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Expansion, Milo, Keeping Bulls
00:24:33
Welcome to BCI Cattle Chat! In this week’s episode of Cattle Chat, the team along with Dr. Jason Warner talks about cow herd expansion and when to add in those new cows to your herd. Next the experts discuss a listener question of how to combat moldy m...
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- [00:10]
A
Today I'm happy to have our crew in the studio. Good morning, Scott.
- [00:12]
B
Morning, guys.
- [00:13]
A
Morning, Bob.
- [00:14]
C
Good morning, everybody.
- [00:15]
A
And Dr. Jason Warner is joining us from the animal science department. Morning, Jason.
- [00:19]
D
Good morning. Thanks for having me.
- [00:20]
A
Well, I'm glad you're here because we've got questions for you. So we had a couple listener questions, one relative to expanding my herd, one talking about keeping the bulls in with the cows you year round. And we've actually got a Dr. Fritz question about molds and ergots that we'll get into. So we're happy to have several listener questions. If you have a listener question for us, you can send those in to bcisu Edu or you can reach out to us on social media. We sure enjoy getting those and we've received several of them lately. Good to have those to talk about. But before we get into those questions for today, guys, I wanted to ask you, if you go in the, maybe not the way back machine, but the partial back machine, and you go back to the 90s, what did you have or do that is no longer available today? So you could be thinking about dial up Internet, Blockbuster Video, your portable discman. I know Fritz was out with a portable discman walking along the street or something else. I'm not thinking of what did you have that you no longer have, but you really enjoyed it at the time.
- [01:28]
C
I don't know about really enjoyed it, but came across my mind the other day. The, you know, the phone card, you know, so if you're traveling somewhere and you have to vote for it, you need to make a long distance phone call. Yeah. They have your phone card and that. I think.
- [01:42]
A
Yeah, I remember those. Because you had to make sure it was charged before you travel.
- [01:47]
D
Money on it. You're not making any calls unless you.
- [01:49]
B
Can get some a day to.
- [01:50]
D
To collect call.
- [01:52]
A
Yeah, I don't.
- [01:53]
C
I haven't used the word collect call in a long time.
- [01:55]
A
No. And our new podcast intern, Ella's looking.
- [01:59]
D
At you like ears if you know, I don't even know what you're talking.
- [02:02]
C
Like that crank phone where you have to, you know, skin it.
- [02:05]
B
Really.
- [02:05]
D
When we were going through the lunch line at school, we used to have little punch cards that would keep track of how many meals that we ate during that time period. And. And they were manually punched out, handed back to us. And don't lose that card. That's exactly right. Don't lose that card. And then, you know, an invoice would come from the school and mom and dad would pay it and And. But you're not done at that anymore.
- [02:26]
A
I forgot about that because we had. We had tickets. You had a little book of tickets that you tore off. And you gave him a lunch ticket every day. And if you lost your book of tickets, no lunch.
- [02:35]
B
I remember. So we used to rent movies and it was like the VHS tape and the families that were well off had to dedicated rewinder station food from the be.
- [02:47]
D
That's pretty good.
- [02:48]
B
Like, yeah, the. The real up and comers, they had.
- [02:50]
D
The dedicated rewinder right onto the next.
- [02:53]
B
Three times as fast. It broke half the tapes. Probably like eight bucks.
- [02:57]
D
Right.
- [02:57]
B
But it was like, that thing is awesome compared to what I have to work with.
- [03:00]
A
Well, especially the be kind rewind. You sit there and rewind, which nobody has to do.
- [03:05]
B
Any stupid sticker on there.
- [03:06]
A
Yeah.
- [03:07]
B
Cost you 99 cents for whatever to watch a movie.
- [03:09]
A
Well, let's talk. Let's go back to today and let's talk about what's going on right now. And there was a story out recently in Farm Journal and talked about 47% of cow calf herds are expanding. So if you're thinking about that as we come into fall, should I expand or should I not expand? It's at pretty high prices for cattle to sell at weni. I wanted to get you guys thoughts and not necessarily to answer should I expand or not, but what are the considerations? What should I be thinking about?
