– Garth Ruff, Beef Cattle Field Specialist, OSU Extension (originally published in the Ohio Cattleman)
In Extension work, I learned early on as a county educator that the seasons of the year are not your typical spring, summer, fall, and winter. Instead, we tend to observe, as do many farmers around the state, a yearly calendar that looks more like planting/calving, hay season, harvest and meeting season.
Being hired during COVID, my first official meeting season in this role is on the downhill slide. From Wauseon to McConnelsville and Wooster to West Union, with several stops in between I have taught several programs and had many conversations with cattle producers across the state. At the forefront of many of those conversations have been economics, supply chain issues, and the markets.
At Ohio Beef Expo, I had one such conversation with a cattlemen who made an excellent point considering all that is going on in the world – this maybe a year to optimize production as opposed to maximize production.
As mentioned before from our market outlook webinar in January, cattle prices, although a bit more volatile lately (what hasn’t been), still look positive for 2022. Input costs for both crops and livestock are at record or near record highs. By in large, cattle prices and input costs are out of our control as producers. Taking that into consideration, what can we do to optimize production and hopefully profit potential in 2022?
Soil and Forage Test – Nutrients for both crops and livestock are expensive. Knowing what we have to work with is always important, but even more so given high fertilizer costs. Don’t forget to soil test pasture ground as well, in several cases weedy, poor performing pastures are signs of poor soil fertility.
Ted Wiseman, my colleague in Perry County always references the following quote from Justin Sexton when teaching soil and forage sampling and it’s spot on, “Anyone who’s not soil testing or forage testing still doesn’t think fertilizer and hay prices are high enough yet.”
Lime – Along those same lines, upon getting soil test results back, take a hard look at soil pH. Nutrients have specific ranges at which they are available to plants to utilize. Ideally, a fall application of lime is best to see a change in pH for the follow growing season. Even so, having a stable soil pH and soils in the maintenance range for phosphorus and potassium can help save on inputs this hay and grazing season.
Hay Storage – Nutrients are and continue to be valuable. Evaluate the cost of hay storage against dry matter and nutrient losses over the lifetime of a storage structure. Factor in increased cattle performance to that decision as well.
Add Value to Calves – I hope someday we are to a point where nearly every calf marketed in Ohio is weaned, vaccinated, and bull calves are made steers prior to marketing. I know to some I am preaching to the choir, and perhaps beginning to sound like a broken record on this point, but there are still several calves marketed right off the cow every week through our markets. Reach out to your local auction market, several of them have sale results that support that preconditioned sell higher bawling, unvaccinated calves.
As we switch from meeting season to hay, field days, and county fairs, I hope to continue having these conversations with cattlemen and women across Ohio. As always if you have questions or are looking for additional information, send me or your local Extension Educator an email or I’m more than happy to pick up the phone.