Five Rivers Feeders wants...

During the Ohio Cattlemen's Association's Summer Roundup held in Gallia County this past August, attendees heard presentations from industry leaders on various cattle industry topics. One of the more interesting presentations was delivered by Tom Brink of Five Rivers Cattle Feeding based in Greeley, Colorado. His presentation was titled "What Feedyards Are Looking For in Feeder Cattle They Buy."

http://go.osu.edu/BRINK

Mike could not open it.
if just a reprint of what JimL pukes out dont bother.

all I could find.

Cow-calf producers
who want to sell their calves for top
dollar will learn more about utilizing genetics that have
good growth and end-weight potential.

tell me more as I would like to sell my calves for top dollar.

They want 700-850 pound yearling/long yearling cattle with high growth who can be fed to finish at 1400 pounds.



Is this what the Angus breed is targeting?



I keep reading that the beef quality is permanently compromised by 700- 850 pound yearlings who were roughed through the winter.



Does beef quality suffer and is it beneficial for the producer to rough them through to sell them to 5 rivers to get the compensatory gain?

Somewhere I have a copy of a presentation made about a study from the NU that looked at the economics of yearlings versus calf feds. Even with much cheaper corn the yearling feds on average made more money for feeders. The yearlings also had a higher average quality grade though one downside was a higher percentage of overweight carcasses. This is something not often discussed because ''bigger faster'' is much more popular, especially in the purebred pyramid scheme.

Keystone wrote:

They want 700-850 pound yearling/long yearling cattle with high growth who can be fed to finish at 1400 pounds.



Is this what the Angus breed is targeting?



I keep reading that the beef quality is permanently compromised by 700- 850 pound yearlings who were roughed through the winter.



Does beef quality suffer and is it beneficial for the producer to rough them through to sell them to 5 rivers to get the compensatory gain?

I read that often too Kent - any day that a beef is going backwards versus gaining a certain amount of weight it will produce gristle in the meat. But years ago the 3 or 4 year olds they slaughtered that lost weight every winter and regained it in the summers made fine tasting meat. I wonder if meat off modern, faster growing genetics don't benefit from setbacks to growth whereas meat off older, slower growing genetics don't take any hurt?

An interesting presentation once you get past the gratuitous stroking, barf. Until we started killing and cutting our own I didn't truly appreciate the value of the heavier carcass wieghts. It was interesting that the overwieght live steer sent back was 1800 lbs. He seemed to be saying even 1000 lb carcass wieght would work. The telling market signal of course are the overwight discounts. In 2010 the first weight break discount was over 900, does anyone know the current overwieght discount break point? Up here, from my interpretation the feeder market has valued the the wieght range he referred to by virtue of the discounts offered on the lighter smaller cattle. I found it interesting that he did not talk about the class of cattle that we identified in our own finishing epeience in the 80's and nineties which were able to achieve the heavier wieghts with less time on feed not more. When he was talking about comparing apples to apples I also would have liked to ask him about the relative birth date, age difference if any between the two groups.

DB in the vicinity of 9 wieght grass finished long two's and a few over 1000.

So Dylan what do you consider the extra value of heavier weight carcasses in the type of retail business you are running? I only sell grassfed beef which means a seasonal harvest lasting about 6 weeks. I use 17 month cattle that are averaging 588lbs hanging weight with 3/4s gone to date. I'd be happier with them averaging 600lb but we are not far short of that. We find the price point of just under $500 for a 1/4 and just under $1000 for a half suits the pockets of our customers pretty well as does the size of steaks. I just can't see how it would pencil to winter and summer them again to make 900-1000lb carcases - what are the extra advantages of bigger weights?

We sent a big load of 825 lb light yearling steers to Five Rivers Kuner yard in Kersey CO about 10 days ago. Our buyers son did an internship there last summer and said that they were taking these northern black cattle to 16-1700 before killing them. The steers we sent will finish way before that. That number sounded huge to me.

Ben Loyning

1400 plus pound cows and yearling operations are to a degree oxymorons. Why would you feed that size of cow only to wean a calf that is over wintered then run on grass?