- [03:40]
C
Well, first of all, I had questions.
- [03:41]
D
I had questions.
- [03:42]
C
So one is like these 47% of producers that are expanding, had they been contracting and now they're expanding kind of back to previous levels. Are they truly, you know, buying some, getting some more leases, expanding the herd? And I'm not even sure I know what 47% means. That's about half. So half are not expanding. Is that that up or down from, say, over the last three or four years? I think it's up. I think that's their point is maybe that number was even lower a year or two ago. But I still have questions about are we really expanding the nation's cow herd?
- [04:17]
A
So I think that's it. I think that's a good point, because the nation's numbers are going to be different than individual producers, but individual producers make the decisions of whether they're going to expand or not. In the last few years, we haven't expanded. Jason, what are your thoughts?
- [04:30]
D
Well, I think to follow up on Dr. Larson's point, really good one there. Okay. For talking about, if that is a percentage of herds, what proportion of the total population of cows does that represent? And that's a really important thing that I think we've got to keep in mind with that. Or are we seeing some differences there in terms of heifer retention and projected growth relative to herd size? And I think certainly as we just think about, you know, long term where we're headed in terms of the overall industry. Right. Generally speaking, as herds get larger, we've got more economies of scale there and potentially, you know, a greater potential impact of seeing economic benefit there being able to keep those females back. But you know, I think generally speaking, as we see it, you know, relative to where our, our cattle on feed numbers have been and the proportion of females that we have that are in feed yards right now, just not seeing a lot of general signs right now that, that we're really seeing a lot.
- [05:25]
C
Of aggressive shrimp corre. At least to this point.
- [05:29]
B
My simplistic view is just, it seems like a bad year to invest just with the way prices are. Like you got to, you got depreciation on all those things. When you buy high and sell low, that does not seem like a good business decision. I know that's very short sighted and there's a lot of the things that go into it, but just a flat transaction. Those heifers you gave this year, if.
- [05:50]
A
You save them, they contribute to the overall cost of my calorie whatever my opportunity cost was that I could have sold them for. They're priced in for the next five to 10 years to keep them in my herd and they're going to offset. When I say sheeper, he well, and.
- [06:07]
C
Then the other thing is, hi. You know how many times I've been wrong? It's like, oh, they're paying too much for that piece of land. They're paying too much for those heifers. And then five years later you go, oh, actually that was a good idea. Or not. If there's survivor bias there too, I hate to tell somebody else how to invest their money when I'm not sure exactly how to invest mine.
- [06:24]
A
All right, I've been tracking your wrong numbers. Do you want your weekly number?
- [06:28]
C
Yeah, throw it out there.
- [06:30]
D
I mean, I think you got to.
- [06:31]
B
Look at it big term, right? It's not an annual annual adjustment. It's a, it's a long term success. It's over a long period of time and probably those minor fluctuations aren't that big a deal.
- [06:42]
A
So if you now shipped it, if you were a cow cat producer and you're striking at this decision today, what pieces of information would help you make it. Because what the nation is doing, yes, impacts me, but I still have to go out and look at my herd. How do I make this decision?
- [06:58]
C
There's two things. There's what's the carrying capacity? You know, when I manage my forage well, what's my carrying capacity? And I probably want to be pretty close to that, or I'm missing some opportunity. And what's the best way to replace that? Is it replacement heifers or is it to buy red cows? Or. And, and, and again, as a veterinarian, there's some risks and some rewards for both those decisions. So I think I want to manage.
- [07:18]
D
My forage really well.
- [07:19]
C
So I want to stock appropriately. And what's the best way to. If assuming that I'm understocked and I need to add some, some mouths on that land, what's the best way to do it?
- [07:29]
A
So one thing to boil that down is where am I today? What's my ratio of cows to the land that I have today? Because if I'm already over or under, I need to adjust for that.
