Month: March 2024

How to Use a Grazing Stick

– Christine Gelley, Extension Educator, Agriculture and Natural Resources, Noble County, Ohio State University Extension

A grazing stick helps estimate days of grazing that remain in a paddock.

Measuring the amount of forage available for livestock to graze is a helpful task for designing and adjusting pasture rotations for grazing livestock. There are many potential methods for measuring the amount of forage mass that is growing in a pasture. All of them require time spent in the pasture and repetitious measurements to develop estimations of whole pasture forage availability. One of the simplest methods for estimating forage availability is using a grazing stick.

What does the grazing stick do?

A grazing stick combines information about forage height, forage density, species of forages growing in the pasture, and residual grazing heights into a tool that . . .

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Practical Considerations for Managing the Spring Flush

Dr. Chris D. Teutsch, University of Kentucky Research and Education Center at Princeton

In March we often find ourselves wringing our hands waiting for grass growth to start and a short time later our pastures are growing so quickly that we can’t seem to keep up with them. This time of the year can often be one of the most challenging for graziers. Grass growth goes from nonexistent to excessive in a matter of weeks and if you are properly stocked grazing livestock can have a hard time keeping up with it. The following suggestions can help you to control spring growth and get the most out of your spring pastures Continue reading →

Proactive Forage Management for Grazing Success

– Jennifer J. Tucker, Ph.D., Associate Professor and Beef Extension Specialist, University of Georgia

The goal of grazing management is efficient production and utilization of a forage base.

Attend any forage focused Extension program and you will assuredly discuss the importance of soil fertility, forage quality, having a forage plan, and utilizing proper seeding and planting practices. Each of these are key fundamentals to efficient and effective forage management and utilization and should not be overlooked in this article. A limitation of even one of these areas can have a dramatic effect on overall forage production and operational productivity. Today, however, we are going to take a closer look at what’s happening between the pasture and the highway and discuss a few other key variables in forage management.

The Goal of Grazing Management
Whether a large producer with generations of experience, or a smaller operation just starting out, the overall goal of forage grazing management is the same: Efficient production and utilization of a forage base that is able to meet the needs of the livestock herd.

Below are three key principles needed to . . .

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Weekly Livestock Comments for March 22, 2024

– Dr. Andrew Griffith, Assistant Professor, Livestock Marketing Specialist, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of Tennessee

FED CATTLE
Fed cattle traded $2 higher compared to last week on a live basis. Prices were largely $189 to $191 on a live basis and $301 to $303 on a dressed basis.

The 5-area weighted average prices thru Thursday were $189.52 live, up $1.70 compared to last week and $301.99 dressed, up $3.58. A year ago, prices were $164.39 live and $265.07 dressed.

April live cattle futures have found no direction the past month other than marking time. At the same time, cash live cattle prices have been pushing to achieve the expectations of the futures market for April and have now eclipsed those expectations. Despite this occurrence, live cattle futures are pricing cattle lower through the summer and fall months. Does this mean finished cattle prices will begin to soften as the market moves into May and June? They certainly could, but a lot will Continue reading →

Updates from the March 2024 Cattle on Feed Report

– James Mitchell, Livestock Marketing Specialist, University of Arkansas

The USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service released a report on March 22, 2024, detailing the status of U.S. cattle on feed inventories. As of March 1, 2024, the total inventory of cattle and calves on feed in feedlots with a capacity of 1,000 plus head stood at 11.8 million, marking a 1 percent increase compared to the figures from March 1, 2023. On-feed inventories remain above 2023 totals for the third consecutive month of 2024. By no means is this an indication of herd expansion at this point. It highlights the differences between short- and long-run cattle inventory dynamics.

Feedlot placements in February 2024 increased 10 percent year over year and 6 percent compared to January, totaling 1.89 million head. This marks the Continue reading →

Pushing EPD’s into Dollars

– Dirk Dempsey, Agriculture and Natural Resources Extension Educator, Pike County (originally published in Ohio Farmer on-line)

EPDs are one of the tools to use when selecting a herd sire.

