Deanne Fulawka, a researcher from the University of Manitoba, presented her team’s findings at the Manitoba Sustainable Protein Research Symposium in Winnipeg July 7.

A main point of the study was to get local projections on how implants could impact emissions on Canadian cow-calf operations.

The study modelled scenarios for 130 calves. Under the simulated exercise, calves would have received hormonal implants at 30 days old. Results were then compared with 130 simulated unimplanted calves.

Local farm conditions across south-central, southwestern and Parkland regions of the province were plugged into the model. Fulawka’s team estimated greenhouse gas emissions for the three regions using Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s Holos model.

Ammonia projections were based on simulated manure outputs using Canadian research on beef feed intake, manure practices, body weight and temperature. Regional crop yields, estimated dry matter intake and water needs were taken into account.

The hypothetical revenue producers would get from those cattle was based on prices at local auction marts.

Numbers for birth and weaning weights and average daily gain were based on a 2015 South Dakota State University study, which used Angus and Angus-Limousin cross bull calves. It found that when calves born in March and April received their implants in May, their weaning weight increased by an average of 29 pounds compared to untreated calves. The calves from mature cows gained more than calves from younger cows.

Based on a price of $616 per hundredweight, the Manitoba study estimated that revenue at weaning for its hypothetical calves was $135.80 greater per implanted calf compared to untreated calves.

Total emissions were similar between implanted and non-implanted calves. For example, ammonia emissions for implanted calves were only 0.04 per cent lower.

However, due to the higher weight of implanted calves, the greenhouse gas intensity, measured as kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent per kilogram of live weight was 3.72 per cent lower when implants were used.

Implants didn’t change how much land was needed for production of feed (including pasture) or water. Again, however, landuse intensity (hectare per kilogram of live weight) and water use (litre per kilogram of live weight) decreased by 3.92 per cent due to higher live weight when calves were marketed.

“There is an economic benefit to the producer, but we also want to send home that message that there is also environmental impact,” said Fulawka.

Fulawka noted that South Dakota researchers compared calves implanted at 30 days to calves implanted at weaning, which is when many producers would be implanting their calves. They found that later-implanted calves caught up to those implanted at 30 days and finished at similar weights.

She said Canadian beef producers have set a goal to reduce emissions, adding that every best management practice that is added will get the sector closer to that goal.

The Canadian Cattle Association has set a target to reduce primary production greenhouse gas emission intensity by 33 per cent by 2030, according to its website.

It’s estimated that fewer than 30 per cent of producers in the cow-calf sector use implants, which makes this an area of significant opportunity to improve economic and environmental outcomes, Fulawka’s report said.

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In central Alberta, Simmental based steers weighing 900 pounds on barley and silage diet with full processing data were valued at $405/cwt fob farm. In east central Alberta, black wide frame Limousin based steers averaging 825 pounds supposedly sold for $460/cwt.

The Killarney market report in Manitoba had red heifers weighing just under 900 pounds selling for $391/cwt. At the Ste Rose sale, a smaller package of red heifers with a mean weight of 795 pounds were marked at $425/cwt.

The Ponoka market report had a handful of red mixed steers evaluated at 709 pounds on hay and silage diet with full preconditioning data moving through the ring at $500/cwt. At the same sale, tan heifers scaled at 700 pounds on a diet of silage and pellets with full processing data dropped the gavel at $486/cwt.

At the Westlock sale, a smaller package of Angus Simmental cross 650 pound heifers on hay and barley diet with full processing records sold for $467/cwt. At the Ste Rose sale, the market report had black heifers averaging 616 pounds trading for $512/cwt.  In the Calgary region, a smaller package of Charolais weaned steers weighing just over 600 pounds were quoted at $573/cwt.

The Ste Rose Auction market report had Charolais steers averaging 555 pounds moving through the ring at $610/cwt. A buyer in central Alberta reported that Angus cross weaned heifers on the card at 560 pounds sold for $530.

