COW/CALF CORNER
The Newsletter
From the
Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service
April 20, 2015
In this Issue:
Keep or cull
open replacement heifers?? (and buyer beware!)
Glenn Selk, Oklahoma State
University Emeritus Extension Animal Scientist
Oklahoma forage
conditions improving
Derrell S. Peel,
Oklahoma State University Extension Livestock Marketing Specialist
Keep or cull
open replacement heifers?? (and buyer beware!)
Glenn Selk, Oklahoma State
University Emeritus Extension Animal Scientist
For
some Oklahoma cow calf operations, the bulls go into the breeding pasture with
replacement heifers in mid-April. As the bulls are being removed from the
replacement heifers in two months, this would be an ideal time to call and make
arrangements with your local veterinarian to have those heifers evaluated for
pregnancy after another 60 days. In two months after the breeding season,
experienced palpaters should have no difficulty identifying which heifers are
pregnant and which heifers are not pregnant (open). Those heifers that are
determined to be "open" after this breeding season, should be strong
candidates for culling.
Culling
these heifers immediately after pregnancy checking serves three very useful
purposes.
1) Identifying and
culling “open” heifers early will remove sub-fertile females from the herd.
Lifetime cow studies were conducted at a USDA experiment station in Montana.
Over the span of 23 years, 1589 replacement heifers were exposed to bulls. Over
that number of years 266 heifers were found to be “open” after their first
breeding season. All of these "open" heifers were kept in the herd
for an average of about 4 years. From the 1006 opportunities to become pregnant
that followed, only 551 calves were produced. In other words, when the
heifers that failed to breed in the first breeding season were followed
throughout their lifetimes, they averaged a 54.9% yearly calf crop. Despite the
fact that reproduction is not a highly heritable trait, it also makes sense to
remove this genetic material from the herd so as to not proliferate females
that are difficult to get bred.
2) Culling open
heifers early will reduce production costs. If the rancher waits until next
spring to find out which heifers do not calve, the winter feed expense will
still be lost and there will be no calf to help eventually pay the bills. This
is money that can better be spent in properly feeding cows that are pregnant
and will be producing a salable product at weaning time.
3) Identifying the
open heifers shortly (60 days) after the breeding season is over will allow for
marketing the heifers while still young enough to go to a feedlot and be fed
for the “choice” beef market. The grading change of several years ago had a
great impact on the merchandising of culled replacement heifers.
"B" maturity carcasses (those estimated to be 30 months of age or
older) are much less likely to be graded choice. Therefore, it is imperative to
send heifers to the feedlot while they are young enough to be fed for 4 to 5
months and not be near the "B" maturity age group.
Certainly
the percentage of open heifers will vary from ranch to ranch. Do not be
concerned, if after a good heifer development program and adequate breeding
season, that you find that 10% of the heifers still are not bred. These are the
very heifers that you want to identify early and remove from the herd.
Resist the temptation to “roll them over” to a fall-calving herd if they have
failed to breed in a spring breeding season.
Producers
that are buying replacement females (at a quite hefty price) need to be wary of
heifers that were exposed to bulls or artificial insemination/clean-up bulls
and remain non-pregnant. This is the easiest opportunity to become
pregnant that they will have. If they are still open after that first
breeding season, they may be infertile at worst, or sub-fertile compared to
other heifers. Remember the old Montana data that suggests that they will
be 55% calf crop females the rest of their lives.
Oklahoma forage
conditions improving
Derrell S. Peel,
Oklahoma State University Extension Livestock Marketing Specialist
Most
of Oklahoma has received significant rain the past 10 days with totals
generally ranging from one to three inches, with localized totals over 8
inches. Some of the best rain fell in some of the worst drought area of
western Oklahoma. Much of northern Texas and the Texas Panhandle also
received good rain. While this moisture does not eliminate all the
drought conditions, the timing is superb for forage growth, not to mention the
wheat crop in the region.
This
moisture ensures initial forage growth in warm-season pastures and provides
producers an opportunity to assess the health of those rangelands after
extended periods of stress. The temptation will be to stock pastures too
heavily and too early. Patience and discipline are needed to ensure
forage recovery and long term productivity. However, producers may
finally be able to plan production offensively compared to being always on the
defense.
Cattle
and beef markets have continued strong on continued tight supplies. Calf
and stocker prices have holding close to spring highs on good summer grazing
demand, which may be extended a bit with the recent rains. Limited
numbers of wheat graze-out feeder cattle will be marketed over the next month,
mostly in May. Feeder cattle prices have been steady; limited by the
sharp discount on deferred Live Cattle futures. Cull cow prices in April
are about 9 percent higher than this time last year on reduced cow slaughter.
Total cow slaughter is down 7.3 percent for the year to date compared to one
year ago, with a 1.9 percent increase in dairy cow slaughter partially
offsetting a 17.5 percent year over year decrease in beef cow slaughter.
Total steer and heifer slaughter is down 6.8 percent for the year to date from
last year, with heifer slaughter down 7.6 percent so far this year.
Reduced heifer and cow slaughter in 2015 suggests that herd expansion is
continuing.
Choice
boxed beef averaged the fourth highest weekly average in history last week with
Select boxed beef at the fifth highest weekly average. Fed cattle traded
lower at $160-$161/cwt. in the southern plains last week. Seasonal
supplies will build into May and June and push fed cattle prices lower into
summer but how much lower is a question. Feedlot placements have been down year
over year for 11 of the past 12 months and were down 7.5 percent in the
November through February period. This is a total of 536 thousand head fewer
cattle placed over the four months. Placements are expected to be down
again for March in the upcoming April Cattle on Feed report. Live Cattle
futures have stubbornly maintained a sharp discount to current cash markets
based on normal seasonal summer price declines and beef demand
concerns. Reduced placements in recent months suggest that seasonal
supply pressure will be less than typical going into summer and, despite record
wholesale and retail beef price ratios to other meats, there is little
indication that beef prices are weakening relative to pork and poultry prices
for the foreseeable future. I suspect that fed cattle prices will get
through the summer at higher levels than futures currently indicate, likely
averaging in the mid to upper $150 range.
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