SASKATOON – If last fall’s cheap calf prices didn’t drive the lesson home, the harsh winter of 1995-96 was the ultimate teacher: The biggest cost when raising cattle is feeding them.
And the difference in finding affordable feed and feeding for fewer days can mean the difference between a profit and a loss, even with low calf prices, producers at the Saskatchewan Beef Symposium were told.
Saskatchewan Agriculture farm management agrologist Bob Wolfe has been gathering production data from about 30 herds in the province.
In 1993, the direct expense of raising crops for feed varied within the herds from $160-$230 per head. Grazing costs varied from $20 to $39 per head.
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The herds with the highest feed costs had the lowest income.
In low-income herds with high debt, Wolfe said losses averaged $23 per head. Average herds made $217 per cow, high income herds made $360 per head.
Wolfe said cutting back on feed costs, even in 1993 when calf prices were decent, meant the difference between losing or making money.
And the ability of the other cattle producers in the study to manage feed costs translated directly into more money.
A feedlot operator and a cow-calf producer have discovered ways to cut back on the cost of feed without hurting the productivity of their herd.
Backgrounding on grass
Lorne Christopherson, in conjunction with the Agriculture Canada research centre at Melfort, Sask., fed half of a 240-head herd of feeder heifers Italian ryegrass last fall. The other half were fed barley silage. Christopherson runs a 2,000 head feedlot at Weldon, Sask.
He underseeded 90 acres of barley with Italian ryegrass last spring.
In early August Christopherson took off seven tonnes of barley silage and then said he seriously considered ripping up the field. “It didn’t look like there was any grass to grow.”
But rain came and by early October the Italian ryegrass was knee-high and ready to graze.
Both groups of heifers were identically processed and then weighed a month later. Heifers in the feedlot eating barley silage had gained 2.5 lbs. per day while the heifers on the ryegrass had gained 1.8 lbs.
But Christopherson felt the comparison wasn’t fair. “The cattle on grass were a lot emptier,” he said.
So three weeks later he weighed the heifers again. The feedlot heifers were gaining the same as before, while the grass heifers jumped to 2.2 lbs. per day.
Christopherson said the pasture was able to produce 7,900 lbs. of gain, or 88 lbs. an acre. Gains in the feedlot cost 60 cents/lb. Using that number, he figures the gain on grass was worth $53 an acre.
Winter grazing
Dave Stuart knew way back in June of last year he had to find a different way to feed his 160 head of purebred and commercial cows on the farm at Edam, Sask.
The northwest Saskatchewan cow-calf producer didn’t get any rain at his farm until late June. And then it came in spurts, causing his barley crop to germinate a second, and then a third time.
He was wondering what to do until he went on a tour and heard another producer talk about winter swath grazing.
It was then Stuart knew he had an “out.”
That winter, he fenced a 65-acre field of barley and grazed his cattle from December until early February when they came home to calve.
He swathed the barley in the early dough stage and didn’t condition it. Electricified, barbed wire fences were strung parallel to the swaths, the way the cattle graze them, he said, and moved once a week.
The cattle ate snow for water and Stuart said their condition didn’t suffer.
Winter swath grazing allowed Stuart to reduce the days he fed his cattle to about 100 – from February to April.
