to pay, but didn't fill the order.

I think it's going to be even tougher to buy as many as we want this fall. And it's going to take nerves of steel.

[smcgrath76]

Hindsight we should have bought calves in
April before we got 21 " of rain. Oh
well, sticking to the plan will pay off
over the long run. Big gambles come with
appropriate risk/reward ratios.

[grassfarmer]

That seems a real good deal on the shrink. It's amazing how much can be lost right there. I posted a while back on some yearlings we sold - took a couple of heifers in to test the market and got 7% shrink with an overnight stand. Learning from that we corralled the main group off grass on hay for a couple of days prior to shipping them morning of the sale. The shrink on them was only 3.44% - difference was enough to pay for the hay and all the selling charges.

[greybeard]

Soory to highjack, but did you go ahead with that silage with the ryegrass underseeded experiment Grassfarmer? Results?

[grassfarmer]

greybeard, we seeded barley/oats along with fall rye. Direct seeded into pasture sprayed out in the spring. Custom seeded with a 43 foot drill at 7mph - far too fast in my opinion to get proper seed placement. Not ideal growing conditions either but we got a silage crop off in early September with a yield about what we expected. Fall rye is very disappointing - the only place it's really strong is in strips where the air seeder was blocking and not putting down any oats or barley(they were in different tanks) Makes me wonder if the fall rye can't stand the competition? Will wait and see how it greens up in the spring before deciding on next year's experiment. Anyone with experience of fall rye seeded in the spring got anything to add?