So what is a beef marketing specialist doing working with a livestock nutrition company?
For the Alberta-based, Prairie-wide More Than Just Feed, marketing cattle is all part of the production cycle. That’s why they’ve recently brought Brian Perillat, former longtime manager with Canfax, on board to work with company consultants as well as directly with beef producer clients to make sure that livestock nutrition and herd health are in sync with marketing objectives.
It is all part of the holistic service approach that More Than Just Feed has developed over the years, says Jeff Nielsen, one of the company founders and president of More Than Just Feed.
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The first element of the company was launched in 2005 when Nielsen and business partner Jeff Pascoe created Nutrisource to provide nutrition consulting services to the Alberta dairy industry. That was the beginning. Then in the 2017, under the More Than Just Feed umbrella, they added Bullseye, a well-established beef nutrition service created a few years earlier by longtime cattle and feed industry consultant Tom McNeely.
Nielsen and Pascoe had backgrounds in dairy nutrition and animal science. Soon after launching Nutrisource, they realized that proper nutrition is only one aspect of milk production and the dairy business. “We sensed there was a real need among customers for other consulting services such as forage production, animal health and animal welfare that are all connected with optimizing milk production,” says Nielsen.
As the holistic approach to dairy production took off, the company decided a similar holistic approach could also be offered to cow-calf operations and feedlots. This holistic approach is a concept that Nielsen says revolutionized the livestock feed and nutrition industry.
More Than Just Feed has developed a service that includes a number of on-staff specialists as well as partnerships with other specialized services such as veterinary care — all who can provide advice to both dairy and beef sectors. Offering services across Western Canada, More Than Just Feed operates seven processing plants and warehouses in all three Prairie provinces as well as Montana. The company has 150 employees, including 30 nutritionists and 10 consultants.
With Bullseye for example, livestock nutrition stands as the hub of the service, but around that hub the spokes of the wheel include herd health, cow comfort, optimized and balanced rations, forage management, calf health and water quality.
“So our beef clients now have access to experienced consultants in many more areas other than nutrition,” says Nielsen.
Again, back to the question of where a marketing specialist fits with consulting services?
Everything is interconnected
“There are several components that go into raising good-performing cattle with optimum weaning weights for the cow-calf producers, or optimize rate of gain for the backgrounding operation, or feed efficient finishing weights for the feedlot operator,” says Perillat. “Are people happy with their production performance? Are they meeting their goals? Are they being profitable?”
From that perspective, Perillat can offer advice and direction.
“First, it is important to talk to a producer to learn what their goals are,” he says. From there they can look at performance indicators to see where improvements might be made. Nutrition and herd health will drive how your animals perform.”
“With a feedlot for example, their dressing percentage might be two per cent under industry standards, which is costing them a huge amount of money — money that is being left on the table. They may not even realize it. Once the feeder recognizes that, they can sit down with consultants and look at nutrition and herd health and other management practices to see where improvements can be made.
“Even a one per cent improvement, looking at $3 per pound rail grade, could work out to about $50 more per head on low-end cattle, which is huge. But first they may not even know there is a problem.”
Cow-calf operators might look at heifer conception rates that are about 85 per cent and then look at management practices and nutrition that can be changed to improve that percentage. And what about calving season? How many cows are calving within that first 21-day cycle or the first two cycles? Perillat says more calves born in the first cycle will bump up calf weaning weights. Can management and nutrition be improved to tighten up the calving season?
“In the beef industry, marketing is key,” he says. “You can do everything amazingly well in terms of production to achieve 50 pounds more per animal with better feed conversion but still lose money if they are not marketed properly.
“You need to buy right and then market them right. The marketing begins before you buy. If you don’t buy the right animal, you will be behind the eight ball before you get going.
“If a producer is looking at 750-pound heifers, for example, and is thinking about marketing them in October, they need to look at the futures contracts and do the math backwards. It may turn out that selling in October will result in a $30 per head loss,” says Perillat. “But then look at the November market. Perhaps they can adjust their feeding program, keep those heifers a month longer, sell in November and pencil out a profit.”
