From the Barns: Topsy-turvy market

We couldn’t have asked for much better weather this past month, considering the time of year it is. The majority of days starts out in the mid-20s and get into the mid-40s. No extremes either way. We have had a few small rains. The local meteorologists say we need the rain, but quite frankly I wouldn’t mind if it didn’t rain again until spring. Let them come down and work in the mud this time of year when it keeps raining often. It doesn’t take much rain at all to make conditions slick and muddy. They are forecasting a significant rain next week and then after that turn quite cold.

We didn’t end up selling those two loads of feeders. Guess we will feed them out. Those heifers are weighing in the mid-800s by now and I am optimistic the fat market will be strong when they are ready to sell. We did end up selling two loads of fats the last week of December. Pretty sure we will sell at least one load of fat cattle later this month.

Need to make a decision on another 325 head of feeder heifers that should be weighing a little over 700 at this point. If I sell them, I will need to move them in the next two to three weeks. This coming week we will see what kind of bids we can get on them. This market remains topsy-turvy, so hard to predict what kind of interest we will get.

This winter we are trying something new in feeding our fall calving cows, spring calving bred heifers, yearling heifers that are currently in the middle of breeding season and also replacement heifers that were weaned this fall. Instead of free-choice feeding round bales of hay and supplementing some feed to those groups, we are using a total mixed ration to take care of their nutritional needs. Two things we know from plenty of experience is that cattle waste a lot of hay when it is fed free-choice and also that most of the hay cut and baled in this part of the country is poor to fair in nutritional quality.

This is also the belief of some of our Extension educators in this state, so after an August meeting at Dixon Springs Agricultural Center in which Travis Meteer talked about this very subject, I followed up with him this fall to discuss how to move forward with implementing this idea. He worked up some potential diets for me to use and I have spent the last few weeks trying and tweaking them to find the best possible mix for my cattle and my environment.

There are many challenges to making this plan work properly. I would say the biggest difficulty is finding the right blend — one that meets nutritional needs, gets the cattle enough feed to keep them somewhat satisfied, yet doesn’t overfeed and cost us more money than is necessary.

I think I have finally found the one that is meeting our needs, including being logistic and infrastructure friendly. We are grinding and going through an unbelievable amount of hay. Our early analysis is that the cattle are looking good, while being relatively satisfied with the amount that they are getting and that initial cost estimates are going to be reasonable.

By grinding the hay, we aren’t seeing waste and are using 100% of the bale. The cattle are essentially being forced to eat the lower quality hay, which is being made palatable by using other feed ingredients to improve the taste of the mix. Obviously, I will know a lot more 60 days from now and can better state how this project succeeded or not.

To piggyback on something my friend Trevor Toland wrote last month, I hope the readers of these columns we write find that what we write is of interest, but also that it is useful information. As you all know, not everything on the farm goes well or as planned, so I like to share as many things as possible, some good and some not so good, but again, that is life on a beef cattle farm.