Evolution in the Feedlot Industry, Questioning Cow Calf Practices, Big Cows vs Small Cows on Pasture

Summary

Cattle Chat Podcast – Episode Summary

Episode Title: Evolution in the Feedlot Industry, Questioning Cow Calf Practices, Big Cows vs Small Cows on Pasture
Date: November 21, 2025
Host and Panel: Dr. Brad White (Host), Dr. Bob Larson, Dr. Scott (Dustin), Dr. Phillip (identified from context)
Podcast Description: Veterinary professionals from the Beef Cattle Institute at Kansas State University discuss changes in feedlot economics, entrenched practices in the cow-calf sector, and strategic considerations about cow size and herd efficiency.

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Episode Overview

This episode centers on critical shifts and longstanding paradigms in beef cattle production—from evolving feedlot management and profitability strategies, to questioning ingrained practices in the cow-calf segment. The hosts also tackle the debate of whether smaller cows in greater numbers outcompete larger cows in pasture efficiency. The conversation, rooted in real-world data and industry experience, encourages producers to challenge “the way it’s always been done” and make decisions suited to their unique operations.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Evolution of Feedlot Practices and Profitability

[03:10 – 10:34]

• Over the last 10–20 years, both days on feed and hot carcass weights in feedlots have steadily increased, with a dramatic rise in the past five years.
• The traditional metric for profitability—harvesting cattle when the “incremental cost of gain” exceeds its value—is being re-examined.
  • Quote: “Basically, once the cost of gain exceeded the value of the gain, that was sale date.”
    — Bob [04:34]
• Historic focus was on feed efficiency and average daily gain, but this approach ignored the animal’s original purchase price.
  • Quote: “...with every pound of gain...I’m diluting out that purchase price, and I'd never thought of that before.”
    — Bob [05:25]
• The COVID pandemic caused feedlots to lengthen their feeding periods due to processing disruptions, which accidentally increased profitability and challenged old paradigms.
  • Quote: “One of the things that happened was during COVID…they were more profitable by going beyond where they would have harvested them.”
    — Brad [07:49]
• Industry shifts: Less market penalization for heavier carcasses and movement from live to grid-based selling.
  • Quote: “20 years ago you used to get a dock for carcasses over £950…today I’m not sure there’s much of any dock…”
    — Bob [10:20]

2. Rethinking "Set in Stone" Cow-Calf Practices

[10:34 – 15:49]

• With feedlot practices shifting, the panel reflects on what entrenched paradigms in the cow-calf sector could also be due for revision.
• Weaning age is examined—why seven months is the default, how forage quality and region play a role, and whether pushing or pulling that number could unlock value.
  • Quote: “We’ve got that number stuck in our head of like seven months or something...but if you think about it from a nutrition standpoint, it depends...”
    — Bob [12:30]
• Other “sacred cows” include the standard 30 cows per bull ratio.
  • Quote: “I’d like to have bulls that can handle more cows…manage groups of bulls so that we can handle more than that.”
    — Bob [11:39]
• Marketing timing, preconditioning, and weighing reputation and risk are also central.
  • Quote: “The longer you hold them, the more at risk days they have to die on your place...”
    — Scott [13:10]

3. The Case for Revisiting Weaning Weight

[14:29 – 16:06]

• Despite genetic improvements in cattle, average weaning weights industry-wide have remained flat due to nutritional constraints—grass quality hasn't kept pace.
  • Quote: “Weaning weight over the last 20 years is a pretty flat line.… we’re kind of stuck in a nutritionally limited mindset.”
    — Bob [15:07]
• The group considers if sale weight—rather than weaning weight—should be the focus, with potential for early weaning followed by strategic feeding.

4. Big Cow vs Small Cow: What Works Best?

[16:06 – 21:47]

• There’s spirited debate over whether it’s better to run more small cows or fewer large cows—given the same land resource. The answer, as agreed upon, rests heavily on operational specifics.
• Larger cows have higher maintenance requirements, but their calves can perform better with feedlot nutrition. Smaller cows allow for more animals and potentially more total calf weight per acre.
  • Quote: “The smaller the cow, the more number of cows I can get on the ranch.… In my—I don’t think it makes much of a difference at all in the efficiency of individual cows…”
    — Bob [17:38]
  • Quote: “My gut...feels like it would be easier to add final pounds of calf sold at the end of the year by adding more calves than adding pounds per calf. That's my gut.”
    — Scott [19:14]
• The panel recognizes the importance of not decoupling reproductive performance and resource limitations from cow size decisions.

