How Sorting and Commingling Affects Stocker Costs

How Sorting and Commingling Affects Stocker Costs

Lorie Woodward Cantu

The Cattleman

In stocker and feeder cattle businesses, performance and costs normally are tracked by groups, not by individual animals. Generally, the large groups reflecting the cattle’s origin are identified as lots, while the sub-groups resulting from sorting are identified as pens.

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Selecting the Right Replacement Heifers

Selecting the Right Replacement Heifers

Anthony Wiggins

As I was preparing to write this article, I took the liberty to read several articles written by Ph. D’s regarding selecting replacement heifers. Though I often have a tendency to over simplify things, three themes emerged about replacement heifers; 1) replacements are costly, 2) they should be a genetic improvement to the herd, 3) and the heifer should become a fertile cow that produces a calf annually for a long time.

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Profitability Starts with a Live Calf

Profitability Starts with a Live Calf

Troy Smith

Angus Journal

Management strategies from heifer and bull selection to assisting with delivery help assure calves get a good start in life.

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Comparison of the Effects of Three Different Dehorning Techniques on Behavior and Performance in Feeder Cattle in a Western Kansas Feedlot

Comparison of the Effects of Three Different Dehorning Techniques on Behavior and Performance in Feeder Cattle in a Western Kansas Feedlot

The Beef Site

Dehorning is carried out to protect other cattle and prevent bruising to the carcase. Here C.D. Neely, D.U. Thomson, C.A. Kerr, D.E. Anderson, and C.D. Reinhardt from Kansas looks at the effects of tipping, dehorning and banding on the behaviour and performance of feeder cattle.

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BeefTalk: Uff Da!

BeefTalk: Uff Da!

Ken Ringwall, Beef Specialist, NDSU Extension Service

Seven hundred eighty dollars’ worth of hay for a calf: uff da! Seasonal and yearly trends repeat. In fact, in 2008, the same concerns were very evident as the hay yards were empty.

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Pre-Planning to Avoid Disasters During Weaning

Pre-Planning to Avoid Disasters During Weaning

Heather Larson

iGrow

Sometimes when you wean calves you can have disasters. Some things can be prevented and some things just cannot. Here are a few tips that you could do before or during weaning to make sure you get your calves off to a good start and avoid disasters.

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Monitoring feedstuffs

Monitoring feedstuffs

Dave Barz

Tri State Livestock News

Summer is moving rapidly. We got a few showers of rain the last few weeks. Not enough to end the drought, but a least enough to bring a little green to the grass. Most of my clients are attempting to gather as much winter feed as possible.

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Is Your Ranch Ready For New Ideas?

Is Your Ranch Ready For New Ideas?

Burke Teicher

BEEF

Two traits separate great managers from the rest – they aren’t defensive about their methods and they actively seek new ideas

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Rescuers attempt to help livestock affected by Isaac

Rescuers attempt to help livestock affected by Isaac

Brett Wessler

Drovers

Teams went to Plaquemines Parish to rescue people and animals after the area was swamped with over 10 feet of water.

Flooding in Plaquemines Parish, located downriver of New Orleans, left people stranded on rooftops.

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Drought causes shortage in Wis. cow chip throw

Drought causes shortage in Wis. cow chip throw

CARRIE ANTLFINGER

The Seattle Times

It’s very seldom someone talks about the quality and amount of cow dung, but in one southern Wisconsin city that’s all they’ve been talking about lately.

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Tips on selecting a backgrounder or feedyard

Tips on selecting a backgrounder or feedyard

B. Lynn Gordon

iGrow

Drought conditions across South Dakota and the nation have many cattle producers considering early weaning to extend the use of the pastures and lessen the demands on the cow. As a result, producers who are accustomed to selling their calves at their more standard weaning time in the fall (October or later), are now faced with the decision as to what to do with the calves they wean off early.

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Sick Cattle are Expensive Cattle

Sick Cattle are Expensive Cattle

Miranda Reiman

Cattle Today

Sick cattle are expensive cattle. Treatment is costly in itself, but the side effects of illness keep robbing through lower performance and carcass quality.

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What You Need to Know About Lepto

What You Need to Know About Lepto

Troy Smith

Angus Journal

If you’re experiencing unexplained reproductive losses in your herd,

leptospirosis could be the culprit.

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Wean right

Wean right

John Maday

Drovers

On the Hibbard family ranch in Montana, they calve their herd in June, and by the time they are ready to wean calves in the late fall, snow sometimes has drifted over the fences.

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Midwest drought affecting Louisiana cattle producers

Midwest drought affecting Louisiana cattle producers

Bruce Schultz

Delta Farm Press

The drought choking the Midwest is hundreds of miles away, but it is having direct effects on the Louisiana cattle market.

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Will People Really Be Forced to Stop Eating Meat?

Will People Really Be Forced to Stop Eating Meat?

Natalie Wolchover

Live Science

It simply takes too much water to grow a steak. In a new report, leading water scientists say the human population would have to switch to an almost entirely vegetarian diet by 2050 to avoid catastrophic global food and water shortages.

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Opening date not yet set for beef plant in SD

Opening date not yet set for beef plant in SD

CBS News

A long-delayed South Dakota beef-processing plant given new life when Korean investors took over in 2009 is without an opening date more than six years after it was first proposed.

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Beef sector heading into feeding frenzy

Beef sector heading into feeding frenzy

ART HOVEY

Lincoln Journal Star

At a time when cattle feeders are losing as much as $200 a head, Nebraska is a contradiction in the making.

It’s bucking a national trend by boosting its feedlot numbers by double digits compared to a year ago.

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Drought’s Aftermath Includes More, Different Weeds

Drought’s Aftermath Includes More, Different Weeds

Victoria G. Myers

Progressive Farmer

There’s one thing even a drought has a hard time killing and that’s a weed. In some cases it seems like drought gives weeds a chance they never had before — a chance to proliferate and move to pastures and fields states away.

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Animal Health Indispensible In Cattle Marketing

Animal Health Indispensible In Cattle Marketing

Larry Stalcup

BEEF

Good animal health is an excellent complement to good cattle marketing, these stocker operators and backgrounders say.

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