The USDA estimated U.S. fourth quarter beef production at 6.650 billion pounds, down from the 2024 final quarter output of 6.882 billion pounds. If the U.S. border stays closed to Mexican feeders for an extended period, U.S. fourth quarter beef production forecasts would likely drop to 6.400 billion pounds. This would drive the December live cattle futures higher and support the yearling market during July and August.

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About a month ago, in 2025, we made our second voyage to South Korea and got another great opportunity to revisit her family’s farm.

To appreciate their farm, as well as the special beef industry in Korea, we should compare the typical Korean palate against our own eating habits in Canada. For example, Canadians consume about 30 kg of beef and eat less than eight kg of fish and seafood on an annual basis. Koreans, on the other hand, consume over 60 kg of fish and seafood and about 15 kg of beef. Furthermore, a Korean plate of beef rarely bears a steak as we know it, but often displays stewed heart, tripe, chitlins, oxtail and other offal.

Similarly, Canada slaughters about two million cattle per year, while Koreans slaughter nearly 900,000 Hanwoo beef feeders, which originate in their country. Plus, I can attest that from Seoul to Naju City (pop. 120,000), I did not see any open-air feedlots, which are a common sight in Western Canada. Rather, most in Korea are like that of my girlfriend’s uncle and aunt — Sang June Kim and Hee Jong’s operation — in the form of an open-roof and dairy-like barn with two longitudinal rows of cattle pens.

I reported last year that they bought 170 Hanwoo feeder steers at eight to nine months of age, weighing between 300 and 350 kg. Their plan was to raise and market these calves to 1,000 kg at 24 months of age.

Upon our second visit, most of these calves have been sold. Now 150 five- to six-month-old Hanwoo heifers weighing about 250 kg have been trucked in. They will be raised until they are marketed at 750 kg, which I am assuming is about their slaughter weight.

According to Sang June, using my girlfriend as an interpreter, they made a handsome profit on last year’s steers. Given that a new group of feeder steers would be an unprecedentedly high input cost and would have resulted in razor-thin profit, he penciled it out and decided to buy light-weight Hanwoo heifers.

Sang June acknowledged heifers may gain less per day than comparable steers, but should have better overall feed efficiencies for an attractive financial return.

On the farm with the steers, he cut and loaded plastic-wrapped bales (500 to 600 kg per bale) of complete diet (forage plus concentrate) in a small TMR mixer, which was mounted on a small truck and then equally unloaded in front of the steers.

Now, Sang June lays only chopped hay (wrapped 500-kg bales imported from Australia) in front of the heifers and in a more precise manner feeds a complete grain ration through individual self-drop feeders on the other side of the heifer pens.

It is my further understanding that this heifer concentrate is made up of rolled corn, rolled soybeans, ground barley and a mineral-vitamin pack.

The amount of this concentrate diet is distributed on a weight-per-head basis and then increased respectively as these animals grow heavier. As a footnote: no implants are used on this operation.

Another change Sang June made this year is that all growing heifers are still housed to about three to five animals per pen, but a thick layer of clean rice hulls lines each pen. In comparison, last year’s steers laid on their own manure.

According to Sang June, his goal of continuous improvement is to keep all animals as clean and comfortable as possible, particularly during the autumn rainy season. He believes it contributes to good health and better weight gains.

For me, such a second guided tour of this beautiful operation was totally unexpected. I was thrilled to learn about the significant improvements made to it in less than one year’s time. I encourage all readers to look back at my Grainews article from last spring to read or re-read about my first excellent visit. Both visits certainly made me appreciate ever more of the beef industry in another country and here at home. Above all I want to thank Sang June and Hee Jong again for their great hospitality in welcoming us to their farm and home.

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Smart Paddock’s founder and chief executive officer, Darren Wolchyn, moved his family from Alberta to Australia and ended up working on GPS-tracking golf carts. Ranching friends in Alberta suggested he help them GPS-track cattle, and the company was born.

The technology’s target market is cattle on the range or in remote locations and uses solar-powered tags, installed on the back of a cow’s ear, to keep track of them.