5. Challenging Groupthink and Encouraging Individual Analysis

[19:54 – 21:47]

• The episode closes with a call to continually question deeply embedded practices and to “do the math” for each unique scenario.
  • Quote: “It kind of opened my eyes to question some things. And I think on the cow calf side, there are many things we could question—we don’t necessarily know the answers to. But maybe those are some areas we should branch out and try.”
    — Brad [19:54]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On changing feedlot timing:
  “They were forced to try a different way of looking at it…all of a sudden realized we don't need to go back to the old way.”
  — Brad [08:31]

• On industry “paradigms”:
  “It makes sense to me that as soon as how much money I'm spending today...just compared it to how much value that added today—and. Sure. And the point I'm saying here, I didn't understand that...”
  — Bob [09:34]

• On cow size and ranch efficiency:
  “Either way could be equally efficient...”
  — Bob [18:05]
  “I don't, I don't know the answer to that. I can argue either side of that and kind of convince myself.”
  — Bob [20:29]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Pie Preferences Icebreaker: 00:18 – 03:10
• The Evolution of Feedlot Practices / Days on Feed: 03:10 – 10:34
• Questioning Old Rules & Cow-Calf Industry “Paradigms”: 10:34 – 15:49
• Why Weaning Weights are Stagnant: 15:07 – 16:06
• Big Cow vs Small Cow Debate: 16:06 – 21:47
• Final Thoughts on Challenging Groupthink: 19:54 – 21:47

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Episode Tone & Takeaway

• The tone is friendly, collaborative, and frequently light-hearted—experts spar ideas with mutual respect and curiosity.
• There’s ongoing encouragement for cattle producers to challenge herd mentality, adapt to changing economics and genetics, and to analyze and adapt based on their own situation, not ingrained “rules.”

“We need more arguments.”
— Bob [20:21]

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For livestock producers, veterinarians, and industry watchers, this episode serves as a reminder: Yesterday’s wisdom isn’t always tomorrow’s profit. Challenge assumptions, do your math, and tailor practices to your operation’s realities.

Transcript

[A]

Hi, welcome to BCI Cattle Chat.

[B]

I'm Brad White.

[A]

Happy to have you with us and happy to have our crew here in the studio. Morning, Bob.

[C]

Good morning, guys.

[A]

Scott.

[D]

Morning, Dustin.

[E]

Good morning, Phillip.

[B]

Hello, everybody.

[A]

So we're happy to have you guys here because we've got several things that we're going to talk about today. And as always, if you have a listener question for us, you can send that to [e-mail] or you can reach out to us on social media, Facebook or Instagra. Instagram. We get them that way also, because we sure enjoy talking about your questions and finding out what you want to know about. And hopefully you're spending some time with the family at Thanksgiving and Christmas coming up, which makes me. Which brings me to my question for you guys today, which is all about pie. So if you could only have one pie for the rest of your life, what would that pie be?

[C]

That's easy. It'd be apple pie. But I would add a little bit. Just. No, just a little bit of variety. Sometimes with ice cream, sometimes with whipped cream, sometimes maybe just extra apple pie.

[D]

Slice of American cheese.

[C]

You know, I've done that. It's okay. But I like the ice cream and the whipped cream better.

[B]

Really? American cheese on apple pie?

[E]

Yeah. What?

[C]

Yeah, go for that.

[B]

Where does that trist come from? Because I've never seen anybody do that.

[D]

I saw it on a movie once.

[E]

I've never heard of that before, ever.

[C]

We're glad that we can kind of broaden your horizons a little bit today.

[D]

So I don't think my sister listens to this podcast, so I'm safe telling this story, but she made a pecan pie one time and something with the filling. I don't even know what goes in it, but it didn't set like it wasn't the gel, so it was like pecan soup. And I just poured that over the bowl of ice cream and I would have that for the rest of my life.

[A]

That was so good. So the pie failed, but it was your favorite pie ever?

