A weaned and vaccinated calf typically brings a $6- to $10-per hundred pounds (cwt) premium, and the losses due to shrink may be cut by half.
out, and that adds to shrink. The more you stress them as you sepa- rate them from their mothers, the more they’re going to shrink once they go to the auction market. “Just separate them as quietly
as you can. The more they jostle them around and run them back and forth between corrals, the more they shrink. Treat them with tender hands and as kind an approach as you can. That’s about all you can do at that point.” Nichols agrees, saying, “If you
do have to move that timeframe up, then you follow your Best Manage- ment Practices of low stress and trying to get the cattle to perform as well as they can.” He also stress- es sticking with your routine, and adds, “Potentially one of the bigger things is on the day of (delivery) — if we can make sure those cows get a good fi ll on them before we put
tscra.org
them on a truck and take them to the auction barn, then that’s more weight to sell.” In addition, fi nd out from the
auction market when they think the cattle will sell, so you can bring them to the sale barn at the optimal time to minimize shrink. Price can drive the decision to
sell, but it depends on the individual producer. Some, says Nichols, “will sell on a certain day, because that’s how they’ve done it and their dad’s done it and their grandpa’s done it.” Others sell based on how the mar- kets are performing, and whether or not they think they can make more money by holding the cattle. Mak- ing such a calculation “is a moving target,” he concedes, “but that’s where having a good economist, a guy that knows the economics of the deal, is so important when it comes to futures markets, study-
ing the markets and knowing what they’re going to do.” Are the best managers being
rewarded and will they be the ones to stay in business? Gill says, “You would hope that would be the case. It’s hard to predict where the mar- ket’s going to be with the futures jumping up and down. One thing that we encourage producers to do is, if they can, go ahead and get their calves weaned in these kinds of markets. That way, if they do have a downturn in the market, those cattle can be maintained at home... Those people that have these calves weaned or ready to go and easy to handle can really capture some of this, so I think the better managers will be the ones that will be better positioned. I think with prices what they are, a lot of people can survive bad man- agement.”
July 2013 The Cattleman 47
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