The feeding/ packing bussiness is not worried about what you do on your ranch to make a profit, they are worried about profit to them. With corn this morning at 6.50 the cost of gains have to be around 1.15 and there will be no money made feeding cattle. The answer I believe lays in making big yearlings on grass with moderate cows.

The question about meat quality from my experinece is that the animal that is fed without implants and not filled with any thing but grains and forage and fed for a minimum of 45 days will be a good eating 90 % of the time. There will be a difference in yeild, carcass size and yeild grade. The time on feed will directly be tied to the condition and size going to be fed.

Grasses can do exactly the same thing the problem is timing with a year around supply.

Grassfarmer wrote:

So Dylan what do you consider the extra value of heavier weight carcasses in the type of retail business you are running? I only sell grassfed beef which means a seasonal harvest lasting about 6 weeks. I use 17 month cattle that are averaging 588lbs hanging weight with 3/4s gone to date. I'd be happier with them averaging 600lb but we are not far short of that. We find the price point of just under $500 for a 1/4 and just under $1000 for a half suits the pockets of our customers pretty well as does the size of steaks. I just can't see how it would pencil to winter and summer them again to make 900-1000lb carcases - what are the extra advantages of bigger weights?

Ian, if I had it to do all over again, I would choose your system, 16 years ago grass finished beef was simply an odd novetly, hardly the selling feature it is today, as grass finished beef is the fastest growing segment of the beef complex. We established sales in the early years through retail outlets. Retail outlets in general prefer year round over seasonal availability. We are out of 2's now for this season and will start killing some 17 month old cattle. Our carcass wts will now be in the 550 to 600 lb range. Since the grass browned off with no rain since the end of July we have been supplementing with haylage for the last 4 weeks. We will continue with the haylage and killing and come June we will be killing off the grass again and by next fall or earlier will be out of the 2010 cattle. Cattle held that long need to pay for themselves, the only way they can do it is to keep gaining. You, expressed a preference for 600 lb carcass on your 17 month cattle for the same reason I presume. Our grade and fat cover is better with the two's and contrary to what processors and the mainstream industry has preached over the years we experience no resistance from our customers re carcass wts in the 900 to 1000 lb range. In addition the 2 year old beef has a much more full beefy flavor then the 16 and 17 month old cattle that we have been killing since 1995. The vast majority off our 2 year old carcass
grade triple A, and to date we have had no complaints or returns, in fact we recieve only positive feedback on the eating quality of the beef. Of course it is what we eat also, and yes overall the our younger cattle are more tender but our older cattle are far from tough.

It is interesting that historically in western Canada the traditional model was selling grass fat two's and even 3's prior to the evolution of the feedlot grain finished sysytem. There were still ranchers in southern Ab and Sk shipping fat 2 steers off the grass in the 60's.
A bit hard on cash flow for sure but we have been slowly positioning ourselves with the 2 yr old program for the last 16 years. If it could be done then why not now, as long as we have our margin taken care of it works.


Dylan

Bob H wrote:

The feeding/ packing bussiness is not worried about what you do on your ranch to make a profit, they are worried about profit to them.

Well, said. And contrary to what he said. He was stroking hard to get those guys in the audience to buy into his "we are all in this together routine", it was rather disturbing.

Dylan

GF, you are selling a half of a 600# carcass for $1000.
Half of a 900# carcass would get you $1500 at the same price per pound to your customer.
You can't winter for less than a $1000 per head?
Of course, they all might not hang 900#.

Dylan, cash flow is only disrupted when a new system is being installed. If you sell as 2s, the first year you have to wait 2 years to get that money, but after that, you have a set of 2s to sell every year.

Grassfed, by definition, is seasonal. There are times of the year that you have to accept that "finishing" will be expensive...maybe too expensive. Seasonal works well for Freezer Beef.