[D]

Yes. And I asked her, I was like, are you making pecan soup again? And then she just, you know, usually not kind words.

[A]

Dustin.

[E]

So I really like apple and peach, so I don't care which one, but as long as the topping is like that crumble topping. So lots of butter and sugar and stuff. Yep. So I don't care apple or peach, but it's gotta have that crumble topping.

[B]

You know, My favorite pie is pie.

[A]

Any kind.

[B]

Pretty much any kind of pie. I have not found a pie that I don't really like.

[A]

Pick one.

[B]

No, I can't pick one. They're all too good. How about rhubarb? Oh yeah. Rhubarb pie. Oh yeah. And then you can do strawberry rhubarb, which is really good. Gooseberry pie. My grandma used to make gooseberry. Oh yeah, my grandma used to make gooseberry pie all the time. Shepherd's pie. That might be the one that I'm not so fond of. That would be the one that may go off the list.

[A]

Doesn't make. That doesn't make the list. No banana cream, no chocolate. Oh yeah.

[B]

All of them are all. They're all good. Oh yeah.

[E]

How about you?

[A]

Yeah, I'd be, I'd be banana cream or chocolate.

[B]

No pumpkin.

[A]

No pumpkin. So pumpkin pie is no good?

[E]

Pumpkin pie is good. If you put it in, in a blizzard, you slice of it in, you go like a.

[B]

Get a pumpkin pump. But yeah, you gotta have some.

[A]

So one of the things that I wanted to visit with you guys about and I thought it was really interesting and I'll, I'll set it up a little bit because we met with some folks that work with feed yards in different scenarios and met with them a few weeks ago and we're talking about some of the evolutions in the feed yard industry. And they told a story of one of the things that has changed dramatically. As you know, the last 10 years we've gone up in days on feed or how long we feed feed yard cattle, which is consequently raised hot carcass weight. And so if you look back over the last 10, 15, 20 years, pretty steady uptick in both of those numbers. But over the last five years it's been dramatic. There's been a big increase in how long we feed cattle and go through that feeding phase. One of the things that they were talking about was the evolution of that thought process. So for years, the feedback, especially if you were custom feeding cattle, you everything's focused on efficiency. So the feedback to the producer who owned the cattle was here's what our feed conversions were, here's what our average daily gain was. And we want to have the best of those, which would imply that we're being the most efficient and doing the best job. However, that also directly impacts when we would harvest those cattle. Because as you go through the feeding phase, once they become less efficient at the end, then you set a harvest date.

[C]

Basically, once the cost of gain exceeded the value of the gain, that was sale date.

[A]

Exactly. And you talk about incremental cost of gain was sometimes a point where you'd say, okay, the cattle are finished once.

[C]

And that makes perfect sense when you say it that way.

[B]

But then when you. But that depends on how you're looking at it. Because the incremental cost of gain is different on a live basis and a carcass basis, because as that animal gets heavier and there's a larger and larger proportion of the gain that is in the carcass. And so the incremental cost of gain on a carcass basis. And so selling cattle on a dress basis has made a big difference in that too.

[A]

Yeah, absolutely. And so when you start thinking about carcass, and some people will refer to it as carcass transfer, and looking at those pounds, it changes the game. But we're so set in the paradigm.

[C]

So here's a question, and I'm glad we got an ag economist and a nutritionist in the room, because I had a cattle feeder, this had been 20, 30 years ago, that challenged me on that concept of selling them as soon as the cost of gain exceeds the value of the gain. He says, but you've forgotten the in price of the steer. You know, so if you include. Because we were just looking at, you know, the cost of the feed, how much dollars per day am I putting into him today versus how much is that gain? He goes, but with every pound of gain, and I'm diluting out that purchase price, and I'd never thought of that before. I was just thinking of, well, today I was discounting the original purchase price in my calculation. And when he said that, it made sense that it should be the total cost, not just the feed cost. And as the gain goes up, my actual purchase price cost per pound of gain is going down. So I thought it was brilliant that I had never thought of before. But was he right? Is that the way.

[E]

So you were all. You weren't including the purchase price of the animal?

