Cattle Business In Big Time Decline

[Mike]

Calif. expected to lose 100 dairy farms
San Francisco Chronicle / SFGate.com ^ | Updated 10:56 p.m., Saturday, October 13, 2012 | Stacy Finz
Posted on Sun Oct 14 2012 13:23:39 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time) by thecodont

The nation's drought and high corn prices are devastating California's $8 billion dairy industry to the point where farmers can't afford to feed their cows - and their professional trade organization has been regularly referring despondent dairymen to suicide hotlines.

Experts in the industry estimate that by year's end California, the largest dairy state in the nation, will have lost more than 100 dairies to bankruptcies, foreclosures and sales. Milk cows are being slaughtered at the fastest rate in more than 25 years because farmers need to save on corn costs. According to the Western United Dairymen, a California trade group, three dairy farmers have committed suicide since 2009, despairing over losing their family's dairies.

"I've never seen it as dire as it is now," said Frank Mendonsa, a Tulare dairyman who serves on the Western United Dairymen board. "Pride is just eating these guys up. People are calling me and asking me what to do. It becomes like a counseling session to stop people from hurting themselves. But it's not just losing our jobs that is driving the desperation. We're losing our houses, in some cases the same houses that our grandparents lived in, and we're losing our entire identities."

The problems started in 2009, when milk prices bottomed out and grain prices soared, partly due to the government's ethanol mandate. Congress is requiring that gasoline producers blend 15 billion gallons of ethanol, made from corn, into the nation's gas supply by 2015. Dairy farmers were forced to borrow against their land and cows to make their bills.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Calif-expected-to-lose-100-dairy-farms-3946897.php#ixzz29IaSB7WG

 

[jodywy]

Western United Dairymen, when I milked cows the board wasn't nothing but a bunch of slick haired bent nose types...

 

[Anonymous]

CAB Acceptance Factors
How are high corn prices affecting CAB acceptance rates?
by Kasey Miller

There is no doubt that this summer has been a tough one. More than 70% of the country this year has been in a drought. Drought conditions have made already high corn prices even higher. Pastures are in rough shape, too, as low moisture has reduced forage quantity. What do these changes imply for the beef industry? More specifically, what does it mean to the Certified Angus Beef® (CAB®) brand?

Historically, corn price fluctuations have not significantly affected CAB acceptance rates, says Mark McCully, assistant vice president and director of supply development at Certified Angus Beef LLC (CAB). However, fall 2011 might have been the exception.

Due to high feed costs, more beta-agonist and growth promotants have been used. The aggressive growth technologies decrease marbling, which certainly affects CAB acceptance rates. To alleviate the quality grade issue, though, many cattle feeders increased the days on feed, McCully says.

This and last year's drought have made it necessary to place lighter cattle in feedlots, which means that more days on feed are required. Low feeder-calf placements, he explains, have also supported longer days on feed.

With some projecting corn prices at $10 per bushel (bu.) this year, the impact on days on feed and resulting quality grade are unknown. $10-per-bu. corn means cost of gain could elevate to $145 per hundredweight (cwt.). McCully cites Cattle-Fax analyses that reported cost of gain has remained relatively steady at around $115 per cwt. in late 2011 and early 2012, while corn was about $6 per bu. However, the recent spike to $8 per bu., with the impending threat of higher corn prices, has sparked an uptick nearing the $120-per-cwt. level in cost of gain.

Are we going to short-feed cattle?

"As long as the value of that pound of gain exceeds the cost of that pound of gain, we're going to keep feeding cattle," McCully answers. "We're going to keep feeding heavier because it just makes sense to do that. We all know cattle get less efficient, but there is incentive to feed cattle a little bit longer, especially for feedlots selling on a carcass basis. The market has been able to sell cattle and beef high enough to offset these increased cost of gains, for the most part, over a five-year period."

He concludes, "The absolute positive message for Angus genetics in this is the need for cattle to grade with possibly fewer days on feed — come in and grow and grade."

http://angusbeefbulletin.com/extra/2012/09sep12/0912fp_cab-acceptance.html#.UHcrfxhgMpQ

If corn remains short and is used more for energy and less is available for feed- I do agree with them and think it will affect the type of beef cattle that will be needed...

 

[Mike]

Breeding cattle that thrive on grass, and forcing their offspring to thrive on corn is antagonistic.

We've been able to profit with cheap corn but those days are near the end. There is not nearly enough grassland to raise the numbers of cattle slaughtered in the U.S.

Milk & beef prices will be totally out of reach for the common man before long, if not already. Hope you like chicken.......................

 

[canadian angus]

As long as Governments continue to play the ethonal game, corn will be high. We are competing with Goverenment coffers on the protein market.

CA

 

[3 M L & C]

Breeding cattle that thrive on grass, and forcing their offspring to thrive on corn is antagonistic.

We've been able to profit with cheap corn but those days are near the end. There is not nearly enough grassland to raise the numbers of cattle slaughtered in the U.S.

