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Getting More Money Out of Cull Cows by David Bowser Each year, cow-calf operators cull cows from the herd to improve productivity, but this culling process can be done more efficiently and profitably with a little extra planning and work, according to a New Mexico State University professor. Ten to 20 percent of a ranch's income can be derived from the sale of these culled cows, said Dr. Mark Petersen, professor of nutrition in the Animal and Range Sciences Department at New Mexico State University. The way the cows grade and their maturity are important influences on their value, but perhaps most important is timing. Value can also be added to some cull cows by feeding them. Value can also be realized by watching the time frame in which they are sold. "If you decide to enhance the value of them by feeding, you have the cost of the feeding program," Petersen said. When they're sold and the volume of other culled animals being sold at the same time will also influence the amount a rancher can get for a culled cow, he said. The rancher can take advantage of variations in seasonal pricing, and he can manipulate the body condition of the culls. The body condition score can be used to improve the value of those cull cows. Muscling, quality and blemishes those cows might have from injection sites will also affect the price they will bring, but it's their live weight and the percentage of lean yield that determines their value, Petersen said. There are slaughter grades that have been established to determine the value of cull cows, he said. Those grades are based on their body conditions. Within these grades, there is also maturity grades. While cull cows may vary widely, open heifers in the fall is perhaps where the rancher can make the best money. "These open heifers are really a great chance to try to start out with retained ownership," Petersen said. "They're basically some stockers. It doesn't take them very long to finish. These heifers then represent your cow herd, so if you retain ownership on this group of open heifers, you can get information concerning the carcass quality of your cow herd and their progeny." Also, the open heifers are A maturity, so they ought to be able to grade Choice or Select to the feeding program. "If you want to experiment with retained ownership, these open heifers are, I think, a really neat group to start with," Petersen said. Dry two-year-olds that lost their calves are still young enough that they can make that A maturity, he said. "That's another group of animals that we can feed and recover a lot of value back in these types of cattle," Petersen said. "They can grade Choice or Select, and we can enhance their value when we feed them." With A maturity, a soft-boned kind of cattle, they would be nine to 30 months of age, a dry two-year-old that calves at 24-months would still be a good candidate for feeding. The thing to watch out for, Petersen warned, is selling grass fed for slaughter and cows that might have a small carcass size. Slaughter cattle coming off pasture most likely will have yellow fat color which is heavily discounted. Carcasses that are too small or too large also face heavy discounts. To a great extent the slaughter grades for cull animals are going to correlate to body score. "The cows that are in good condition," Petersen said, "are the cows you would probably want to sell right away." The thinner cows would have the potential to be fed. "You can add value to them by feeding them," he said. The goal of feeding cull cows is to move body condition for cows out of the canner grade. "This isn't always true, but in general we can say that the difference between a canner cow and a utility cow is about $10 a hundredweight," Petersen said. "That's a pretty nice boost in value going from canner to utility. There's a lot of motivation there to try to change that grade in your cows." The cows that should be fed are those that have the lowest value prior to feeding such as the canner, which have a low yielding percentage. A good feeding program, Petersen said, can move an animal two body scores in two months. He said, however, that the cows need to be healthy. "We don't want to have to doctor cows," He said. "We don't want to have health problems." Petersen warned that there is some risk involved in feeding these cows because the cow market can be volatile. "We want to be able to get in and out of this thing in case we see the market going against us," Petersen said. Dry and open cows many times will experience a 20 percent body weight loss, he said. "These are the kind of cows we want to feed," Petersen said. "They've lost a lot of weight." Those cows have a lot of built in compensatory gain. Petersen recommends using ionophores with these cattle to help feed efficiency. It will help stabilize the rumen so there are fewer digestive problems. Lower body weight cows also have the lowest maintenance requirements, Petersen said. The reason for the compensatory gain boost is because if the cows are allowed to eat all they want, they will eat to what their mature body weight is, but their maintenance weight is quite low so more of the feed goes to gain and less goes to maintenance. They can gain four to five pounds easily in those first 30 days of feeding because they have lower maintenance requirements. As they are fed longer, their maintenance requirements catch up and they start to lose that advantage, but during the first 30 days, there can be some really cheap gains. This can be a good deal, he said, even when cattle prices are low. There are, Petersen said, seasonal price patterns for these cull cows. A 10-year average of cull cow prices indicated that there are four months when cow prices are below average, January, October, November and December. "If we're looking at a 60 day feeding strategy for our body condition score three cows and we're weaning in the fall," Petersen said, "what this suggests to me is that we want to kick them back out on rangeland during November and December and maybe bring them into a trap or corrals and start to feed them in January. Then we have a 30 to 60 day window where we can enhance the value of those cows by the change in price and also by changing their grade." He said the rest of the year, the cows have values higher than average. "Those dry cows, after calving, we might want to get them sold after feeding them for 30 days," Petersen said. He said there is also a situation where ranchers may want to preg check cows in September. Those cows that are open could be sold before the seasonal dip in prices in October. For November and December cull cows, he said, it would be nice to sell them in February or March. |
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