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Has anything changed in a year

Bill

Well-known member
A comment from ocm made a year ago in the thread

http://ranchers.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=16237&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=ethanol


Higher feed concentrate cost (corn or barley) will in the long run benefit ranchers. If you think otherwise, you need to reconsider or talk to an expert. Short term with such a quick rise in price it has been painful. Long term it is better for RANCHERS not FEEDERS. It will also probably diminish the advantages of retained ownership in many cases.

Some reasons it will be better for ranchers:

Pounds put on with forage will be cheaper relative to pounds put on with concentrates.
Competing meats have no easy cheaper alternates
Holstein steers will not be taken to as high weights at slaughter due to increased cost of gain, decreasing Holstein tonnage.
Placement weights will go up
Time on feed will go down, making total tonnage lower.
It will take more cattle to get the same tonnage.
Using forage land for yearling grazing will allow fewer cows decreasing the size of the calf crop.
Select / choice spread will increase.
DDGS can easily be used as feed supplements by ranchers but use in feedlot is limited. When the feedlot supply is saturated it will be cheap feed for ranchers (like for winter protein and energy source)

Think about it.


PS The reason NCBA seems more concerned than R-CALF is that R-CALF is primarily a cow/calf organization, whereas NCBA has a MUCH higher percentage of members who are FEEDERS.

How long before we start to see this benefit of higher feed grain costs?
 

Bill

Well-known member
RobertMac said:
When you make changes to take advantage of opportunities.
Nobody is going to come give you a benefit!
I realize that we live in 2 entirely different parts of the continent but what changes have you made RMac?
 

RobertMac

Well-known member
I've been making them over the last 10 years...I'm now 100% forage based. The price of grain doesn't effect my operation...except for the feed my wife buys for HER horses! :wink:
I do buy some alfalfa pellets as a treat when I catch to sort or sell.
 

Kato

Well-known member
IMHO, higher feed costs will be good for some, but not neccesarily for ranchers. It's not the high costs that are painful, as much as it is the adjustment period that comes with it. I remember making good money backgrounding calves when barley was a high price, but I also remember paying a LOT less for those calves. :shock: Can anyone live on calves that are worth $325.00? Not likely these days!!!

The cost of gain wil find itself back to the cow calf operator, we can be sure of that. Expensive feeding will make for cheaper calves. All along the chain, the extra costs just keep trickling down. Finally it's not worth selling calves, the cow herd in general gets smaller, and then the demand begins to exceed the supply. Then it starts to improve.

The best cure for high prices is high prices, same goes for low prices.

We're dealing with it by feeding byproducts like screening pellets and straw, and grazing corn in the fall. Keeping down costs that way, because we sure don't have the money to outbid the grain boys up here for more pasture land. :roll: :roll: They've all gone completely nuts.
 

RobertMac

Well-known member
Doing the same thing when major influences in the industry change is the sure path to a train wreck.
If producers want more money out of this industry, they are going to have to do more jobs!
 

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