Moving your cattle along to meet the goals of everyone in the beef supply chain takes focus on the data-backed decisions to add and capture value. Without people like Kenny Montgomery, Ruth Ammon and Meg Groves, those dollars from down the chain might never make it back to the ranch. These are some of the people who keep the plan on course when your cattle enter the feedyard and packing plant. Montgomery is a cowboy in the classic sense. He’s tough, unassuming and resilient – maybe that’s why Pratt Feeders, Pratt, Kan., has made him a part of its team for so long.
It’s been talked about for 60 years. It’s better for animals, preferred by most cattle feeders and could provide a 169% return on investment. “2014 was the biggest ‘no brainer’ year in history to precondition your calves,” says Purdue University veterinarian W. Mark Hilton. “2015 could be even better.” Crunching the numbers, Hilton first turns to an 11-year analysis of Indiana beef herds that showed weight alone added $50.84 average profit on preconditioned calves.
Paying the feed bill has cleaned out bank accounts faster than Jesse James in recent years, as high corn prices left cattlemen everywhere looking for the cheapest, most efficient alternatives. Answering that search, Galen Erickson shared research results and insight on distillers grains at the Feeding Quality Forums in Omaha, Neb., and Garden City, Kan., in August. As of late summer, the ethanol byproducts were selling at near corn prices. Many cattlemen responded by cutting back or removing it, but Erickson, feedlot Extension specialist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, said that could be a mistake.
Ford County Feed Yard is a big one. In fact, Certified Angus Beef LLC (CAB) has never licensed a larger feedyard, but the 50,000-head-capacity business runs like a collection of smaller yards. Maybe that’s because it is family owned and operated, and 22-year manager Danny Herrmann is the youngest son of a founding partner. Wheat-stocker and feeder George Herrmann went in with four others, including three from what later became National Beef in Dodge City, to build the feedyard 15 miles to the southeast, near Ford, Kan., starting in 1972.
Nobody likes to lose a customer, but to see a cattle feeder get emotional over the thought of a ranching client having to sell out… that’s when you know his heart is really in the business. Terry Beller, of Lindsay, Neb., can tell you the last time the Sandhills and points west received a measureable rain. It matters to his bottom line, certainly, but the owner-manager of the 6,000-head Beller Feedlot talks about ranchers dealing with drought as if one of his own children were facing a major obstacle.
When Daryl Strohbehn retired as an Iowa State Extension beef specialist there was one project he wasn’t ready to give up the reins to.
Since 2003, he has tracked the profit values for sires of calves enrolled in the Tri-County Steer Carcass Futurity (TCSCF). “To make things work in the cattle business today, it takes information based on sound data,” Strohbehn says. “I enjoy figuring out what that sound data is and what it might tell us.” The cooperative’s Sire Profit Analysis has grown from data on 35 sires in the initial report to 3,451sires evaluated in 2012.
But there is one thing I DO know, and that is we have high calf prices (if you’re buying to put on feed) and we have high corn prices (if you’re buying corn to put in those cattle), and the feedlot sector has been sustaining some horrible losses during the last 15-18 months.
T-bones, sirloins, filets and strips—these are the beef cuts referred to as “middle meats.” Such steaks make up 12% of the carcass, but represent just under half of its total value. That and the difference in cooking method lead many to believe it’s the only place where beef grades matter. Not according to experts like longtime market reporter Bruce Longo, of Urner Barry, and the data he tracks.
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