[C]

No, it was like, so I'm spending, you know, I'm spending a dollar on feed today. And I increased the value of the live weight or carcass weight by a dollar today. So today's the last day I would feed him. I didn't include my thinking. And I think the way I was taught, that was the way I remember being taught. Whether it's true or not, that's the way I remember being taught. There was that incremental cost of gain, but the cost of gain was really focused around the feed, which probably ag economists wouldn't have done that that way. But that's My point is, I wasn't thinking that way.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, that was the thinking that we used to have was, I don't know, being taught that specifically. But at some point, the animals are eating less, they're gaining less, and so your efficiency really goes down, and so your profit per day is really tanking off. And so that's when we used to think about when the market cattle was when that intake starts to really drop off. That's when we market them. But I think looking at some of the latest data and cattle that we've had in the last 15 years, that doesn't happen with these genetics that we've got now. Not like it did back in the 90s and stuff as much.

[A]

I think some of its genetics, I think some of it's how we calculate and what metrics we look at. What they said was they had been talking about some of these things and one guy was like. You had said, Bob was like, we should be feeding them longer and it'd be overall profitability. And what changed the mindset a little bit is sometimes happens if you have a big paradigm like efficiency, and this is when we harvest cattle, sometimes it takes an external factor to shift that. And so one of the things that happened was during COVID the plants were processing less cattle. You had to hold cattle longer. And what they found was they were actually more profitable by going beyond where they would have harvested them.

[C]

They were forced to try a different way of looking at it, forced to.

[A]

Try something new, and all of a sudden realized we don't need to go back to the old way. Although you still face some of the people said in the previous mindset of, yeah, but my feed efficiency is not as good over the entire period or my average daily gain isn't quite as good. But your profitability is better, particularly if.

[C]

You'Re dealing with customer cattle. And you have answer those questions. Why is my feed to gain worse than it was five years ago?

[A]

So, Dustin, back to some of Bob's thoughts. Does this approach make sense to you? Do you see why people are doing that? Yeah, I guess.

[E]

One thing I wanted to ask, why did they come up with this rule of thumb way back when? Or who came up with this rule of thumb and then how did everybody adopt it?

[A]

Yeah, that's the interesting part of the thought process is it seems pretty pervasive throughout the industry of. But it's efficiency. And you say, well, when they decrease efficiency, that is the time. That's the only logic I know behind it. You guys may know more Again, just.

[C]

Like when you first said it, it makes sense. It makes sense to me that as soon as how much money I'm spending today. And again, it's how we define how much money I'm spending today that we didn't get. Right. Because I was thinking about today's expenses, not my locked in expenses, and just compared it to how much value that added today and. Sure. And the point I'm saying here, I didn't, I didn't understand that. I bet there were people that were probably a lot of people that understood better how the economics worked and they were doing better than I was. I'm not saying that everybody missed it, but it was driven by. I'm going to pointing at my nutritionist buddy over here. It was driven by the nutritionist thinking of efficiency.

[B]

Feed efficiency. Yeah, probably a lot of it. Yeah.

[C]

Because you're not an ag economist, you weren't worried about the buying of it.

[B]

The other thing is too is, you know, 20 years ago you used to get a dock for carcasses over £950 and then it moved up a little bit. And it moved up a little bit. And today I'm not sure there's much of any dock on heavy carcasses.

[A]

And that that has changed. It dramatically shifted from not a high percent of selling on a grid, a higher percent selling on a live basis to now very few sell on a live basis, which is a difference as well. And for the packer, having a bigger carcass, if it will go through the facility with no problem, you're spending the same amount of time and you have more pounds to sell at the end of it, which is also beneficial. But it made me wonder, and to tie into Dustin's question, what this really made me wonder was there was a paradigm that was throughout the industry and everybody's kind of following it and repeating it and then it cements evolves into where you've got blinders on to thinking outside of the box. So where do we have some of those paradigms? Specifically, if we look on the cow calf industry, where are some of those paradigms that maybe we should rethink with today's knowledge that may be different than in the past? The first one I'll throw out is at what age do we wean calves and why do we do that? And I don't know, you guys may have some others off top of your head. Any other paradigms you want to challenge?