- [07:40]
D
Jason, one thing I think that we always got to keep in mind if we have those discussions. You got to know what your annual cow costs are. Got to have a really good understanding of what your production costs are. And on the flip side of that being really, I think, realistic in terms of what you expect feeder cap prices to be in the future, because you can forecast that out and use that to help understand at what point do those females return back and do they break even. But there's lots of ways where folks can expand and grow their operation outside of maybe just necessarily retaining those females back. Traditionally, like we think, whether you take old age cows or you do an ET program to try to keep the genetics high out of a set of recip cows, there are lots of different ways where you can do that, but you got to know what those numbers are to make a wise decision.
- [08:28]
A
Yeah. Because that cost that I mentioned earlier that she attributes to the herd and her appreciation costs over time is additive to whatever my annual operating costs are to keep that cow. Which is your point. So not only do I have to know what's my ratio of cows to pasture, but what's my cost per cow to go into that decision? Scott?
- [08:48]
D
You bet.
- [08:49]
B
I don't really have a lot to add beyond that. I think there's. Bob probably has enough.
- [08:54]
C
One thing, because I'm interested in reproduction and reproductive efficiency and fertility. One ways to expand your herd in the most cost efficient method is to make sure your Cows get pregnant, you know, so that's your, your mature cows. So bull fertility, good body condition going into the breeding season. All the basics of protect. The downside, I don't want a bunch of open cows when you know, calf, you know, calves are worth so much. And if I'm going to retain some heifers, ideally I want them to perform well reproductively and I want them to perform well over time. So again, I don't know that there's ever a time in the cattle cycle when you don't want to be doing as good as you can at reproductive efficiency. And I don't necessarily mean the very, very highest rate percentage, but a good strong percentage at a reasonable cost. And that never goes out of style no matter where we are in the cap market.
- [09:47]
D
Well, and to that point too, Bob, I think one thing also that there's temptation that people can have of well, we're just going to take the money on these extremely high prices for these Peter calves and we're not going to retain anything back this year. But all of a sudden now if you skip a generation, you don't keep any females back. Your cow herd is that much older on average after one year. And then plus two, if you have a year where okay, maybe, maybe open rates are higher than what you expect and you have a little bit of a hickey there. Well, now you've got to try to work through that and you've got an older calford that now you got to try to get younger again quicker. And so there's long term growth ramifications to that that you really got to be thinking about as we think about making these decisions.
- [10:27]
A
I think that is an excellent point because the Cal Catford you don't make a decision and it affects you this year. You make a decision that affects you the next five. So really think carefully about an all or none scenario to where I want to keep all of them or keep none of them because that's. That may not be the right solution or it may but put a pencil to it. So I want to shift and talk a little bit about and this was a question and Jason, you received this question about some moldy Milo and one of the questions comes immediately to if we're going to use that for cattle feed, is that going to be toxic? Is it going to be a problem? Are there things like ergots? Scott, I'm going to ask you first. Is seeing mold on something like that that we're preparing to chop or harvest.
- [11:11]
D
Is that, is that always a problem?
- [11:13]
A
Is it sometimes a problem.
- [11:14]
B
How do we distinguish when that question came up? It must be rare. It's not one that you hear about all the time. I think a lot of that's just, I mean a lot of times you're utilizing that resources, you know, more of an arid environment that you can't grow other things in a lot of situations. And the biggest issue that we have with mold growth on anything is moisture seconds, probably heat. So heat moisture equals mold. We all know that's bad. Typically we don't have that issue in a lot of places where we grow mila. So I don't think it's super common. That said, there's probably areas of the country that, that it is common. I do want to. So we've talked about ergot and we've talked a little bit about endophytes, we've talked a little bit about molds and I think we need to probably discuss the differences of those. So just quickly endophyte, that endo means it's a fungus that lives inside the plant. So it's not something you're going to be able to see. It's transferred from the plant into the seed. Then when it grows, it's back in the plant again.
- [12:03]
C
Whereas it's almost always fescue.
- [12:05]
A
Right?
- [12:06]
D
Yeah, that's a big one that you worry about.