Milk & beef prices will be totally out of reach for the common man before long, if not already. Hope you like chicken.......................

How can you say those days are near an end? If the drought would have only been half as bad, the price of corn would be less than 4 dollars. And also with the drought the corn crop was the 10th largest ever in us history. With high corn prices now you can bet your butt that next years planted acres of corn will be the most ever. It wouldn't supprise me a bit to have 3.50 corn this time next year. At this point their just moving demand around on their numbers to not run out of corn before next harvest. If you don't remember it did pretty much the same thing about 5 years ago. I remember because corn spiked to 8 dollars and I had one landlord take ground away to farm it himself again, and other landlords that had their leases run out were standing with their hands out for more rent. The following year corn was back to fairly cheap prices.

Also if you take corn out of the energy part thats just going to raise the price of distillers products that most parts of the cattle industry use anyway, so thats not going to help much. I saw one spot where they said if they shut down the ethonal mandate, or whatever they call it. It would only amount to the price of corn dropping between 10 to 15 cents a bu.

 

[Mike]

Breeding cattle that thrive on grass, and forcing their offspring to thrive on corn is antagonistic.

We've been able to profit with cheap corn but those days are near the end. There is not nearly enough grassland to raise the numbers of cattle slaughtered in the U.S.

Milk & beef prices will be totally out of reach for the common man before long, if not already. Hope you like chicken.......................

How can you say those days are near an end? If the drought would have only been half as bad, the price of corn would be less than 4 dollars. And also with the drought the corn crop was the 10th largest ever in us history. With high corn prices now you can bet your butt that next years planted acres of corn will be the most ever. It wouldn't supprise me a bit to have 3.50 corn this time next year. At this point their just moving demand around on their numbers to not run out of corn before next harvest. If you don't remember it did pretty much the same thing about 5 years ago. I remember because corn spiked to 8 dollars and I had one landlord take ground away to farm it himself again, and other landlords that had their leases run out were standing with their hands out for more rent. The following year corn was back to fairly cheap prices.

Also if you take corn out of the energy part thats just going to raise the price of distillers products that most parts of the cattle industry use anyway, so thats not going to help much. I saw one spot where they said if they shut down the ethonal mandate, or whatever they call it. It would only amount to the price of corn dropping between 10 to 15 cents a bu.

Corn is not the only factor in beef prices skyrocketing. Fuel is causing beef prices to rise and leave fewer dollars in the ranchers pockets.

For instance, there are no packers here, all calves are shipped to the corn and the feedlots 20 hours away. We have to pay the shipping as it comes out of our check. Then the beef is shipped back down here to the groceries' with the consumer paying that freight.

Cattle's digestive systems simply aren't efficient enough to compete with the chickens of today. We have fallen way behind in that category.

Land prices are out of sight. I have a buddy that sold a section of corn land in Iowa for $9,900.00 per acre. Only high corn prices will pay for that.

 

[3 M L & C]

Breeding cattle that thrive on grass, and forcing their offspring to thrive on corn is antagonistic.

We've been able to profit with cheap corn but those days are near the end. There is not nearly enough grassland to raise the numbers of cattle slaughtered in the U.S.

Milk & beef prices will be totally out of reach for the common man before long, if not already. Hope you like chicken.......................

How can you say those days are near an end? If the drought would have only been half as bad, the price of corn would be less than 4 dollars. And also with the drought the corn crop was the 10th largest ever in us history. With high corn prices now you can bet your butt that next years planted acres of corn will be the most ever. It wouldn't supprise me a bit to have 3.50 corn this time next year. At this point their just moving demand around on their numbers to not run out of corn before next harvest. If you don't remember it did pretty much the same thing about 5 years ago. I remember because corn spiked to 8 dollars and I had one landlord take ground away to farm it himself again, and other landlords that had their leases run out were standing with their hands out for more rent. The following year corn was back to fairly cheap prices.

Also if you take corn out of the energy part thats just going to raise the price of distillers products that most parts of the cattle industry use anyway, so thats not going to help much. I saw one spot where they said if they shut down the ethonal mandate, or whatever they call it. It would only amount to the price of corn dropping between 10 to 15 cents a bu.

Corn is not the only factor in beef prices skyrocketing. Fuel is causing beef prices to rise and leave fewer dollars in the ranchers pockets.

For instance, there are no packers here, all calves are shipped to the corn and the feedlots 20 hours away. We have to pay the shipping as it comes out of our check. Then the beef is shipped back down here to the groceries' with the consumer paying that freight.

Cattle's digestive systems simply aren't efficient enough to compete with the chickens of today. We have fallen way behind in that category.

Land prices are out of sight. I have a buddy that sold a section of corn land in Iowa for $9,900.00 per acre. Only high corn prices will pay for that.

Ground has been bringing that for a long time in the corn belt. Do you think at the Chicago Board of Trade they care what some farmer is paying for his ground?

