Producers who are considering sending cattle to a feedyard should do a little homework before loading the trailer.
University of Missouri Extension Livestock Specialist Dr. Patrick Davis, who is based in Cedar County, Mo., said producers who wish to retain ownership should ask themselves what they hope to gain and if the overall cost is feasible.
“Even with the low prices on fed cattle right now, there are still producers out there who are making money,” he said. “A lot of that depends on how those cattle are marketed and if there is risk protection involved.”
Building a relationship with a facility and having an understanding of how it is operated is critical.
“I’d ask how the cattle are fed, what type of ration they are getting, and how might it change depending price and/or availability? What type of nutritional supplement are they using?” Davis said. “You want to know about their health program and their implant program at the yard.”
How cattle are marketed at the time of slaughter should also be discussed with the feedyard.
“You really need have a good discussion to make sure you have a good marketing program for those cattle,” Davis said. “All feedyards market them differently; are they sold on grid, live? If producers really aren’t sure how their cattle would grade, they might want to sell them live. If they are sure about the genetics and know they are the type of cattle the packers want, they might go and sell them on a grid. How they market the cattle and how they protect your investment is important, and the types of risk protection they can work with you on.”
Before sending cattle to the feed yard, Davis said producers should take a look at their health protocols.
“You need to have a good health program, that means consulting with a veterinarian and getting one in place,” he said. “If you have a good health program in place, those cattle are less likely to be stressed, less likely to get sick. It can still happen, but you want to try and prevent sickness as much as possible before you get to the feedyard. A lot of these illness issues, it is cheaper to prevent them than treat them.”
Davis said knowing the types of vaccinations needed goes back to the need to build a relationship with the feedyard.
“It’s important to check on that, and even going as far as to find out about castration and dehorning,” he said. “You need to find out what works best (for that feedyard) to make sure those calves are healthy all the way through.”
He also recommended that producers do a little preconditioning of their cattle before sending them to the feedyard.
“You need to get them used to a feed bunk, a waterer because when they go to the feedyard you want to reduce that amount of time they are learning to use the feed bunk and the waterer,” Davis said.
Many producers are striving to produce the best animal possible for the market, so sending animals to a feedyard can provide data about their animals, and if there is room for improvement.
“They might be able to get as much data as individual carcass information, depending on how the cattle are sold and how much money (producers) want to pay,” Davis said. “If you are wanting to sell into a market for high-quality beef or you are selling on a grid, you need to have that information so that you can make your breeding decisions on that. You can get performance data, pen efficiency data, carcass cutout data, but those are all things you want to visit with the feedyard around. It varies on what they are able to acquire and, obviously, the more data you are wanting, the more it will cost you.”
For those producers looking to feed a small number of calves in an effort to obtain grading data, Davis recommended looking at programs that are ran by companies and organizations, not a commercial feedyard.
He added that sending cattle to a feedyard is no guarantee for profit.
“You might break even, depending on how much you have in them to start with,” Davis said. “You really have to pencil it out and look at the cost side of it. Sometimes it makes sense to feed calves, others times it makes sense for someone else to feed calves.”