- [12:08]
B
And so that one you can't see where ergod you actually the fungus itself replaces the seed on wherever a grass species goes to seed, you'll be able to see it looks like wild rice or people described it as mouse droppings. And then there's this flat out mold which, you know, you see fuzzy appearances, white discoloration, some of those things. So they're, they're all different, but they're all, you could characterize them all as.
- [12:28]
C
A fungus and they're all kind of in the bad category usually, but. Or maybe this is what you were asking is a little bad or a lot bad.
- [12:36]
B
So like we talked a little bit about this before. Everything can be a toxin, but it's all the, the dose is what matters. Right. And so how much is there? And that gets to be really challenging to evaluate on the forage setting especially how much is there? What are the, what portion of that plant are the cows going to eat? What's the concentration to sort that out? There's probably some sampling strategies that would help that, but that's not an easy.
- [12:56]
D
Question to answer now. Now, specifically with ergot, do we see that just primarily in, in the seed head of Any plant or crop that can develop in or can we see it uniformly throughout the plan.
- [13:08]
B
So ergot, it's actually sclerotia is what you see and you can physically see them and they replace where the seed grows. So it will be a, a black discoloration, an abnormal looking seed. And so when you've got an ergot infected seed, it's one so it replaces one to the next one. I mean you could have multiple on the same stock per se, but it's just the seed head that you're worried about. Now with ergot in sorghum or milo, some of those things you actually get this honeydew that it produces and can drip down the plant. And so you get this physical drippage that can contaminate the rest of the plant for say it would be on the leaves, it would be on the stock, it can drift to the ground and then that can potentiate into the next year.
- [13:44]
A
Would you expect this to be a field level problem? Like if I see some it's in the whole field or is it a portion of the field or an area?
- [13:54]
B
It's a good question. I think you could walk out there and see it.
- [13:57]
D
Right.
- [13:57]
B
So maybe that's how you evaluate it. And I would anticipate there's probably areas of the field that retain more moisture, humidity, maybe the low spots. If it's not a completely flat field, field edges, some of those things are. They're different than the rest of the field maybe.
- [14:11]
D
And so really I think one thing we have to keep in mind when we're talking about grain, sorghum is okay in that situation, if we have it in the head itself, if that crop is eventually harvested and removed, then okay, do we potentially still have some risk in the residue? But certainly one thing we keep in mind is if we have downgrade in the field or if those plants lodge and we got a fair amount of that which can happen, we still potentially could have some risk there as well too. So I think our mine usually goes too well. It's primarily in a grain in that grain sores. So our risk is less on, on the res viewer on the forage component, but may not always necessarily be the case. So analytical testing is really our, our vest approach there. Of course.
- [14:48]
A
Yeah. And that, and that makes sense because a lot of times we'll talk about.
- [14:51]
D
I talked about it last week about.
- [14:53]
A
Grazing some of the crop rep in a milo field, going into stubble grazing that great opportunity for the cow catf. But you probably want to have some communication because it may be two different people or two different operations that are doing the harvesting and the grazing. So you may want to be able to talk to them and say, hey, was there anything here? What did you see? And if there's any testing that needs to be done. And so if you see that before harvest, you, there are labs that you could send that into, you take samples.
- [15:18]
B
Yeah, there's, there's endo, well, endophyte ends, ergot testing available at all sorts of different labs. You know, it's a matter of finding one that's close to you that can do it. And they've probably got some sampling recommendations. And it always helps to call ahead of time. So you make sure you package it appropriately and you send enough and they get it how they want it for their specific testing.
- [15:37]
C
Well, it seems to me, you know, I'm trying to think, well, what would I do? I. I go out there and I'm counting on this as, you know, maybe four jacket s or milo that I'm going to harvest. What if I do. If I see some. I mean, do I. Is the first thing I should do, get some samples and then walk the field and just see what percent is. I mean, because one of the things that I think about on some of these problems is, well, dilution. If it's a small enough percentage, a lot of times I get away with just diluting out the problem over, over a lot of tonnage. Is that a fair thing to think about or do I still worry about the cow that gets that part of the, the feed pile?