 

[Mike]

Why is beef losing ground to chicken?
Gene Johnston
02/02/2012 @ 11:29am
On the scene at the 2012 Cattle Convention, Nashville
Attend enough beef cattle meetings, and you know these numbers by heart:
1:1
2:1
3.5:1
7:1
Those are the average feed efficiencies, in order, of fish, chickens, pigs, and beef cattle. Yes, fish will gain a pound for every pound of feed they eat. Chickens will convert half of the feed they eat into body weight gain.
So why does it take 7 pounds of feed to gain a pound on a beef animal?
That was the topic at a forum during Cattlemen's College at the 2012 Cattle Industry Convention, along with what we might do about it to turn the trend and make beef more competitive.
"We used to say that feed made up 50% to 70% of the total cost of beef production," says Dan Shike, an Extension beef specialist at the University of Illinois. "But with feed as expensive as today, it may be closer to 80% at some times."
There are reasons why cattle aren't as efficient at feed conversion compared to those other species, says Shike. "For one, as ruminants they eat higher fiber diets compared to chickens and pigs, and fiber digestion is not as efficient as grains," he says. And, another issue is the large body size of beef cattle. They use half of what they eat just to maintain themselves.
But a bigger issue is that in the cattle industry, we haven't selected hard for feed efficiency, like they have with chickens and pigs. Chickens have made a 250% improvement in feed efficiency since the 1950s, while cattle efficiency has barely budged. Feed efficiency research in cattle is expensive work because you have to feed animals individually, or measure it individually. But new technology that uses wireless radio signals from tags or collars to weigh every bite an animal takes may change this, and lead to more and better research.
Generation interval also works against the beef industry. Chickens and pigs go through multiple generations a year, while it takes at least two years with cattle to see genetic change come to fruition. As one speaker said, "In the cattle business, you have barely entered the dates on your calving calendar when the poultry and pork folks have completed a new generation of data."
"We have some long-term records that say that over the last 20 years, we've made no improvement in beef cattle feed efficiency," says Shike. "Other work says maybe we've made a small improvement, maybe from 8:1 to 7:1. And it looks like the rate of improvement has slowed."
The rewards will be huge when the beef industry begins to make progress in this area. Shike says a 10% improvement across the board in feed efficiency throughout the cattle industry would be worth over $1 billion. "A 1% improvement in feed efficiency would give the same economic impact as a 3% improvement in daily rate of gain. It's a big deal."
And perhaps the most significant place to improve feed efficiency is in the cow herd. About half of all the feed resources used in the entire beef industry – calves, cows, feedlots – goes just to maintain the cow herd. Controlled feeding trials have shown huge differences in forage intake by cows, with some eating as much as double their herdmates. And the low-intake cows are not always the low-performers. "This has a lot of implications for stocking rates and carrying capacities of our pastures," Shike says.
"We have to get serious about this in the beef industry," he says. "With new technology such as gene markers, we have a real opportunity to make progress, and we're starting to identify sires that are good in feed efficiency for grain and forage."

 

[mrj]

Mike, it's great to find another cattleman who knows the value of Cattlemen's College. I didn't get to that particular class last winter, but that was my own fault. it is hard to pick and choose which ones to take, they all are so good.

It would serve many families well to find some research into the cow maintainance, especially if it could be tailored to various types of land/moisture/temperature fluctuations. It just seems like too muchh of the 'one size fits all' mentality has been used in animal research, when it comes to climate and types of grasses available, particularly in areas where native prairies still exist. And those prairies need to be preserved with proper grazing, and imo, ranchers are most able to do that most efficiently and effecticely.

 

[Weber Show Cattle]

Where I live in South Dakota the price of land has sky rocketed like all over.. The biggest problem has been the lack of rain.. If it would happen to not rain again next summer you will see load after load of cows going to town.. Mother Nature seems to play as big of role in the prices and the numbers as any thing now days..
I do expect land and corn prices to level off, it's going to get too high for anyone to afford.. Feeding beef cattle or dairy cattle is going to be high and with the government wanting cheap food it's going to get harder and harder to make either one work for a profit.. I did see a article where the US beef herd is the lowest it's been since 1951 or around that time.. With all the grass land being broken up to farm the numbers will only get less and less...

 

[Aladar]

Read that last sentence that O T copied from the anus beef bulletin

" come in, grow and grade" the tolerence for poor growth and/or poor grading cattle is about to come to the end of a short chain. The alternative is lower calf prices.

 

[jigs]

[

With high corn prices now you can bet your butt that next years planted acres of corn will be the most ever. It wouldn't supprise me a bit to have 3.50 corn this time next year.

.

you can bet on one thing for sure, when there is a bullish future market, the American farmer will produce himself right out of it.

 

[kolanuraven]

Read that last sentence that O T copied from the anus beef bulletin

This will get some of these boys WAY too excited with talk like that!!!

 

[hopalong]

Any thing that gets a guy excited will give kolo=jingo=lulu=allie a tingle down her leg,,she can't do it herself but anything else will work