ment of animal science at Texas A&M University, stepped up to look ahead to 2025. While the factors will be in place to increase the size of the national cow herd, Mies predicts that drought-induced caution and an aging ranch- ing population may cause expansion to drag. He went on to discuss the ripple effects this smaller cow herd will have on the national beef production chain.
1991 to 2014 Smith reminded cattle raisers that in 1991
“we thought the price of beef was so high that a lot of people could not even afford to buy it.” Economist Chuck Lambert’s study had deter-
Drs. Gary Smith, left, and Bill Mies, visiting professors at the Texas A&M University department of animal science, were featured speak- ers at the TSCRA summer meeting, June 9 to 11, Arlington.
mined total gross revenues for the beef industry were $44.85 billion and “we were leaving about 27 percent in lost opportunities on the table. That amounted to $458 per head. Later the same year, your beef check- off dollars were used to fund the fi rst NBQA,” which allowed the industry to benchmark the losses caused by placement of hot iron brands, outlier cattle, excess fat and management practices. Smith coordinated a group of beef industry experts
to help him compare our industry today to the fi nd- ings from 1991.
Reproductive performance In the 1991 study, Lambert said 80 percent of beef
females exposed to a bull subsequently weaned a calf. It’s the same today, according to Smith and his experts. “If you look at the effect of drought and what a cull cow is worth at the moment, it really doesn’t pay to try to determine which cows are bred or open. You just keep her and when you get ready, you sell her; she’s worth $1,300 to $1,500,” Smith observes. “We don’t have any real motive for working on this when we don’t have forage and we don’t have rain; there’s not much you can do about it. “Production has to be relative to the resources you
have and the cost that would be required to change it. If God gives us a little more rain that’s a bit more evenly distributed, we’re poised and ready to do this. We know how to pregnancy check. We know how to synchronize estrous. We’ll do that when it’s economi- cally profi table in individual operations.”
Death loss According to Lambert’s study, death loss in 1991 was about 6 percent. Smith’s experts inform him that
tscra.org
today’s death loss rate, the percentage of calves that die before slaughter, is about 3 times that number. “Everyone agrees that the drought has complicated
respiratory disease in cattle, and incidents of dystocia have increased, probably due to using bulls that sire calves too big for smaller cows and heifers,” he says. Smith also attributes the increased death loss to
“weak calf syndrome”, seen when the mother doesn’t get enough protein from forage to build the necessary antibodies in her colostrum for her calf.
Weaning weight In 1991, the average weaning weight in beef cattle
was 500 pounds. Today, that number is 550 pounds. He attributes much of this success to the record-keeping done by seedstock producers, who are identifying cattle with superior genetics for weight gain. However, he adds, “I wouldn’t want to imply we are in a contest to see how heavy we can wean calves.”
Multiple and redundant processing Lambert said it cost $5 per hundred pounds every
time an animal was run through a working chute for dehorning, castration, deworming, implanting, or any other process. When Smith asked the experts if progress had been made, they said yes, because of programs like VAC 45. Producers who are preconditioning their weaned calves before selling them off the ranch have reduced the need for multiple or redundant processes. Feedyard veterinarians have also been very helpful in reducing the incidents of redundant processing, he says.
Feed effi ciency In 1991, it took 7 pounds of feed to generate 1 pound of gain in a beef animal. “Chuck (Lambert) said if that
September 2014 The Cattleman 89
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