Angus Cattle

[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.

[rkaiser]

I guess a person could challenge a statement like farmer_son made - "Cow size and breed have nothing to do with it" - but not sure what the meaning was. Shall we all just stop genetic selection farmer_son? Does the purebred industry have a place in this world you speak of? What do you think that purebred breeders are supposed to be selecting for?

[farmers_son]

Every cow producer I know practices genetic selection. It is not something unique to purebred breeders.

Cow size and breed have nothing to do with profitability….Most would agree there is more variation within breeds than between breeds. There is a right sized cow for your particular operation, one size does not fit all.

I think reproduction efficiency is very important and any attempts to save on winter feed that even slightly negatively impact births and reproduction will prove to be unprofitable in the long run, my opinion of course.

This article may be of interest:

Optimizing Cow Size and Efficiency to Maximize Profitability

http://www.extension.umn.edu/Beef/components/publications/bccd06.pdf

I am not following what greybeard meant by me having a change of heart on working out. As our farm gets bigger and I find I am doing most of the work myself I can see advantages to cows that take less intensive management. We do things quite a bit different that two decades ago, swath grazing and so on, and I see that trend continuing. An example, we used to put up with cows with bad teats…. no more. We do not have the time. It has been years since I had the time and manpower to baby along a weak crippled calf from a hard pull. And lo and behold, we do not get hardly any weak crippled calves any more.

I can throw the cows another bale of hay, that only takes minutes. But the genetic direction our cows are headed is towards a herd that gets along a lot better on their own compared to 20 years ago when there were more people around.

[rkaiser]

Thanks farmer_son, and I agree with most of what you say. I would add that changes to a herd can happen quicker when "breed" is considered. Some types of cattle within breeds have been gotten in a few short generations vs. years of breeding for similar characteristics in some "breeds".

[grassfarmer]

Farmers_son, I think what many of us "alternate breeders" are looking for is to create the perfect cow, or more of the perfect cows. I firmly believe there are cows that will do it all and the cow that is low labor, high fertility is usually also the right (ie moderate/smaller) size and more feed efficient. There are strong correlations between these traits and you will only identify the best cows by testing them under the appropriate conditions.

I really hate this acceptance of the working off farm scenario, after 8 generations of being full time in agriculture my family has no intention of going there, ever. This is why I fight to change the status quo of our industry. I do not accept that we must accept a $20 per cow margin, run hundreds of cows per man to deliver the proceeds to some nameless, faceless corporate entity. We must remember that as primary producers involved in the solar conversion business we are responsible for creating the only real wealth to be generated on earth on a sustainable basis. This can not be said of the exploiting industries of oil, gas, gold, diamond etc production. And all the add on retail gluttony that we see around us at this time of year is really frivolous activity of consumers who are very well fed and have no better ideas of what to do with the wealth WE created for them. Without farmers or ranchers around the world there would be no civilisation, no society and no human race.
We need to quit squabbling over which cattle breeds/feeding systems to use and concentrate on making sure we all extract enough reward for the investment, knowledge and work we expend as food producers.

[kato]

I guess one man's perfect cow is another man's cull? LOL. We all have our own criteria that we have developed over the years. It will be different for every operation.

Above all, on our place, it doesn't matter if a cow raises a grand champion calf, or the biggest one here, if she is out to kill us, she's gone. And not to a bred cow sale either!!!

Our perfect cow is one who calves by herself every year without help and rebreeds early. Cows who do this will naturally be the ones who can maintain body condition on whatever feed they get. She must calve early for us because we don't live near all of our pastures. Calving in the pasture is not an option when that pasture is 50 miles away. She must raise a good calf and stay sound on her feet. These are the cows we select heifers from.

The ones who cannot perform like these cows will cull themselves. They will get late, and eventually come home open.

Over time, with selection, a trouble free cow herd naturally develops. It takes a lifetime to accomplish this, so patience is necessary.

I think the best thing we can all do is to keep doing different things. The more diversified the general cattle population is, the better returns we will all get. Spread it out.

I have noticed that now that there are later calving herds around, we've got a much easier time finding lightweight calves to background. It used to be that in the fall, if there was a sale with fifteen hundred head in it, we might find a half a dozen lightweight calves to buy. Now they come rolling in by the trailer load. What used to take us two months to buy can be done in a couple of weeks.

Another bonus with later calving is that my donkey business is booming. I can't keep up with the demand. ;-)