I can do the math RobertMac and in my view it's not as simple as is being put forward. We do only seasonal production because integrity and eating quality of my product is my #1 concern. We only harvest from the last week of September until early November because I believe that to be the correct harvest window for the conditions here. So I can sell 17 month cattle at 600lb carcass or keep them to 29 months to get ? weight carcasses.
If I start into a second winter with cattle fat and weighing up to 1200lbs what would I feed them to keep them gaining? They won't do it on banked grass out with the cows, I don't want to grain them and letting them go backwards is not an option in my mind if I'm concerned about meat quality. My cattle aren't bred to make 1000lb carcasses, I don't think cattle that are would live under my mature cow wintering system. I reckon I would get cattle that would be fat, quit growing and go stale long before I got to next October. Our 17 month cattle have been fattened on only green grass for their last 120 days+ , if I had to sell cattle because they were fat and ready to go in June I wouldn't consider them grassfed - their weight has been put on with their winter ration and June grass here is totally inappropriate for finishing cattle - high protein, washy, low energy grass.

My beef retailing is a sideline that uses steers and surplus heifers - its not the be-all and end-all in fact I don't care for the business that much. Because I a using Luing cattle I want every animal to make a good impression, another reason I will never compromise product quality to enhance gross margin per animal.
Another option I could consider is August calving and harvesting cattle at 23-24 months - their is something natural about cattle getting fat at 2 in the fall - we used to do that in Scotland. I'm not entirely convinced on the economics of wintering a milking cow in this climate but perhaps if I moved to a better quality feed source like swath grazed cereals it would pencil.
One Luing breeder here did that for years - fall and spring calved and bred everything to calf at 2.5 years old. He reckoned he came out ahead because the 1st and 2nd calvers could always hold their own with the mature herd and didn't require separate feeding/care. But that's a different discussion....

Iain, how do you feed them their first (and only) winter to get them to hang 600 lbs. at 17 months? I'm assuming that you have to do two things to make your system work: 1) Calve as early as possible, by this I mean April vs. June, and 2)Feed them quite well through the winter. What would be the cost savings of being able to calve a bit later and not having to feed so hard the first winter? Would it partially offset the additional cost of the second winter?

My carcass weights are running 530 - 630 at 17-18 months.

Well, anything under 600 kinda sucks when you're paying $90 for a kill fee. Not to mention the ear tag, the fly tags, the RFID tag, the doses of vaccines, and anything else that is priced per head. Oh, let's not forget the beef check-off.

That would be true if I was paying for any of that.

oops, I did vaccinate them once.

Tom D wrote:

Iain, how do you feed them their first (and only) winter to get them to hang 600 lbs. at 17 months? I'm assuming that you have to do two things to make your system work: 1) Calve as early as possible, by this I mean April vs. June, and 2)Feed them quite well through the winter. What would be the cost savings of being able to calve a bit later and not having to feed so hard the first winter? Would it partially offset the additional cost of the second winter?

Tom, all the calves we use are born 1st cycle (April 20-May10 roughly) Late October they will be 550-600lbs so we grow them to gain < 1.5lbs a day over winter which puts them 8-900lb going back to grass in mid/late May. Last 120 days on grass we average 2.25lb/day over several years doing this. So we are not pushing them real hard over the winter - silage and @ 3lbs a day of wheat short pellets for about 90 days through the colder months keeps them on track. There isn't a lot of room for error though - you need to keep track of how they are doing or you can run out of days with cattle 100lbs short of finish.
Calving in June doesn't really work for me as my cows are on rented pasture away from home by then and I prefer them all born, a few weeks age on them and all processed at home. I ran all the calves through one winter without the pellet supplement and it proved false economy as they stood still for 4 months instead of gaining and it cost me way more than it saved. I guess taking fatteners through a second winter they would manage on silage alone - but starting the winter at 11-1200lbs they would eat a lot of silage - I imagine it could easily be a $400 for feed alone before you looked at yardage.

Tom D wrote:

Well, anything under 600 kinda sucks when you're paying $90 for a kill fee. Not to mention the ear tag, the fly tags, the RFID tag, the doses of vaccines, and anything else that is priced per head. Oh, let's not forget the beef check-off.

Not really a big issue Tom for the management costs - $1 ear tag, our RFIDs are paid for by the AB Government just now, don't have enough flies to use fly tags, vaccine maybe runs $5/head and we have a refundable checkoff levy - not that I pay it anyway on slaughter cattle as it was always on an "honor basis" and I had no honor funding the idiot organisation we have.rect marketing. Even if I paid all these costs they would come to less than the commission for selling a feeder calf so this is actually another advantage of direct marketing.