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Big Swede

Well-known member
Joined
Jan 21, 2008
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Location
South Dakota
I've got a question for all of you to think about and respond to.

With the price of grain going to all time highs and probably setting a new price range in the future, is spring calving a smart business decision?

Here's what I'm getting at. There is such a huge volume of 500 to 600 pound steers that hit the market in October every year with the majority of them destined for feedlots, why would anyone want to pay a decent price for them any more. Can you blame them? With cost of gains going through the roof, I guarantee you they are going to discount five weight steers because there is such a huge supply of them.

The older I get, calving later in decent weather gets more appealing all the time. If that means selling lighter calves that will hit the grass market isn't that a win win situation?

Is summer or fall calving the answer? Not only less work but less expense. I've always heard it takes more feed for a fall herd, but if you normally background calves after weaning anyway, would it really take any more feed?

Looking forward to your thoughts.
 
No!!!! You definitely don't want to go to summer calving. Trust me, there is a lot of value in those five weight calves in October, there must be because everyone does it that way. Seriously, if you keep posting things like this it is going to wreck my market!!

In all seriousness, regardless of the grain price, because so many people calve during the winter it has been making a lot of sense to calve later and sell into the grass market for quite a while. If you look at a month by month chart of prices it always had a dip in it during the fall and the peak is somewhere around February or March. That graph may shift a little bit but I think it will probably hold pretty much true even at these grain prices.

One thing that the ranching business knows a lot about is tradition. I fully expect that most people can rationalize their winter calving so that they don't have to change. That is fine with me because it gives me a very profitable market, one that I hope too many people don't decide to choose to pursue.

I will warn you, if you decide to switch calving seasons you will never calve another cow during the winter. As much as I love ranching, I will quit the cattle business before I will ever go back to winter calving.
 
I appreciate your sense of humor, Rancherfred. Here is one of my concerns though. When all of your neighbors are winter and late spring calving, how do you keep their bulls out of your pasture until July or August. If you were to decide to make the switch all the way to fall calving I don't see how you could keep a herd of cows open all summer until let's say October.

I'll also agree that most of the reason is tradition that guys winter and spring calve. That's the main reason I do I guess. I can see purebred guys having to do it to get their bulls big enough, but why do the rest of us do it?
 
Rancherfred you had me going on your first sentence. Thankfully I read further! Big Swede I can only say that being contrary to what others are doing is most likely the most profitable thing to do. The highest price takers are not necessarily the most profitable. The lowest cost producers usually are. Calving in the nicer weather does not require bedding and you are mating your best and cheapest feed (spring grass) with your cows highest nutritional needs (lactating). If you can find winter grazing and background your own calves to spring, by the end of the next years grazing they will either be fat or short keeps in a feedlot. This model works for me and is less work than winter calving.
 
per said:
Rancherfred you had me going on your first sentence. Thankfully I read further! Big Swede I can only say that being contrary to what others are doing is most likely the most profitable thing to do. The highest price takers are not necessarily the most profitable. The lowest cost producers usually are. Calving in the nicer weather does not require bedding and you are mating your best and cheapest feed (spring grass) with your cows highest nutritional needs (lactating). If you can find winter grazing and background your own calves to spring, by the end of the next years grazing they will either be fat or short keeps in a feedlot. This model works for me and is less work than winter calving.
Click to expand...

But that's not traditional...smart, but not traditional! :wink: :) :D :lol:
 
With winter calving your primary problems are health and feed related. With late spring or early summer calving your biggest problem is going to be keeping your neighbors bulls out. This past calving season I had calves start coming about a month before they should have, out of at least four different bulls. Thankfully it only ended up being about 20-25 head. I guess you could say I got to try out several different breeds on RA cows without having any bull costs. I just wish my neighbors spent more money on good bulls. I am happy to report that there is no hybrid vigor associated with Black Angus-Red Angus crosses. Nor is there any hybrid vigor associated with a mongrelized black limi bull and RA cows. However, there seems to be pretty good heterosis with the Hereford/RA cross.

We had the neighbors bull in with our replacement heifers three times before I finally got the guy to come get his bull. Unfortunately we had to go through them with lutalyse and abort everything about six weeks before the breeding season started. About that time I started wondering how mad the guy would be if I got that rotten bull in and pinched him and turned him back out.