When they begin using the system, ranchers usually start by tracking bulls — but other uses include tracking herd movement and where cattle have grazed. It can also be used to predict calving and identify potential problems, such as access to water.

Wolchyn says the solar power on the ear tags sets the product apart. The cattle can then go out onto a range without worry about how the tracker is powered.

Once the property is mapped out, the tracker is designed to give alerts about an animal that has strayed from the herd or is down.

As each animal is tied to GPS co-ordinates, it’s easy for the producer to track the animal’s location.

Marking important points of management on the farm can help producers understand how it is being used and see if an animal is not visiting a lick or a supplement feeder at its required intervals.

Many producers opt to start out tracking their most valuable animals. “Ideally I’d like you to track all of your animals, but some guys track their bulls to start with,” Wolchyn said at Agribition. “If they stray, they are worth a lot of money.”

“On an individual animal, we will model what normal behaviour is over several days and then we will look for a drop in behaviour for that one specific animal.”

Once an individual animal’s behaviour is understood, lessons can be learned from how that animal reacts to its environment.

Cohorts of the herd can be managed, such as tracking all first-calf heifers as they are more likely to have calving problems.

From an even wider perspective, Wolchyn says 10 per cent of the animals in a herd can be tracked for herd-level understanding of movement and feeding patterns.

“We’ll look at the grazing patterns over the whole herd over a week,” he says. Producers can see what areas of the pasture are being grazed and what areas are being left. Adjustments can be made to the herd management, or to the future management of the grazing land.

For example, maybe a temporary fence is needed, or a watering point can be moved to encourage more balanced consumption of the grass, he says.

Farmers can interact with the maps and data through a computer screen and a smartphone app, allowing for use and sharing of the data anywhere.

The app is focused on notifications, to let a producer know about an event in the pasture — say, for a stray animal, or an animal that’s calving.

The company has been selling the system in Australia and is now expanding to North America. It has some systems running in Saskatchewan and Alberta.

“We’re not a solution for a feedlot. We’re not a solution for a pasture around your house. We’re really for the bigger grazing areas,” Wolchyn says.

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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.

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)

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.

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He joked that he is ready to lock them up inside the creep enclosure and force-feed them. Like most people, myself included, he wants to add about 60 lbs. of creep-fed weight to each calf, in order to take advantage of 2024’s record-breaking feeder prices.

Dried-out pastures make any nutritious creep feeding program work, but we seemed to forget that a lot of rain makes us dependent upon profitable economics, if we are going to creep-feed calves until late autumn. Consequently, I have calculated the profitability of creep feeding calves for 2024, which targets 60 lbs. of extra weaning weight in a 100-day creep feeding program and I compare it to that of non-creep-fed animals. The main profit drivers of this year’s creep-feeding are:

• predicted feeder prices during this autumn andinto winter,
• current feed prices, and
• feed efficiency in which creep-feed is turned into heavier weaning weights.

For 2024, the accompanying spreadsheet shows that to put 60 lbs. of creep-fed body weight on large-framed calves (segregate out the replacement heifers) in a 100-day creep feeding program looks unbelievably profitable.

I estimated a base $4.50/lb. for fall-weaned 600-lb. calves and the recent decreased creep-feed prices of 15 cents/lb., together with an estimated 6.5 feed efficiency and a 10-cent/cwt. market discount. The yield from those calculations is an unheard-of $150 premium, or a 250 per cent return on investment, for creep-fed calves.

It has been my experience that when producers wait until late summer to put out creep-feeders, feed intake by spring calves is dictated significantly by pasture quality, even though mum has already dried up.

This means calves usually start to come up to the creep feeders and eat a couple of pounds of creep each day, for a few days. Then they might not come up again for about a week. It’s only in early fall that calves tend to tackle creep consumption to an optimum seven to eight lbs. per day, which continues until they put on an extra 60 lbs. until weaning.