- [16:12]
D
Well, you know, I think you think about in styling that crop or putting that crop up as, hey, well then all of a sudden now we've got a lot more control with how we can use it. Of course, depending on what other feed resources we have to work with. That's.
- [16:24]
C
Or not harvest part of it if it's one car.
- [16:26]
D
Exactly. So to your question, Bob, I think walking the field spurs really, really important thing to do to understand, okay, just spatially, what do we have to work with here and what's that equate to? And the total full amount of either tonnage of forage or bushel to grain. And we have to work with. But understanding what we got there I think first is probably, probably the most important thing. And then we do some judicious sampling or fork through the problem that way.
- [16:50]
A
Excellent. So I think good feedback there. If you see that it's worth paying attention to and figuring out what you've got going on, do some analysis and Determine the quantity, the amount, and then come up with a plan. And it may still be salvageable to some degree, but you'd have to see what you got, how much it's in that well.
- [17:07]
D
And I think, you know, whether we're looking at a situation where we have nitrates, prussic acid all of a sudden now in nutritional compounds and any sort of feed stuff that we have to work with, we can always, we can always figure out a way to manage it. Right. Sometimes we just got to be a little bit creative there about our inclusion. You know, maybe in some situations, maybe we have to use a toxin binder or toxin removal type of a product in the diet. There's ways where we can handle it. We just gotta be creative and know we have what we're working with and get everybody on the team on board. So everybody is. Is informed and manages it appropriately.
- [17:39]
A
You just gotta be aware of it, be able to manage. Yeah, yeah. Excellent. Great, Great question there. And I go, I want to go to a different listener question and, and this one was on cow Catford. I'd like to just keep the bull and I'm gonna give you guys a scenario where I. I've got a couple bulls or a couple herds that are separate. I'd like to be able to keep bull found from a management standpoint, despite it. A lot of times people recommend get.
- [18:07]
D
The bulls out at a certain time of year.
- [18:08]
A
So that I have a defined breeding season and wanted to get you guys thoughts.
- [18:13]
C
Well, I could argue both sides of this problem, to be honest. And, and I'll say. And the reason I say I don't like to leave the bulls out there is one of the things that I find really frustrating is a cow for where cads really are calving throughout most of the year. And it's because now I got cows at totally different, you know, levels of production. They're in lactation or they're in late pregnancy or they're dry. And I can't manage the herd as a herd from a nutrition standpoint or even by vaccination programs or anything else. I like my herd to be all. All the cows within a couple months of each other about where they are in. So I like a nice tight group of cows. And one of the ways to do that is put the bulls in and take the bulls out. And one of the ways to get into trouble is just to leave the bulls out there all the time.
- [18:57]
B
But I can fix a lot of.
- [18:58]
C
That with franchising coal.
- [19:00]
A
So if the bull is out there and I break checking cold in a disciplined manner. I don't have a cabin year round.
- [19:06]
C
You want me to argue the other side because you know if I I'm a guy with one or two poles and so roll it with small cow herd, you're asking me to build another facility that's a bull type facility for nine months of the year and, and.
- [19:20]
A
Feed him separate and feed him separate.
- [19:22]
C
And, and I could just leave him out there without. And so I'm going to argue the other side now and say I would love to just be able to leave them out with the cows. But to avoid my first problem I need to prey check those cows and be diligent about. Well, because the bulls out there, they're going to get pregnant later but treat them as if they're an open cow. They didn't fit my breeding season.
- [19:43]
A
So I'd argue that's even better because then instead of selling an open cow and selling a pregnant selling a pregnant.
- [19:48]
C
Cow that's bred off season. For Mike, my news, she could avoid.
- [19:52]
B
The secondary facility management thing by leasing the ball too. When a small producer said it like this, there's options there for leasing for a couple months and you can still manage it that way without the ownership.
- [20:03]
A
Well, in the last couple years there's an argument to be made depending on what bulls you buy. Buying and selling a bull, I mean you can't always get all of your value back out of him. But sometimes you could, you could lease or you could buy and sell.
