By D. Peter Stonehouse & Lan Gao, Department of Agricultural Economics & Business, University of Guelph; Tom Hamilton, OMAFRA, New Liskeard Research Station and Jock Buchanan-Smith, Department of Animal & Poultry Science

Most beef cow-calf farmers in Ontario follow a pattern of calving the herd in the winter, weaning the calves in late summer or early fall, and selling those progeny not needed for herd replacements or expansion as weaned calves. Some beef farmers, however, buck tradition by keeping their surplus offspring for marketing as backgrounded yearlings or feeders or heavy feeders. The question is, does it pay to retain your weaned calves for marketing at heavier weights?

At the New Liskeard Research Station, Tom Hamilton adheres to tradition by selling all surplus offspring as weaned calves averaging 558 lb (253 kg) liveweight in the fall. These calves are taken to the Elora Research Station. There, they are backgrounded and marketed as yearlings, averaging 690 lb. (313 kg) liveweight, or fed out in confinement for sale as 15-month feeders averaging 779 lb. (353 kg) liveweight. Some feeders are kept by for grazing and sale at about 18 months and 1089 lb. (494) kg) liveweight; if these have enough finish on them, they are sent for slaughter, otherwise they are sold as heavy feeders to a feedlot.

At the Elora Research Station, Jock Buchanan-Smith recorded stored feed consumption (Table 1, post-weaning section) for each growth stage from weaning to finisher weight. Cattle at all growth stages were confinement fed from October to May. Note that consumption rates, sufficient to support an average daily liveweight gain of 1.0 lb. (0.45 kg), were particularly high for the feeder stage; i.e. from 690 lb. yearlings to 779 lb. feeders. During the following stage, from feeder to 1089 lb. finisher, all feed nutrients were derived from pasture alone, apart from mineral supplement. As pointed out in the May 2002 Ontario Beef article on "Extend Your Grazing Season and Save Feed Costs", pasture is nature's cheapest feed for ruminants, so the impact on total feed costs across the different growth stages is significant.

Labour costs were also recorded by Hamilton and Buchanan-Smith for the various growth stages. Most time for a beef enterprise has to be spent looking after the cows and young calves, with proportionately less time required from weaning to the finisher stage. You should nevertheless allow an average 7.72 hr./head of labour for taking a weaned calf all the way to finisher status, over and above the average 14.49 hr./head for the cow-calf stage.

Next agricultural economists, Peter Stonehouse and Lan Gao combined financial data with the bio-physical data from the two research stations to give estimates of net returns per cow exposed to breeding for calves marketed at four different liveweights (Table 2). Market prices for livestock sold were based on OMAF 12-year averages for the months of sale (October for weaned calves, February for yearlings, May for feeders, and August for finishers). Total expenses per cow for almost every category of inputs increased growth stage by growth stage, as would be expected. Key stored feeds and labour costs were particularly high for feeder cattle, as these remained totally confined from meaning in October to pasturing the following May.

a) Includes animal marketing, manure handling, utilities, banking, accounting, legal, insurance, building and fence maintenance

These higher expenses for the feeder stage had a large negative impact on the net returns. As indicated (Table 2), these were most negative (at -$120,.35/head) for marketing offspring as feeders, but they were least negative (at -$31.65/head) for marketing as finishers. Perhaps more important was the finding that offspring marketed as either yearlings or finishers netted lower losses than those marketed traditionally as weaned calves.

These results are part of a $26,000 OCA-funded research project entitled Economic Evaluation of Management Approaches to Improve Cost Effectiveness in Ontario Beef Enterprises.