To drive such great creep feed intake, I believe that only a highly nutritious grain-based creep feed should be provided. As a beef nutritionist, I have formulated many creep rations that fill this nutritional gap for spring calves. One of my favourites is a 14 per cent protein and medium-energy feed pellet, made up mainly of wheat middlings, and some barley and supplemented with high-protein concentrates such as corn distillers’ grains. Its mineral/vitamin profile also contains a complement of calcium, phosphorus and salt with essential trace minerals and vitamins A, D and E.

It should also be noted I have formulated rolled creep feeds with a similar nutrient profile, largely using steam-rolled oats in combination with a special protein pellet. Plus, all of my creep feeds contain five per cent molasses to improve and steady feed consumption by young calves. Brewer’s yeast is often added to improve forage digestibility and monensin sodium (a coccidiostat) is added to prevent the devastating effects of coccidiosis.

As an alternative to my creep feeding program, a feed mill operator for whom I worked part-time 15 years, and who owns a 100-cow-calf herd, takes a more aggressive approach. His sons put their creep feeders out much earlier in the spring. Initial consumption by spring calves starts at one to two lbs. per head per day, but steadily increases throughout a normal grazing season (with timely rains, no drought) in a step-up fashion toward autumn.

As a result, weaning weights of their spring calves are consistently higher by 20 lbs. (80 lbs., total) with better feed efficiencies of six lbs. of feed per pound of gain compared to the above conventional creep feeding program.

The funny thing is, whether my other friend is truly serious about locking his calves in to creep feed them, or my former employer puts out their creep-feeders much earlier in the season, both producers should make more creep profit than ever. And it’s not just a couple of loonies, but a $150 profit per creep-fed calf. So, it’s never too late to creep feed, even when feeders are pulled as the first snowflakes fall.

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Such practice is unacceptable today. Assured good mineral intakes by breeding beef cows builds up good macro, trace mineral and vitamin status, which contributes to optimum health and high conception rates. All it really entails is that each cow eats a few ounces of a nutritious mineral on a daily basis. At times, this simple task is challenging, but with good, committed management can be achieved.

Consequently, many factors either promote or hinder the consumption of a commercial cattle mineral, so each cow consumes 56 to 112 grams (two to four ounces), daily. Here is an outline of some major factors:

Mineral formulation

Salt-free mineral is eaten to a lesser extent than one containing 10 to 15 per cent salt. If salt makes up at least 20 per cent of this mineral, one should adjust suggested mineral intakes accordingly.

Note that cattle also may shy away from mineral that contain excessive amounts of limestone (calcium), phosphorus (over 10 per cent), or salt (over 25 per cent).

Water quality

The mineral content and salinity in cows’ drinking water is one of the biggest challenges to get breeding cattle to eat loose-fed mineral.

A few years ago, I recommended a 2:1 cattle mineral (with 10 per cent salt) to a 200-cow cow-calf operation that grazed rotational pasture and drawing water from a natural spring. It contained low levels of salt and minerals; the cattle ate about four ounces of mineral daily. Weeks later, the cattle were moved to a new pasture in which the well-water was very saline. As a result, cattle mineral consumption fell to zero.

Timing

Whether cattle are overwintered on a good mineral program or not, it seems providing loose mineral on pasture is a new experience for even the most mature cowherd. Overconsumption of cattle mineral is initially expected, which should taper off after a week or so. Because of this phenomenon, it important to keep loose mineral available at all times.

Overcoming these few obstacles to good cattle mineral consumption is a matter of consistent mineral-management. We should:

• Calculate the amount of mineral you would need to carry the cows, every few days. It goes something like this: 300 cows x 112 grams of mineral x 3 days = 100 kg or 4 x 25 kg bags of mineral.
• Place about one third of a bag in about a dozen durable mineral feeders (one per 30 cows).
• Check back every few days and refill mineral feeders. Note: adjust mineral consumption as the summer progresses and spring calves start eating minerals too.

