As most of the leaves have fallen, many spring calves are being weaned. It’s also the time when many people determine whether their weaned calves are immediately sold or held back for further feeding.
Record-high prices, especially on the weaned calf side of the market, should have everyone penciling out the feasibility of continued backgrounding of calves this fall and throughout the winter. It should pay off with positive revenue, if the feeding programs and financial spreadsheets are sound.
As a beef nutritionist, I put together many well-balanced backgrounding feeding programs for beef producers. Some of these are standard programs, while others are customized, which depend on the farm situation. In doing so, I believe my greatest asset is that I can write out on paper such backgrounding diets using a pencil and calculator in front of anyone.
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If a producer wants to raise a group of 600-lb. steers to 900 lbs on a 120-day backgrounding program, I would pencil out a few parameters — namely, target medium- to large-framed calves that gain two to 2.5 lbs. per head per day.
I would estimate their dry matter for about 16.5-22 lbs. during these next four months. Then, build his or her backgrounding feeding program to meet dietary requirements of 62-64 per cent total digestible nutrients, 11-12 per cent crude protein, 0.4 per cent calcium and 0.35 per cent phosphorus (including other macro, trace-minerals and vitamins). Add sodium monensin to the package, and later on, make some adjustments to the diet due to the upcoming winter months.
It is still the early part of autumn, so my penciled-out backgrounding total mixed ration (TMR) diet for these calves might look like Table 1 on as-fed basis for each weaned calf. The current cost per pound of each ingredient is included in the respective brackets. Therefore, the entire cost of the above diet is about $1.90 per head per day. Note that I encourage beef producers to use their own respective on-farm costs to determine their overall TMR’s cost.
Table 1. Backgrounding TMR diet for calves (in pounds)
| Barley silage (4 cents/lb.) | 30 |
| Pea straw (2 cents/lb.) | 5 |
| Distillers’ grains (17 cents/lb.) | 1 |
| Barley ($4/bu.) | 4 |
| TMV pack (64 cents/lb.) | 0.2 |
| TOTAL | 40.2 |
Now is the time to set aside the nutrition of the program and determine the economic outcome of feeding this diet for the above group of weaned calves. By using current feed and feeder cattle market prices, we get this economic spreadsheet of my own proposed 120-day background feeding program, as illustrated here in Table 2.
In setting up the table, I made a few assumptions for illustration purposes. First, I assumed it’s based on a cash market and the selling prices of 900-lb. heavy calves will be similar to those of today in late February.
I realize it’s a simplified approach, since contract and future prices may also be used. According to my numbers, these backgrounded steers lost $53 per head of fall market value, while the value of feeder heifers went backward by $233.
The odd thing is that this financial report is based on a real-life situation, taken from a modest cow-calf operation I often visit. The owner calves out about 400 Angus-Simmental beef cows at the end of April in which the calves average about 600 lbs. and are weaned by mid-November.
Consequently, he often retains, overwinters and sells all steer calves at the end of February, while heifer calves are sold immediately after weaning in mid-November. In the past, he retained and sold these females as certified pre-conditioned heifers at a higher dollar value or takes advantage of selling more mature cull cows at high market prices and replaces them with bred heifers of lesser value.
My friend is the first person to admit he cannot predict the cattle markets in the upcoming months. He only uses the information available at the moment — the cost of the above backgrounding diet and the current value of weaned calves in the autumn. He pencils these things out in the fall, which still gives him the foresight as to some flexible marketing options. And this is something everyone can do.
