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A
two-year study was conducted at the Sand Mountain Research and Extension
Center (SMREC) in Crossville to evaluate the economics of selling spring-born
calves in February (Table
1) rather than the typical October marketing. The calves were born
in February and March from the resident crossbred herd. During
the first year of the study the calves were born in 1998 and marketed
in February of 1999; for the second year of the study (Table
2), calves were born in 1999 and marketed in January and February
of 2000. At birth, all calves were given an ear tag and males were castrated.
The calves were weaned on October 5 and September 28 for study years one
and two, respectively. At weaning, all calves were vaccinated for protection
against Clostridial species as well as BRSV, IBR, BVD, and PI3. The
calves were then randomly assigned to one of three treatments for backgrounding
(the post-weaning period): (1) free-choice hay and free-choice soybean
hull pellets, (2) free-choice hay and soybean hull pellets until fescue
was stockpiled (allowed to grow ungrazed until enough was present for
proper grazing), and (3) free-choice hay and free-choice of a 50% broiler
litter and 50% soybean hull pellets mix. For treatment 2, the fescue was
fertilized with two tons of broiler litter per acre in September and one
acre was stockpiled per calf. For
the economic data the following information was used. The soybean hull
pellets cost $72 per ton, broiler litter was $11.67 per ton, and hay was
$60 per ton. All calves were weighed at weaning and again just prior to
being shipped to the sale. On average, the calves weighed 7.5% less (shrink)
at the sale barn than they did at the station prior to sale; therefore,
weaning weights were also shrunk by 7.5% to estimate a sale weight for
assigning their value at weaning in the fall. When the calves were sold
the actual sale price for each animal was used in the analysis. The average
of the actual sale price was computed. For the given weight range, it
resulted in a value that was the average of medium-large frame, muscle
scores 1 (heavily muscled) and 2 (light muscling) for that week in Alabama.
During
the first year of the study steers averaged 493 pounds at weaning and
the heifers averaged 462 pounds. All three treatments resulted in weight
gains of 1.6 to 2.0 pounds per day. As expected, heifers gained a little
slower than steers (female animals tend to grow more slowly than male
animals). The calves fed the broiler litter/soybean hull mix consumed
the most feed per pound of gain while those on the soyhull/hay/fescue
ration consumed the least. Obviously, this figure does not account for
the amount of fescue that was grazed. The fall of 1998 was quite dry and
the amount of stockpiled fescue was quite low; in fact, very little grazing
was available until mid-January and the calves were sold in early February.
Because the fescue was fertilized in early fall and produced very little
forage, the feed cost for that treatment was the most at $33.51 per hundredweight
(cwt.) of gain. The final result for the first year was that all feeding
strategies increased the net cash income of the calves by $45 to $50 per
head by backgrounding the calves until February rather than selling them
in October. Second-year
results were similar to the first year with regard to weaning weights.
However, in the second year, the calves gained much faster than for the
first year. In fact, some of the calves were actually sold in early January
because the researchers did not want the calves to exceed 800 pounds in
weight. Approximately one-third of the calves attained weights of 725
to 775 pounds by early January and were sold at that time with the remainder
being sold in early February. Unlike
the first year, the stockpiled fescue did produce moderate amounts of
forage and thus the amounts of hay and soyhulls to produce a pound of
gain were quite low, 2.8 pounds. However, the calves did not gain as fast
as those kept in the drylot. Because of the excellent gains, cost per
cwt. of gain was much lower compared to the first year. The range of the
increased net cash income of the calves was quite large as opposed to
the first year. For the calves fed soyhulls and hay, net cash income exceeded
$100 per calf while those fed the litter/soyhulls realized only $34 per
head. The reason for the higher value was the excellent gains by the calves
in combination with high calf prices. On the contrary, the $34-per-head
value for the calves fed litter/soyhulls decreased substantially because
one calf in that treatment died from bloat. However, even with the loss
of one animal out of 16 (6.25% death loss) the increased value per calf
was still $34 per head for backgrounding the calves. In summary, spring-born calves can be fed until January or February as a way to increase net cash income over marketing the calves in the fall. Averaging all treatments over the two-year study resulted in net cash income of approximately $59 per calf. The simplest strategy would be to keep the calves in a drylot situation and feed free-choice soybean hulls and hay. If weaning facilities and low-cost feedstuffs are available, backgrounding spring-born calves can increase net returns for the cow/calf operation.
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