By experience, I prefer to fill with mineral the three-compartment plastic mineral-feeder covered with a thick rubber flap. A few years ago, I knew a producer with the same amount of beef cows as above (roughly 300 cow-calf pairs); he mounted seven new mineral-feeders on tractor tires.

These mineral feeders were spread out over summer pastures, with one or two of them placed near water-filled dugouts in which the cattle congregate. Caked and clumped mineral were removed and fresh mineral was placed every few days.

The funny thing is that this producer had low mineral problems for the first few weeks of that year’s summer. His cow herd would eat barely a half ounce (15 grams) of salt-free mineral per day. Subsequently, he solved/increased his herd’s mineral consumption in three ways:

• Switched to a mineral with 15 per cent salt. Removed most of the free-choice blue-salt blocks from pasture. Mixed one-third salt with two-thirds of this new newly formulated mineral and poured it into the mineral feeders.
• Moved feeders closer to the dugouts.
• Stopped feeding liquid molasses in a lick-tub near one of the mineral feeders. As a result, mineral consumption leveled off to 70 grams per head per day.

It feels good to hear such mineral intake success stories. This problem wasn’t solved with a lot of scientific fanfare, but with some common sense. It also reminds me that good mineral intake of a cattle mineral goes hand-in-hand with a well-balanced mineral formula — one that meets the essential mineral and vitamin requirements of breeding cows and eventually helps get them pregnant.

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In short order, my girlfriend and I took a two-week vacation to South Korea and had a once in a lifetime opportunity to visit a typical Korean beef finisher operation.

Before I get started on our visit, let me put in perspective some important numbers comparing South Korea to Manitoba and Canada. The population of South Korea is 52 million people living in one-third of a total land mass of about 100,000 square kilometres (two-thirds is mountains), compared to 1.4 million Manitobans living within 650,000 sq. km (including 100,000 lakes).

South Korean agriculture encompasses about 3.25 million acres, while Manitoba tills about 17 million acres, both for a variety of crops. For example, half of the arable land in South Korea is set aside for rice; the rest seems to be pear farms, which produce 185,000 tonnes per year of Asian pears.

On the livestock side, Canada slaughters about two million cattle per annum, while Koreans slaughter nearly 900,000 Hanwoo beef steers, which originate in this country.

READ MORE: Canada struggles in Korean beef market

With such information, we are now ready for our visit to a traditional Hanwoo beef finishing operation located right outside Naju City (population 120,000) in the country’s southwest.

It so happens the owners are my girlfriend’s uncle and aunt: Sang June Kim and his wife, Hee Jong. They bring in about 170 Hanwoo-steer calves at about eight to nine months of age and 300-350 kg. The calves are raised and marketed at 1,000 kg at 24 months of age. No hormonal implants are used on this operation.

All animals are housed in pens with an open-roof barn, which reminds me of a U.S. dairy barn. There are three or four steers per pen with plenty of living and bunk space. No straw bedding is provided.

Feeding is once a day at 3:30 p.m., sharp. Sang June first blows the bunks absolutely clean of residual feed with a leaf blower. He then cuts and loads plastic-wrapped bales (each 500-600 kg) of complete diet (forage plus concentrate) in a small TMR mixer, mounted on a small truck. I calculate that he feeds seven to eight bales per afternoon.

With the same truck, Sang June can unload the feed along the feed bunk in a very precise manner. Subsequently, I took up a handful of diet — a grower-type diet, containing about 50 per cent rice straw and 50 per cent concentrate. The concentrate portion was rolled corn, rolled soybeans and ground barley.

I also understand from Sang June that the rice-forage portion is locally purchased from a feed mill, which combines it with grains, proteins and a mineral-vitamin pack imported from Australia. Though I didn’t confirm it, I would assume these cattle are fed a higher concentrate ration as they move into the latter finishing stages of growth to market.

Consequently, I calculate their overall growing-finishing average daily gains (ADG) to about 1.5 kg (3.2 lbs.) per head per day. Comparably, our Canadian finishers are slaughtered at about 650–700 kg at about 18 months of age, yielding comparable ADGs.