[C]

I think that's actually a good one because it's a great. It depends question. But yeah, I'm not sure that we are ready to think about either leaving those calves on the cows a lot longer or a lot shorter. You already see some differences between fall calving cows and spring calving cows at the age at weaning, typically. And so I think we should open up some of those questions and then another one is I'll go back to bull to cow ratio. We've got this, you know, 30 cows per bull stuck in our heads. It's not totally wrong, but I'd sure like that number to get bigger. I'd like to have bulls that can handle more cows than that and manage groups of bulls so that we can handle more than that. I hope I'm not setting somebody up for a failure by taking my advice, but those are some paradigms. So the 30 cows per bull, I'd like to revisit that. The weaning age, I'd like to revisit that.

[B]

Well, I think the weaning age, like you said, we've got that number stuck in our head of like seven months or something, and we use that all over the country. But if you think about it a little bit from a nutrition standpoint, I think it depends a lot on the type of forage that you've got and how many nutrients that cow and calf can continue to consume and things like that, and what's your growth and value of gain relative to your cost to gain in that in each individual situation. So, yeah, I think there's a lot of stuff we should revisit and nuance into that discussion of what's the best weaning age.

[D]

Scott, I've always wondered about the for cow calf guy, the input on the calves. So do you sell at weaning? Do you precondition on a year like this year, do you get crazy and feed them till they're a thousand pounds and what all goes into that decision? The longer you hold them, the more at risk days they have to die on your place. And one on a year like this is going to be a substantial reduction. So maybe there's some efficiencies in there that I don't know how you figure those break evens. I mean, that's a great question for an economist.

[E]

I just wonder, is that are those questions any different than any other year? Yeah, they're just a little higher this year. Prices are. But you still need to be thinking about that every single year. Right. Should I wean them because of the risk keeping around a little longer? Yeah, there's a risk of dying or should maybe I retain ownership in the feedlot. I mean, I guess I think you want to ask those questions probably every year of yourself.

[D]

How much reputation goes into that? My question there. So I'm thinking back to practice. I worked in a sale barn and so I had my producers would bring calves in and I had two guys that no matter when they brought them, would top the market that day, year after year after year. But they did it the same every year. And buyers got used to those calves being available on that week every year. And if they switched it, I don't know if that would be true.

[A]

Yeah. So your marketing plan plays a big role in this. But one of the things that drew me to weaning age was we talked about, you can picture that chart in your mind of carcass weight just increasing significantly over years. We went and pulled some data, Bob and I did, and looked at weaning weight. And weaning weight over the last 20 years is a pretty flat line. I mean, there are individual operations that certainly have increased for sure, but weaning weight is a pretty flat line. So what are our options? If I want weaning weight to go up like I did carcass weight, do I have options or why is it not changing?

[B]

I think for the most part our weaning weights aren't changing because they're nutritionally limited. You know, we're, we're in a mindset. You know, for the most part we got certain forage. Our forage quality hasn't changed. The calf can maybe eat a little bit more, but not that much more. And we're not increasing milk production in our cows because then they don't rebreed because we don't have nutrients going into them. And so we're kind of stuck in a nutritionally limited mindset. Maybe we need to look at some things. If breaking out of that mindset with the type of genetics that we have now, would it be profitable to put higher quality feed into calves and or cows in certain situations?

[A]

Well, maybe it ties into Scott's point of maybe it's not weaning weight. We should worry about its sale weight and what has sail weight done over that period. And it's a little bit harder to track on individual operations, but maybe you wean them earlier and feed them for two or three months.

[C]

I'm going to throw out, maybe we should be a lot smaller and lower milk production because that is less nutrient demands. Because our grass, the calories per bite is the same now as it was 100 years ago. And so by increasing cow size. She does take more bites, but is that enough to really offset that? So maybe we need to bring cow size and milk production down. I think that's a reasonable thing we should look at. On the flip side, what about having bigger cows with more milk? So grass isn't changing, but we have access to byproduct feeds that are pretty compatible with grass. What about and this would make my grandfather turn over in his grave, but bringing feed out to the cows on grass to meet their needs and their big old cows that milk heavy. It'd be interesting to say stay where we are. Cow size and milk production, decrease it a little bit and more. Match the nutrients that they're going to get from the grass or treat cows as grass as only part of a beef cow's diet. And again, that makes me shiver just to say it because that's not the way I was saying.

[A]

That's their efficiency I'm pushing back on you already.