I am just not real sure that fall calving makes a lot of sense for a commercial cowman. With late spring or early summer calving you are really doing a good job of matching your cow needs to your forage availability. With fall calving you get to calve in good weather, but you are back to the mismatched forage availability and cow needs. A cow's peak milk production is reached sixty days post-parturition. If you have an October 1 calving date, sixty days later is the first of December, hardly a peak forage month. Your most expensive feed is always going to be purchased feed. Dry cows can get along fine on cornstalks in December, but you aren't going to be able to do that to milking cows. You will either have to haul lots of expensive feed, or your cows and calves will perform poorly. The most likely scenario is that you will haul lots of expensive feed and your cows and calves will perform poorly.

We have had a projected start date of May 15 for a few years now. The last couple of years we have sold a pot load of steers on the video in the summer for December delivery. We do the same with a load of heifers and have a January delivery date. They are sold in the 475-525 range and they always do real well for us. The calves are usually weaned about the first of November around 450-500 lbs. We background them on a high roughage diet of BMR sorghum sudan grass, oats, rumensin, and a little alfalfa. The alfalfa is usually purchased but the rest of the feed is raised on our own farm.

Calf health issues have really become a nonexistent problem, but as always there are other problems to deal with. I haven't come up with a good answer for the bull issue yet. You might end up needing to spend more money on VD vaccinations because, unless you have got buffalo fences around all of your pastures, I can virtually guarantee you that you will have the neighbors bulls in with your cows.
 
You have two choices at the coffee shop, Lie or compare balance sheets. As far as the neighbors bulls are concerned around here we discuss our grazing plans with each other and co-operate with where our cows will be. When that is just impossible a 4 wire fence with alternating hot and ground wires or an out rigged hot wire on the bull side.
 
As far as herd health, if you started calving cows on May 15th, I would guess you could eliminate your scour guard shot couldn't you? I've been tempted to quit supporting Pfizer in that respect for a while now, but I haven't had the courage to yet. I would however be more comfortable doing it if you were calving out on range and rotating the herd.

Isn't snow beautiful when you're not calving?
 
We start calving around April 15. I'm thinking of backing off to May 1st. Instead of taking off these 400-500 lb calves in the fall and either selling them or backgrounding them inside a corral, we're leaving them on the cow and letting the cow winter them. Our calves are still on the cows right now. We will be taking them off shortly though. Some cows are holding their weight really well with these big calves sucking on them. We have the option of either selling these calves or backgrounding them for another couple of months and then grassing them. The tough part about wintering the calves on the cow is getting the easykeeping genetics in the cows. That's what we have been working on for awhile now. If I can get more of these easykeeping cattle it's a very cheap way of getting your calves through most of the winter and gets rid of a lot of headaches.
 
Rancherfred, I have a sure solution for your bull problem(although expensive)...supply your neighbors with bulls. When they break back in, at least they are your bulls!!!! :o :wink: :) Luckily, I only have one neighbor. 8)

I tend to agree with you on the fall calving having done it. I have the advantage of winter grazing options and actually worked well for me(if all one looks at is weaning weights), but it's cheaper to provide better feed for a calf than the cow and the calf. Having said that, I know of rancher that fall calve and let the cow supplement the calf through the winter...in Colorado!

One could take your program a step further and "rough" the calves through the winter on alfalfa hay and grass hay. Spring and summer compensatory gains will be as good as any feedlot could do and a lot cheaper, then sell grass fats to a premium grassfed marketer or premium priced feeders for short finishing.

Once a rancher gets past the "tradition" of selling weaned calves, there are many options.

per, I too have kept out a bull that regularly came over a five strand barbed wire fence to visit my father-in-laws herd with electric fence!
 
rainie said:
We start calving around April 15. I'm thinking of backing off to May 1st. Instead of taking off these 400-500 lb calves in the fall and either selling them or backgrounding them inside a corral, we're leaving them on the cow and letting the cow winter them. Our calves are still on the cows right now. We will be taking them off shortly though. Some cows are holding their weight really well with these big calves sucking on them. We have the option of either selling these calves or backgrounding them for another couple of months and then grassing them. The tough part about wintering the calves on the cow is getting the easykeeping genetics in the cows. That's what we have been working on for awhile now. If I can get more of these easykeeping cattle it's a very cheap way of getting your calves through most of the winter and gets rid of a lot of headaches.
Click to expand...

Any management change will expose cows that work and cows that don't. If the management change works financially, keeping heifers out of the cows that work will get you there...keeping and using bulls out of the best cows that work will get you there a lot faster!!! Adapted cow herds are always more profitable.
 
Hey rainie, I couldn't agree more about reducing problems by wintering pairs. One question though, are your hard keeping cows in good enough shape by the time you calve in the middle of April or is that a way to cull the type of cows you don't want anyway?
 

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