Hanwoo carcass yields are also similar to those recorded in Canada, which are about 60-63 per cent. Hanwoo cattle, though, are raised to unaccustomed hefty weights and their inherent breed meat quality differs substantially from our typical Angus- or Hereford- terminal cross.

For example, a Hanwoo ribeye contains about 40-50 per cent fat compared to a Canadian cut of marbled 20-25 per cent fat. It just so happened that I took a snapshot of a few Hanwoo meat slices sold at the local Korean store in Nagu City. It sold for about C$16 per 100 grams!

In the end, this excellent tour in itself was totally unexpected. That’s because I didn’t know my girlfriend had an uncle and aunt who raised beef in the first place. Plus, it taught me that high-quality beef is raised in other countries with both different and familiar feedstuffs. And saving the best for last: I want to thank Sang June and Hee Jong for their great hospitality in welcoming us to their farm and home.

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“The RX2 is our latest series,” Hustler’s country manager for North America, Lance Paskewitz, says. “The actual concept itself has been around for over 30 years in multiple countries.

“Most of the new stuff is upgrades here and there that the market has been asking for, different innovations we’ve added into it, like the width of the machine to increase its capability with multiple-sized bales; also, the visibility with the redesign of the front fence, so you can see all the way through the machine. The access ladder has been improved so you can get in and out of the machine.”

READ MORE: Understanding farmers’ equipment needs

Overall, there are design changes throughout the machines, including new chain guides on the cross floor that improve tracking and reduce the risk of derailing. The pusher blade has been redesigned for simplicity, reduced weight and increased strength, among other improvements.

There are two models in the Combi RX2 line. Both use a pusher design to move product forward and across onto the discharge elevator. The company says this eliminates the need for gearboxes and the kinds of adjustments typical of other feed wagons. It also reduces maintenance requirements.

“In the North American market we’ve launched both the RX178, which is a tandem axle, and the tridem axle one is the RX218,” Paskewitz says.

“Both are very similar in how they operate. Any type of bale, round or square, wet or dry, big or small. It can feed any type of bale. You can also feed loose material in there as well.”

The wider cross floor gives the Combi Multi-Feeders the ability to handle larger bales. The 178 gets a 38,865-pound (14,000-kilogram) load capacity, while the 218 can handle up to a 37,478-lb. (17,000-kg) load.

“We have some people who load the whole front end with hay and in the back they’ll put their loose product,” Paskewitz adds. “They’ll just string out hay and spin back around and top dress with whatever supplemental feed they’re feeding as well.”

The all-hydraulic drive system can be controlled from a single joystick, so the machines can handle varying feed rates with just a single control input from the operator in the tractor cab.

READ MORE: Gentle hay handling does make a difference

“That cross floor actually has load-sensing capabilities so you can actually determine how much load is against the elevator,” Paskewitz says. “It can start and stop to adjust the flow of feed to get a good, consistent feed rate. You can adjust the tilt of the elevator and speed of the chains. So there’s a lot of variables in there.

“But it’s all been brought down to just a simple thumbstick control. So it’s all run with a joystick to make it simple but quite versatile and adjustable.”

Both machines can be equipped with the company’s app-based FeedLink scale system, which wirelessly connects to a smartphone or iPad, eliminating the need to have a fixed scale head mounted in the tractor cab.

The FeedLink system also has a geolocating function, which provides not only the amount fed but its exact location as well.

“The RX178 has been our most popular model,” Paskewitz says. “We see a lot of those going on a 140- or 150-horsepower tractor.”

The Combi RX2 Multi-feeder wagons are available from dealers now and come with a five-year front-to-back warranty.

Paskewitz says the base MSRP for the RX178 will be about C$100,000; the larger RX218 retails for about C$120,000.

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Notice the use of the word feed. Feeding — that is, the act of providing feed — can also be one of the highest costs for an operation. In some cases, it may be higher than the actual cost of the feed.

