“Employees pay more attention to what you do than what you say,” commented cattleman and manager Harry Knobbe. Knobbe shared his 50 years’ experience of managing employees at his West Point, Neb., operation which consists of a feedyard, a livestock commodity business and grain production. Employees are as valuable to your operation as any other production parameter that you may focus on, Knobbe said.
“Employees pay more attention to what you do than what you say,” commented cattleman and manager Harry Knobbe. Knobbe shared his 50 years’ experience of managing employees at his West Point, Neb., operation which consists of a feedyard, a livestock commodity business and grain production. Employees are as valuable to your operation as any other production parameter that you may focus on, Knobbe said.
Biosecurity and its role in the swine industry, has always been a mandatory practice while some of its importance to the beef industry in recent years has diminished. With the Tuberculosis (TB) incident recently documented in eastern South Dakota, cattlemen have good reason to re-evaluate biosecurity measures within their production programs.
An always anticipated event held during the 2012 Cattle Industry Convention and National Cattlemen's Beef Association Trade Show, is the "Industry Outlook" provided byt eh marketing analysts of CattleFAX.
The first calf heifer represents one of the most challenging animals in our cowherd. She hasn’t reached maturity yet and we also see the highest levels of calving difficulty in that population. Getting her successfully re-bred is a challenge under the best of circumstances. Now the stakes are much higher given the significantly greater values of bred heifers and bred cows. A first calf heifer that either loses her calf or fails to re-breed could easily lose half her value when she’s marketed as a cull compared to being retained on the balance sheet as a bred female. Any steps that can be taken to minimize those losses will help us hold the line on the expense of cow depreciation and replacement costs.
Realizing that a difficult calving is in progress is a critical, but only an initial, step in assuring that everything possible is being done to ensure as good an outcome as possible. This article discusses what should be done to assist with a difficult birth and the situations in which one should call for help.
Our previous article described the factors that affect a newborn calf’s ability to gain the benefits of colostrum. When everything goes according to plan, that calf will get up and drink his full dose of colostrum from his mother. But what if that doesn’t happen? When should we intervene and feed the calf colostrum ourselves?
By now many cow-calf herds are in the home stretch in the race towards the start of calving season. Our primary focus is doing everything that maximizes the number of live calves born and eventually weaned and marketed. We also need to keep in mind that to be successful we have to get these cows in a position to breed back in a timely manner. That’s where monitoring body condition now before calving comes in to play to make sure that our herd is on the right track.
Researchers at the USDA-ARS Meat Animal Research Center in Clay Center, Nebraska, studied the environmental conditions in and around the deep bed-pack in two commercial monoslope facilities. The results show how climatic conditions and bed-pack management impact air quality, manure quality and cattle comfort.
As demonstrated the last couple of weeks, in the report Profit Profiles: Factors Driving Cattle Feeding Profitability from Professional Cattle Consultants (PCC) the most profitable pens of cattle are associated with fast gain, heavy carcass weights, and high quality grades.
In the recent article, Profit Trends for Fed Cattle I: Performance, we referenced the Professional Cattle Consultants’ (PCC) recent analysis of over 440,000 head of cattle all sold on a grid from 2004 to 2009 that segregated lots of cattle into the top 1/3 most profitable and bottom 1/3 least profitable by month. Over the five years when the data were collected, the top 1/3 of cattle had an average profit of $90.26/head and the bottom third lost $39.15/head.
SDSU is currently leading a multistate project to gather baseline data for gases and dust emitted from monoslope barns, and evaluate how manure handling systems impact the emissions. The study is investigating differences in emissions between a deep bed pack and weekly scrape manure management method. At the same time, environmental data spanning all four seasons and multiple years will help us assess the airflow and temperature conditions in the barn.
When consuming beef, what attributes do you prefer — tenderness, juiciness or flavor? Which one of these attributes are you willing to pay for? Tenderness has been proven to be the most important economic trait and quality factor because it is the trait consumers have demonstrated they are willing to pay for. Historically, the rib and loin have demanded a higher price over the chuck and round, because of their higher palatability attributes.
Sometimes a person listens to a speaker and really gets the message. Many of you probably listen to or have heard of Trent Loos. He spoke at the XXII Range Beef Cow Symposium in Mitchell, Nebraska this past year and was wonderful to listen to.
February is a month dedicated to expressing affection. This year, food is the language of love. According to a survey conducted on behalf of the Beef Checkoff, on Valentine’s Day, Americans would rather have a nice meal than a card, flowers, chocolate or even a gift and 62 percent of Americans said steak is their most desired V-Day meal.
The NFL playoffs are in full swing, which means Super Bowl XLVI is almost here. Most of us will be anchored to our armchairs and cheering for our favorite team. Great food and football just go together, so why not have a few friends over and enjoy some simple, tasty finger-foods?
Winter feed costs are the highest portion of the cow/calf operation. It has been estimated that 50 to 70% is feed cost. One method to understand feed cost is management of waste/losses. Losses may occur during harvest, storage and feeding. The majority of South Dakota cow/calf producers’ hay supply is in the form of large round bales. Hay delivery methods vary from grind, bale processor, spread on the ground or fed in bale feeders. The hay delivery system will influence the amount of hay loss or unconsumed.
Water is the most essential element for the stock cow as it’s availability is directly related to dry matter consumption: Limited water availability results in limited dietary intake. For cattlemen, providing adequate water for cows grazing roughages, where electrical power is non-existent or interrupted by a power failure or where snow is the only moisture source available, snow may provide a short term alternative to water.
The key principle in determining proper stocking rates for range or pasture is balancing the amount of forage required with the amount of forage that can be removed while making sure that the long-term health of the grazing land resource is not compromised. While we often focus on the plant communities and how healthy and productive they are, we also need to make sure that we’ve made the proper calculations on the demand side.
I haven’t consulted the “Drought Monitor” website at all this year – a reflection of the favorable growing conditions we’ve enjoyed! More than one rancher I’ve visited with this summer has assessed pasture conditions with a statement along the lines of, “I could’ve run twice as many cows in this pasture.”