June calving is more profitable than March calving but the cost savings and higher profits from late calving are offset by greater variability in revenues from year to year.
Tanis Sirski, a masters student in agribusiness and agricultural economics at the University of Manitoba, and Agriculture Canada researchers made the finding based on data collected on hundreds of cows and calves at three locations from 2007-08 in Western Canada – Brandon, Swift Current, Sask., and the Western Beef Development Centre in Lanigan, Sask.
During a December presentation at the Manitoba Grazing School in Brandon, Sirksi said the goal of the project was to help cattle producers make an informed decision about changing the time of calving.
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Research teams at the three locations kept track of the costs and revenues associated with calving from the time the calf was born to one year later.
Costs and revenue variables collected or estimated included the obvious ones like feed costs, weaning weights and calf price in addition to manure removal, fencing costs, vaccinations and marketing costs.
To account for the different feeding systems in use on the Prairies, the scientists fed animals with swath grazing, bale grazing, pasture and drylot feeding.
Sirski determined that June calving costs 5.5 percent less than early calving in Brandon, 10.2 percent less at the Swift Current site and one percent less in Lanigan.
Averaged over two years, the annual cost of March calving in Brandon was $858.07 per head per day, whereas June calving cost $811.86. March calving in Swift Current cost $815.11 and June calving cost $731.56. In Lanigan, the costs were almost identical – $671.79 for early calving and $665.16 for late calving.
The difference was partly due to different feeding systems at each location. For instance, Brandon researchers didn’t use bale grazing but the other sites did.
The animals also spent different amounts of time in each feeding system during the year, mostly because of environmental factors.
The number of pasture days in Lanigan was 143 per year for March calving, but only 79 days in Brandon.
June calving may have been more profitable, but that wasn’t the most significant conclusion in the study, said Shannon Scott, Agriculture Canada beef nutrition specialist in Brandon.
Sirski also used a computer simulation to evaluate the economic risk of each calving season.
“The way we were measuring risk was by the variability (in profits),” said Scott, who led the early calving versus late calving research in Brandon.
“If one (system) is a lot more variable, if you have wild fluctuations (in returns), then that becomes inherently more risky.”
Sirski took fixed data from the research in Brandon, Lanigan and Swift Current and looked at how changing the calf price, cull cow price, calf weight and days in each feeding system affected profitability.
She determined that net revenues were more variable for late calving. Profits or losses changed more from simulation to simulation or from year to year.
With a computer model, the scientists could consider more variables and scenarios.
