The Ozarks are not a big cattle feeding region. Missouri reported 687 farms and about 85,000 feedlot cattle in 2012, but that compares to over 26,000 feedlots and over 14 million cattle nationwide; most of the Missouri feedlots are in the northern part of the state. As of the 2012 Census of Agriculture, Arkansas had only 8 farms with a combined total of 235 cattle on feed; although that may have been a function of the drought, the 2007 Census only recorded 75 farms with 1,965 cattle on feed.
There is interest in expanding that industry in Missouri, and it was expressed by Gov. Jay Nixon on Dec. 17, at the 45th Governor’s Conference on Agriculture in Osage Beach, Mo. Even though Missouri has the second largest state cattle herd after Texas, the governor said, “95 percent of the cattle we raise each year end up being finished and processed out-of-state,” and more than 75 percent leave the state immediately after weaning.
Gov. Nixon said that is costing Missouri’s rural economy more than a billion dollars, and in order to keep more of the returns in the state he planned to convene a first-ever “Beef Summit” on Jan. 5, in Columbia that would address the questions of how more Missouri calves could be fed in the state, and what it would take to get a major processing facility located in Missouri. The governor said, “Advances in the lab over the past 25 years have shown that it’s possible to feed and process cattle using methods that are both economically and environmentally sustainable. So what’s stopping us?”
Dr. Shane Gadberry, professor of animal science with University of Arkansas Extension, said despite the lack of a cattle finishing industry there are two common scenarios in the Ozarks where calves may be fed a fairly high rate of grain. One of those involves backgrounders who buy weaned calves at the sale barn rather than growing them out on pasture. “They’re either put in a dry lot situation or they’re housed on pasture, but the bulk of their diet is grain,” Gadberry told Ozarks Farm & Neighbor. “In those situations, we will typically see cattlemen feeding grain at a level where they’re trying to target somewhere around a 2.0-2.5 pound daily rate of gain. Those will typically be diets where about 60 percent of what the calf eats is a grain or a grain byproduct feed-type mix.”
Gadberry said up until recently, byproducts like distillers grains, corn gluten feed or soybean hulls were the basis for the concentrate portion of the rations; frequently, they involved 3 or 5-way commodity blends. But this past fall, the drop in corn prices caused a shift. He said, “We might find a cattleman that’s backgrounding calves on a diet that is 30-40 percent hay, and the other 60-70 percent – if they’re really trying to push those calves – could be a distillers’ grain/corn mix, instead of the 3-way commodity blend that they may have used in the past.”
Some cattle are also fed out by entrepreneurs who market sides of beef to neighbors or local stores or restaurants. Gadberry said, “The consumer may have interest in purchasing local product, and may be thinking they may be able to acquire beef more economically from the local cattleman.” Those ranchers, he cautioned, “have to really watch their costs and make sure that when they are growing out that calf to 1,000 or more pounds they’re looking at the cost that it took to get the calf there, to make sure they’re not providing that service at a financial loss to their operation.”
But he said there has been increasing interest in procuring locally grown beef and other food, in part because consumers want to support their local economies and farmers, and because they want to be more certain of where their food comes from. Gadberry said, “I’ve probably made more farm visits in the past two years helping producers look at finishing options on farm than I have in the past, and it’s been for different scales of being able to provide beef to consumers.”
