Producers are always looking to make the most of their calves.
Whether they are selling them through online auctions or taking them to a sale barn, Dr. John Mutcheson with Merck Animal Health worked with researchers at Kansas State University.
They summarized the auction data of more than 800,000 head of calves to learn more about the management and health protocol that have the biggest impact on revenue.
According to Dr. Mutcheson, “We look at health programs, vaccinations, pre-conditioning programs— they add a lot of value. They bring more dollars per hundredweight, like weaning and deworming and all things that go into a pre-conditioning program. There was a definite signal to cattle owners, cow-calf producers, that these buyers want calves that are ready for the transition to the next phase. It’s a big deal! You know, our cattle system is set up for calves to move off the ranch and transition into either a grazing situation, backgrounding situation, or feedlot situation, and so, they want these calves ready for that next transition. And so, if you look at Back 45, which was the most popular program that a lot of cow-calf producers participated in, it added almost $45 a head, almost $8 per hundredweight is what these calves got in terms of value.”
He goes on to explain that there are other things producers can do to increase their calves’ value, including selecting for polled animals.
“I mean, year after year after year, these buyers pay more for not having horns, and that’s thinking of the long-term, these things are going down. They’re going to produce leather, and they’re going to produce food, and so that’s one of the things,” he adds. “The other thing is, as cattle producers and feedlots through the production phase, we keep adding more weight and more weight and more weight and get these cattle bigger and bigger and producing more beef per acre, so to speak. And so, they want medium-frame, large-frame calves. Those bring back quite a bit of value to these calves. The other thing is using good genetics. On the superior sale, we have access to the data, and they have a program that looks at superior genetics, and these are if you purchase bulls that have known genetics that are recognized by buyers of these calves, then you get a nice bump in value as well.”
Dr. Hutcheson says that using implants can also pay off at auction with buyers typically going for larger-framed calves with a bit more weight to them.
