Backgrounding calves?

[stocky]

It sounds to me like you are better off selling the calves right off the cow until you get comfortable with you operation and get prepared for all the hassles and expense of medicines and feed for weaning. I think you should be able to get much higher than 450 lbs weaning weights. I would think 550 should be a very reasonable weight. Most people are in the 600 lb 210 weight or higher. If your first couple of calf crops dont do was well as you like, you can make adjustments. Good luck

 

[Marlin Knight]

I've attended meetings where we've been told how to manage our calves for maximum profits.

One might concede that profits are a matter of careful record-keeping. Sometimes there are costs that don't get entered into the equation. There's also the quality of the calves, an assessment that belongs to the buyer, and in turn, his targeted market.

Most of us in attendance aren't selling truckloads of cattle at a time but the extension guys paint a pretty picture about profits that can be obtained from a vaccination program, backgrounding and so on.

An option, at least for qualified producers, is to share the costs of enhanced marketability with other small operators. (This notes that there are a lot more small beef producers than large ones.)

From what I've been able to ascertain, castrating (plus tetanus), dehorning, implanting, and a blackleg vaccine makes good marketing sense if your a small timer.

That's true in the sense that a seller has to meet the requirements of a buyer. But there isn't going to be much payback if one applies a sound program to an unsound animal. It's a bummer to have one get sick and die two weeks before the sale ring.

Even one full timer in my county sells his calves right off the cow and has done it that way for years.

I suppose one could also say larger producers are busy, maybe sometimes too busy to keep good records. The only question they might ask is, am I making money? If they are, the question goes to the backburner. It's granted that there are several considerations about how one approaches sell-time. It may suit a particular man's lifestyle to keep it simple.

The bottom line is, what does it take to sell your grass and feed investment through ANY animal? Pound-wise, in terms of pounds of feed relative to pounds of gain, it's possible to get quite a lot of weight gain on an undesirble animal, i.e., one that buyers either don't want or don't consider a premium product.

Perhaps the goal should be understood in terms of how much of one's feed investment can be transferred to a premium animal, or at least one buyers find attractive? Obviously, if animal "A" eats the same amount of feed as animal "B" but gains twenty percent more weight, then the payback is more for "A."

Still, what's the nature of the weight gain? What if a buyer doesn't like the frame size? Too big? Too small?

Even so, this comes down to one of those 'simple to say, hard to do' things. Keeping good records isn't something most find particularly attractive, certainly not easy, it being necessary that they be complete.

I realize that's all somewhat elementary. But it may still be worth restating.

 

[El_Putzo]

Rather then pasturing the calves during backgrounding, you might be money ahead to drylot them in a smaller area. Make up for the quality of the hay with a higher protein content backgrounding ration.

dun

This is what we do with ours. We wean 2 groups of 30-40 calves per year and background them for 100-120 days in a 4 acre lot with minimal grass (used to be our sow lot so there are lots of rocks). They get hand fed 5-7 lbs of grain per day, and all of the free choice brome hay they can eat. We have been keeping track of weights at weaning and sale time, and the calves seem to gain between 2-2.5 lbs per day doing this. I'd say we could get them to gain faster, but they seem to get too fleshy if you push them much harder than that. This is what has worked for us.