Cattle producers who held onto their calves last fall, fed them through the winter and put them back out on grass this summer may find their calves will be worthless by fall, says a member of a committee trying to find a way to raise the price of cattle.
Len Vogelaar said there is an increasing worry that by fall, producers will discover their 1,000 pound calves have no buyers because they are too heavy to go in the feedlot.
“We’ve come to the conclusion we need to get a handle on the number of grass cattle that will be beyond weight and age,” said Vogelaar.
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He estimates that 30 percent of the older calves to be sold this fall will be worthless.
In a normal year, feedlot owners buy cattle in the fall that weigh 750-800 lb. and feed them until they are finished at 1,350-1,400 lb.
Instead of selling the cattle last fall, many producers chose to keep the cattle at home and put them on a low-energy hay ration for maintenance and growth, not a fattening ration. This spring, with cattle prices still low, the animals were put back out on grass again. By fall these calves could weigh 1,000 lb., too large to enter the feedlot to be finished, said Vogelaar.
“They’re no longer attractive for feeding,” he said.
If the animals are put in a feedlot they’ll spend the first 40-50 days growing before starting to fatten.
By the time they are finished, they’ll weigh close to 1,500 lb. and their carcass would be larger than the 925 lb. wanted by the packers. Owners would be penalized with a 25-cents-a lb. discount.
In addition, the animals are getting dangerously close to the 30-month age where the meat can no longer be exported to the United States, so they will be discounted even further.
“Those cattle are darn near worthless,” said Vogelaar.
The committee wants to know how many of these oversized cattle will be coming to market. It hopes to enlist the help of auction market managers who are in daily contact with cattle producers.
Murray Gilfillan, manager of the Grande Prairie Auction Market, said it would be difficult to know how many large-framed cattle are left on the farm.
The larger producers have known this would be a problem and either sold or finished their cattle before they became too large.
The people it will hurt are the producers that have 10, 20 or 30 cattle on the farm and haven’t been following the markets, he said.