[C]

I'm just saying if you want to break paradigms and blinders. Is it against the law to have 30% of the cow's nutrients coming from knot grass during the grazing season?

[B]

Well, and I would say that that may be more time specific focused to doing that. Not just the whole grazing season, but.

[C]

Right so late late when it's when this grass is starting to become dormant. But I'm going to green and growing.

[B]

But I'm going to push back on you on the cow size thing. I don't think cow size makes a difference on a ranch level basis to some degree because I only have so many acres. The smaller the cow, the more number of cows I can get on the ranch. In my. I don't think it makes much of a difference at all in the efficiency of individual cows unless you're doing some type of terminal cross where the calf growth potential doesn't decrease too.

[C]

And you're saying either way I do it, smaller cows, more of them on my acreage or fewer bigger cows on my acreage. Either way could be equally efficient on.

[B]

An individual cow basis for my ranch. For the ranch. There's a difference. Because if I can't get the added weaning weight for bigger cows, I'm not getting as many pounds of calf off my ranch because there's fewer calves.

[C]

What if I maintain ownership on these calves clear past, you know, so that they're a thousand pounds?

[B]

So if I got big growthy calves that are going to perform well in a yard, then yes, maybe that is one of the options I need to think about. Versus selling it weaning like I've been doing for the last 30, 40 years or whatever. So that I'm capturing the value of my big growthy calves as. Because the nutrition that I have on my ranch is limiting their growth potential. I almost. But that's why we haven't seen the increase in weaning weights over the last 20 years.

[A]

Yeah, the grass, the grass is still similar and. But those calves have the genetic potential because when they get to the feed yard and nutrition is not a limiting factor.

[B]

Yeah, they go like crazy.

[A]

Yeah, they go crazy. So Scott, where you weigh in on the small cow, big cow.

[D]

I see both sides. I don't know my gut. It feels like it would be easier to add final pounds of calf sold at the end of the year by adding more calves than adding pounds per calf. That's my gut.

[C]

So you're going with. I'm going small, more smaller cows.

[A]

And then we still have to realize while we have a segmented industry, those are all going to go to the feed yard and still need to finish just like everybody else. Dustin, do you have a thought on kind of.

[E]

I guess my initial was this probably also Philip said this, but it's operation specific. It comes back to resources, grass, et cetera. But I liked Scott's comment there at the end about probably, yeah, smaller cows, more animals.

[A]

Well, and I got into this, I thought it was very interesting listening to that story and how the thought process evolved and how easy it is to slide into group think this is true, this is the way we do things and how we do things. And it kind of opened my eyes to question some things. And I think on the cow calf side, there are many things that we could question we don't necessarily know the answers to. But maybe those are some areas we should branch out and try.

[C]

So we need more arguments.

[A]

More arguments. Absolutely. Your small cow, big one debate there tells me we don't know the answer to that.

[C]

I don't, I don't know the answer to that. I can argue either side of that and kind of convince myself.

[D]

How much are you reduced? That's what my question, I guess at the very face value, if you reduce cow size by 100 pounds, then what? It takes you 12 cows to break even to the one that you're not gonna get. And that frustrates me trying to go through the math. But that's basically a 600 pound weaning weight. Right. So 100 pound reduction in cow weight, you get one extra calf on. But it's again, operation specific. And it would go back to number of cows total. It's gonna make me throw up thinking.

[B]

And like I said, so mature size is related to genetic potential for growth. You know, large frame calves gain faster and more efficiently in the feed yard than small frame. And so from an individual cow basis and from a finishing standpoint, does those calves go into the feed yard? We can't reduce the genetic growth and potential of those calves to, to maintain or even improve efficiency by decreasing mature cow weight. So we have to, we have to find the individuals or unlink that mature size with growth potential. I mean that correlation is strong, but it's not 100. So there are individuals where that's not the situation.

[A]

And I think that's a good place to tie in. Thinking about. You have to do the math a little bit to figure out what works for your operation. Because they still have to rebreed whichever size cow you've got and do I support them on my pasture. And it goes back to the reproduction, which Bob's happy that we. Yeah, get them tied in reproduction. So appreciate you guys thoughts on that and appreciate you joining us today. If you have questions or topics you'd like us to discuss, send us an email at BCISU Eduardo.