News

Let cows do the harvesting

Record high fed cattle prices and corn half of what it was months ago make it seem like making money in the cattle business is a cinch, but Ag Business Specialist Wesley Tucker says that’s not the case. Tucker, who’s with the Missouri Extension Service, preaches that high input costs can still stand in the way of profit. Feed is the biggest input of all, but fuel, fertilizer and land trim a lot from a cattlemen’s bottom line, said Tucker.

“Basically, that’s what we built our beef industry upon and we need to get back to using the cow as the forage harvester and maximizing her resource for us,” said Tucker, in an interview with Brownfield Ag News on Friday.

Tucker suggests having the cow harvest grass instead of doing it mechanically, which saves a pile on fuel and equipment. According to what Tucker has learned from previous generations, cattlemen should resist the temptation to acquire more cows at the end of a good grass year.

“Our grandfathers used to tell us to only run the number of cows that you can have a drought year, and that’s because they knew that if it turned off dry, they wanted to not have to feed a lot of extra feed because they simply couldn’t harvest it,” he said.

Tucker says that the way 2014 is beginning, it’s going to be a very good year for cow/calf producers.

AUDIO: Wesley Tucker (3 min. MP3)