To create a reasonably clear division, a good rule of thumb is that all the expenses going into the feed stack/bin are a feed cost. Yardage would refer to those costs on the other side of that feed stack that are not feed. This set would include corrals and repairs, waterers and electricity, feeding equipment, corral cleaning, fuel and labour. I like thinking about the concept of yardage, as it puts into perspective our operational choices and their impact on our bottom line. A couple of simple examples showcase some of the impacts of our choices and provide some food for thought.

Let’s consider feeding with a loader tractor. For this example, I used the Saskatchewan Custom Rate Guide for a front wheel assist tractor up to 160 horsepower. This represents a typical chore tractor in a lot of the country. Rental rates are listed from $55.40 to $108.37 per hour. The rate is higher the more horsepower we have. Custom work (which includes labour, fuel and repairs) is listed from $124.36 to $209.41 per hour. Whether you agree with these costs or not, it will serve to demonstrate the point.

If we feed 100 cows with our tractor and it takes one hour per day, at the lowest custom rate guide cost, we have $1.24 per cow/per day in yardage for the tractor and labour. If we can feed 200 cows in that same time frame (one hour per day) our yardage cost is now half, or 62 cents per head per day. This demonstrates the importance of efficiency in the feeding operation.

It also demonstrates that yardage costs can add up in a hurry. In this example, if we fed 100 cows for a 200-day winter, we have $250 per cow tied up in just our tractor and labour costs. There may be other ways to use that tractor that are more efficient and can result in significant savings.

The same rule of scale applies to facilities. If we invest $20,000 in corrals, spend $1,000 per year on repairs and plan a 20-year life span, a simple division puts us at roughly $2,000 per year. If we use the corral for our 100 cows for 100 days per year, the yardage cost is 20 cents per head per day. If the same facility can be used for more animals or over more days, the yardage cost of facilities is reduced. If a facility can be built with a longer lifespan — for example, putting an electric wire inside slab corrals — we may also be able to reduce yardage costs.

Knowing your own yardage costs is a valuable piece of management knowledge, but these two simple examples expose an interesting catch-22, particularly for those of us who use extended grazing systems. By feeding more cattle or feeding for longer, some yardage costs, such as facilities, may be reduced, particularly on a per-head per-day basis.

Conversely, by feeding longer, some yardage costs may be increased, such as labour, machinery or corral-cleaning expenses. This exposes one of the largest weaknesses in the way we think about yardage and why considering overhead costs may be more impactful.

Let’s look back at our tractor example. By not putting our 100 cows into a confined feeding situation, we can save on yardage; however, if we still own the tractor — just choosing not to use it — our savings are not the entire $1.24 per day. We still have an overhead cost for the tractor. That cost may be significantly lower than feeding daily with the tractor, but is still a cost.

Even with extended grazing systems, if our yard remains a parking lot for feeding equipment, we will have an overhead cost for that equipment. Not all yardage costs are bad. Some yardage costs may be a good thing. A good water supply may have a yardage cost, but can positively impact performance, or an investment in feeders/troughs and feed delivery is a yardage cost, but may be rapidly offset by feed savings.

Three key points to remember about yardage are:

• Your yardage cost is probably higher than you think, and you need to run your own numbers.
• We fight yardage costs; we need to be as efficient as possible. This may include feeding more cattle, feeding faster or improving cattle performance.
• Reducing yardage is not the same thing as reducing overheads, although it can be.

There is nothing inherently wrong with feeding cattle or having yardage costs. The activity of providing feed and support for cattle can provide value to the operation. In some situations, folks just like feeding cattle and yardage is a secondary consideration to personal enjoyment. In other cases, adding yardage costs such as facilities is required for safety, efficiency, and quality of life. That said, yardage costs can be a significant drain on profitability of a beef cattle operation and perhaps more importantly simply tackling yardage costs may not eliminate overhead costs to the operation.

While every operation will have a different set of resources and thus a different feeding solution, knowing your yardage costs is vital to create a profitable beef cattle enterprise.

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