- [20:15]
D
Jason, you know, one thing I think to keep in mind with this is as well too is okay doing what you can make sure that you've got if you are going to leave those bulls in year round doing what you can to make sure that we are giving those cows the best chance to conceive early in that breeding season. So even if we do have some cows that get bred layer on is still pretty minor relative to everybody else. So that starts with making sure that nutritionally we've got cows at the appropriate stage. Body conditions were wise going into calving. You know, we can do some things from an estro synchronization standpoint to try to get more of those females to conceive early on in the start of that breeding season. There's ways where we can try to manage that. If you are going to leave bulls in to still try to focus to get more of those females pregnant but early on but it certainly certainly creates a management challenge with you all of a sudden now you've got a lot of those Females that are bred later on and your herd is more spread out and that's one of the inherent challenges of doing it.
- [21:11]
A
Certainly I think one of the things that I've seen this done before where you talk about an idea and you go well I'm not really concerned about the breeding season, I'm concerned about the calving season and then we get down to preg check time and it's a cow you really like and she's bred but she's just a little bit late. It's easy to drift, it's easy to keep her and go there and that's where you have to really be disciplined on that pre check. There's a lot of advantages of having one less thing to take care of through the winter.
- [21:39]
C
Right.
- [21:39]
A
The bull's out there with the cows and I don't have to have him in a separate facility.
- [21:43]
D
Yeah.
- [21:43]
C
And you know it is important that bull stays in good body condition and, and that to be honest a lot of times the diet that's, that's appropriate for my cows is appropriate for my bulls. And so as long as my cows are being managed well probably if the bulls are running within their body condition.
- [21:58]
D
Is going to be appropriate a little.
- [21:59]
A
Bit more of it.
- [22:01]
C
But he never lactates it never liked it.
- [22:03]
D
See I need, I don't like those absolutes.
- [22:06]
C
I'm pretty sure he doesn't.
- [22:08]
A
So.
- [22:08]
D
So you guys would be comfortable weaving him in the. In my purpose I question what it.
- [22:12]
B
Does marketing wise which would be nice to have an economist sitting in the rooms compare and contrast some of that. But when you, you know we typically you want a group of cats you can market as one group and the more to fit in there is apparently provides some marketing advantages. What does that do when you've got cat spread out for six months or more.
- [22:30]
A
Yeah but they don't, they don't have to be spread out because I really do care more about the cavity season than I do the breeding season and but, but I would throw in the caveat because Lee said Fred, check and you can call and get rid of them. But the time that you do the pregnancy testing is important because by the time you get into if you're not pregnancy checking until mid gestation, six months or so it's going to be harder to distinguish some of those shorter pregnancies unless they're really short. So you want check at a time where you can actually do some fetal aging and do some solid sorting. If you want to get them down to a 60 day calving myriad I care more about a 60 or 90 day calving period with them front end loaded like you said than I do if the breeding season lasts for six months, I don't care if I cull appropriately.
- [23:21]
D
That's right. Right. You know, and I think too, so if you got a set of females that right, if, if they're nutritionally restricted or for whatever reason, we didn't quite manage them just quite right. But yet we have a real short or tight breeding season on those females. We just give them another opportunity there to fail. Right. The shorter that breeding season is, we give that female fewer opportunities to concede we're most likely going to be working with an open female after, after the end of that. So again it just comes back to just making sure that we got those cows set up well and then if we work it from there right. We in most situations will be okay, barring we don't have any other management or health issues with that herd.
- [23:59]
A
So what I'm hearing, there's multiple ways to get there, set up what works for you and your herd, but you can't. The solution that none of us liked was just leaving out and don't manage the breeding season or the calving season and, and eventually just spread out. That's what none of us have been otherwise. Yeah. Do what works for you.
- [24:17]
D
Absolutely.
- [24:17]
A
So thanks for that question. If you have other listener questions, you can send them to us at vcisu. Ed.
- [24:26]
B
Sam.