– Kevin Laurent, Extension Specialist, University of Kentucky
No this is not about the current political state of our country. So far, I have resisted the urge to join in the numerous ongoing social media conversations. No, this is just some of my personal thoughts and observations about the world we live in and more specifically how it relates to the beef business. We live in a world of extremes. There are extremes in the weather and the markets. Extremes can create changes in the marketplace. Sometimes positive change, sometimes negative. Grain prices go up, cattle prices go down and so on.
Extreme stories also get the most attention, whether it’s current events in the media or bragging at the coffee shop about our weaning weights. And although extremes get attention, many times it’s the extreme methods, actions or mindset that can get us in trouble. It is human nature to gravitate towards extremes. The most, the biggest, the heaviest, the tallest are all easier to identify than the moderate or optimum. Any of us over the age of 50 can remember the tall cattle of the 1980’s. My good friend Terry Burks regularly posts historical pictures on Facebook of prominent sires in the Simmental breed. It’s interesting to see that the original sires that came into the US were fairly moderate cattle by today’s standards with decent feet and leg structure. But some of the pictures of sires from the 1980’s and early 90’s are a little tough to look at. We know now that the chase for frame resulted in all kinds of ills, from fertility to feet and leg issues. Realize this is not an indictment of Simmentals, all the breeds were guilty.
So how do we avoid the temptation of chasing extremes? That’s a difficult question to answer. It’s hard to be consistently moderate in our thinking and our management. By the same token, we cannot use moderation as an excuse for poor management. The analogy of “being in the middle of the road will just get you run over” comes to mind. That said, I don’t think we should write off the merits of moderation just because of an old cliché.
One of the best practical examples I have seen of managing for moderation was a presentation by John Genho, of Eldon Farms in Virginia at the 2019 Forages at KCA Symposium. The proceedings of his talk can be found on the UK Forages webpage at the following link: Profitability at Eldon Farms: Guiding Principles (uky.edu). I pulled the following excerpt from the proceedings that I think is quite thought provoking.
“We realized that in our situation, planning on grazing every day of the year was just as wrong financially as feeding 120 days of hay. Both were sub optimum. Over the course of several years, we ended up varying the number of animals on a particular group of fields from about 90 head up to 235 head. When we had 90 head, we weaned the heaviest calves. When we had 235 head, we produced the most lbs. to sell. But neither of these biological maximums created the financial optimum. That number was at 135-140 head. The economic optimum is always under the biological optimum when it comes to stocking rates. We should always run a few less cows than a field can actually carry to make the most money.”
I encourage you to look up the full copy of the proceedings. It’s a great example of using historical data to guide decisions and not just managing for the extremes.
And going back to that middle of the road analogy. Maybe better record-keeping and more importantly, analyzing our records from an historical perspective will provide wisdom to know which lane we need to be in or if we need to switch lanes to avoid the oncoming traffic. Let’s just hope the rest of winter 2021 continues mild with no extremes.