An expected progeny difference, better known in the beef world as an EPD, attempts to quantify the performance of potential progeny from one animal to another based on the lineage within a singular breed. No matter which beef breed you choose, there are similarities and differences between recognized traits from the respective breed association. A visual appraisal is one of the first recommendations many within the industry will say to start with when utilizing known EPDs. As a beef producer, this allows you to see whether this animal is useful or unusable. A purely visual appraisal may deem the animal suitable; however, if that animal has poor EPDs, it will likely result in an unfavorable outcome for the buyer. Also, another unfavorable outcome would be if the animal has a fantastic set of EPDs but with structural issues noted in the visual appraisal; this will also lead to an unfavorable outcome. We expect to push into Continue reading →

Cow/Calf Producers; Share your insight and help shape the future!

– Kate Hornyak, OSU Extension Program Coordinator, Delaware County

Take a minute, share your thoughts, and participate in this eBarn project.

Assist us in shaping the future of beef cattle management by sharing your insights on the breeding practices within your operation. Take a moment to share how you manage reproduction in your beef cattle operation through our quick survey. Your responses will contribute to the OSU Extension 2024 eBarns report, providing valuable insights for other producers.

Your input is crucial, will only take a couple of minutes, and can impact the industry significantly, no matter how big or small your operation might be. Please follow this link now: https://go.osu.edu/beefcattlebreeding

Understand the Implications of a Price Slide When Buying and Selling Feeder Cattle

– Dr. Kenny Burdine, Extension Professor, Livestock Marketing, University of Kentucky

Everyone who buys or sells feeder cattle regularly understands that in most markets price per lb decreases as cattle get heavier. This can create a challenge for pricing cattle in situations where weight is not known with certainty. This applies to forward contracts, internet sales and cattle that are sold off the farm but hauled to another location to determine pay weight. In these situations, cattle are often sold with a base weight, and a price slide is utilized to adjust price as the weight of the cattle exceeds that base weight. As an illustration, let’s consider a backgrounder that sold cattle via an internet auction with an advertised base weight of 800 lbs and a price slide of $8 per cwt. Let’s further assume that the cattle sell for $240 per cwt in the auction and will be hauled to a weigh station the following week to determine the pay weight.


If those steers were to weigh exactly 800 lbs, no price adjustment is needed. The pay weight is 800 lbs and the price is $240 per cwt for a total of $1,920 per head. However, if the cattle weighed 850 lbs, the price is adjusted downward because they are 50 lbs above the base weight. With an $8 per cwt slide, the price would be adjusted downward by $4 per cwt (50 lbs is half of a cwt). With a pay weight of 850 lbs and an adjusted price of $236 per cwt, the per head total is Continue reading →

Livestock Risk Protection insurance (LRP)

– Dr. Andrew Griffith, Assistant Professor, Livestock Marketing Specialist, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of Tennessee

A couple of questions concerning Livestock Risk Protection insurance (LRP) were asked this week concerning the cost and choosing coverage levels.

LRP is much more affordable today than it was when the program was first introduced. This is due to the government subsidy, which ranges from 35 to 55 percent. The subsidy is tied to the coverage level. For instance, 95 to 100 percent coverage levels only have a 35 percent subsidy while the lowest coverage levels have the 55 percent subsidy.

In reality, the subsidy level means absolutely nothing to the producer. The important thing is how much it is going to cost to protect a certain value. For instance, the highest coverage level for an early August sale of an 800 pound steer would cost about $60 per head to cover a little more than $2,100 of value. Thus, the total cost on the highest coverage level is about 3 percent of the total value in this example. Research suggests producers should only purchase the highest coverage levels to the tune of 95 to 100 percent coverage.

Census and Feedlots

– Matthew Diersen, Risk & Business Management Specialist, Ness School of Management & Economics, South Dakota State University

In mid-February, the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) released the 2022 Census of Agriculture. The Census provides a comprehensive look at the structure of agricultural that complements the regular survey work on NASS, such as Cattle on Feed reports. For perspective, in 2022 there were 732,123 farms across the U.S. with a total inventory of 87,954,742 head of cattle. Both the number of farms with cattle and the total inventory of cattle are down or lower than when last measured this way in 2017. The Census provides different breakdowns of cattle on feed that give insights into feedlots and related trends.

Having cattle on feed is a specialized enterprise. Only 22,613 farms had cattle on feed in inventory at the start of 2022, down from 25,776 farms in 2017. Farms with 1 to 19 head on feed stayed constant in number, likely retained ownership for local consumption instead of a budding enterprise. The number of farms in the other small inventory levels, 20 to 999 head, all had Continue reading →