sale of organic fed beef

[charliep]

on team auction sale today i noticed organic fed cattle for sale.
did bring less than our good regular fed cattle .
what is organic fed barley and was it certified, controled fed in alberta.
only rail bid, because no yield and not finished.does this beef end up in the store as organic fed beef in canada.
lakeside brooks bought the cattle.
hope it is kept as [c-o-o-l] and send to the u-s-a.
because it would spoil or good tasting and marbled fed beef from alberta
those cattle at a low yield and 1.30 rail price net figure of around 75 cent
a pound .me be feedlot interest on them cattle to proper finish and have well fed good tasting ,marbling 60 % yielding
the type of beef the consumer wants

[grassfarmer]

I don't know about organic, or how well/poorly these cattle you speak of were fattened. I know with our grassfed beef, direct marketed, we are depositing in the bank @ $1.10/lb on a liveweight basis after paying all processing and delivery charges. There are premiums to be had for marketing outside the conventional system (just as well as the great system you expound seems to be producing very poor returns for feedlots and ranchers)

[rkaiser]

hay jerryk - hope you can think better than you can type.

Those were my cattle old boy and they were not advertised as organic goofball. They were oversupplied cattle from our "Natural Beef Program" that usually end up in high end restaurants and meat shops. The last load I had to bail on and give to our buddies at Lakeside ended up with 20% AAA and the rest AA --- and 49 of the 54 head yield grading A1. Do you have a clue what that means buddy?

Yes they were small cattle - Galloway cross never fed more than 65% barley so guess what --- they all had healthy edible livers.

Tyson is going to make a killing on these carcasses as they will have orders from restaurants for these type of carcasses hormone implanted or not. I sold them on the rail because I have confidence in my yield jerryk. Might want to bump up your 75 cent estimate a bit..... How do you sell yours?

I'd like to really cut in to you old boy, but I know you simply had no clue what you were talking about so I'll leave it alone.

[per]

Jerryk you might also want to check into the cost of production on those mostly grass fed smaller framed cattle. The highest price taker isn't necessarily the most profitable. What didn't he spend getting these cattle ready for market? Be it the low price main stream commodity market or a high end niche market.

[rkaiser]

You bet per, however the particular group that jeryk was slammin did not go to grass. They were weaned off cows in February after being born in May/June. We picked out these bigger cattle that never saw grain their first winter and started them up on 50%. (((Most of our cattle do go to grass and will be following these sacrificial lambs - but hopefully not to Tyson's cooler.))) Went to about 60% for the last few months on the current cattle and we bailed on one bunch in December at about 1150 pounds and 18 months of age. This last batch was right around 20 months. Maybe old farmers_son could help jerryk out with the numbers and I will admit that at the price we were paid by Tyson, we lost money. Ask the average Joe with his 1400 pound barley pumped conventional cattle how much he lost these last few months and I will bet you will get a figure over $200.00. My losses were not that much and if our premium would have been allowed we could have actually made a few bucks.

Trouble is - the low boxed prices and the accessibility of product (that's beef jerryk) from the USA has put any even tighter pinch on those of us in the value chain biz. Just where those who don't want any competition like jerryk and his buds want us.

But guess what ---- we might just be the last ones standing old boy ---- haven't given up yet and have a few irons in the fire that could kick up our volume and allow us not to have to bail out to Tyson or Cargill ever again.

[farmers_son]

I was wondering how the cost of gain on grass compared to on grain.

I just used the price of grass hay (equivalent to pasture??) which I assumed to be $50 tonne and barley at $4.00 bushel. A 900 pound calf could gain 2 pounds per day on grass hay at a cost of 20 cents per pound of gain. The same calf fed a barley/silage ration would gain 3 pounds per day but the cost would be 43 cents per pound of gain for feed alone.

Rough figures, no yardage or anything like that figured in. The cost of the grass hay ration was about $15 per head per month, I would guess that is equivelant to the cost of pasture for an animal that size.

[grassfarmer]

Farmers_son, You can prove anything with a pen and piece of paper. What kind of 900lb steer can you fatten on 16lbs of $50 hay per day?? No one I know of has ever bred such a steer yet.

An easier way would be to calculate the cost of pasture gain compared to the rental price of pasture would it not?
If your pasture rental cost is $1 a day for a 1000lb cow with calf then your fattening steer would cost a proportion of that. The proportion of that cost is a little harder to calculate. I reckon because they average less weight my steers probably eat on average 75% of the grass a (theoretical 1000lb) pair does. But to fatten steers properly on grass you need to allow them to skim the best quality grass later in the season. This leaves lower quality residue that can be utilised by cows later in the fall or the next spring.
With that in mind I estimate the value of grazing pasture given to my grassfed steers at 80c/day and we range from 2-2.5lbs a day gain. Cost of gain 32-40 cents/lb for pasture alone.
The real difference of course is in the yardage - steers making a 30c/day contribution to the nutrient cycle through their back end and a further contribution through their mouth with the forage management they perform. No pen upkeep, no manure hauling, no feeding of mechanically harvested feeds with all the associated costs and losses.
I read yesterday Dennis Laycraft's comment that "Canada's strength is not in pasture - we produce best grain fed beef in world and that's what a lot of markets are looking for" Such a shame that our feedlot system is unsustainable both on an environmental and financial basis. I guess there is no possibility that CCA/ABP will look to promote grass production any time soon? As they say "better to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally"

[farmers_son]

You are correct. The rations I looked at were for a 700# steer. Sorry for the mistake.

[farmers_son]

I would think the marketplace will dictate the future of grass production and grass fed beef. New Zealand was Canada’s number one importer of grass fed beef in 2007 with Australia and Uruguay tied. I would think if there is a market niche or preference within Canada for grass finished beef it would be easy to access product from these countries at prices below what Canadian cattle producers can do it for. I do not see how grass fed beef from New Zealand Angus cattle would be distinguishable from grass fed beef from Canadian Angus cattle. If the consumer can be convinced grass fed is better than grain fed beef the future for the Canadian cattle industry will be very different.

But given the spread in the price of hay/grass and the price of barley I would think grass will play a larger role in feeding cattle, barley a lesser role. I have talked to people that are bedding their cattle with hay, for them hay is cheaper than straw. $50 a tonne is just an estimate, I think hay is cheaper than that in places depending upon where you are at. On the other hand barley is at record prices and is not expected to come down in the foreseeable future even with above average yields.

I would think that we are going to have to learn some new skills that incorporate putting some of the gain on calves with grass while still producing the grain finished product that it seems our consumers demand. And we should not think that other countries cannot produce grain fed beef. See Ranking of Countries for Future Growth in World Beef Trade.

http://beef.unl.edu/stories/200509300.shtml

[kato]

If the price of grain looks to stay up for any length of time, I think you will find less and less hay acres out there. We've found over the years that the volatility in the hay market can be huge to say the least.

We've seen $15.00 a bale hay, and we've seen $65.00 a bale hay, both within the past ten years. To make a long term budget on the hay market is pretty much guesswork unless it's your own homegrown hay.

As acres come out of hay and pasture and into grain, the costs of everything will be higher, especially if you're depending on purchased hay and rented pasture.

Just something to keep in mind.