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Farm & Ranch Happenings

published: March 19th 2010
by: Harvey Buehring

“Along with Spring Optimism comes Choices”
    Texas annual major livestock shows are wrapping up.  Trees are leafing out. Wild flowers are showing their vibrant colors along the roadways.  Pastures are redolent with the earthy scents of grasses greening-up. Farmers are seeding their fields with warm season crops.    These are sure signs that springtime has finally arrived.  
    In South Texas, wet field conditions during January and February halted field preparation for spring planting.  Most farmers in the Coastal Bend region were at least a month behind in getting fields fertilized and sprayed for problem weeds.   As March arrived the soil began to dry.  Fertilizer application rigs and tillage equipment were running at a fast pace.   By the second week of March planters were frantically making up for lost time.  In fact,  fields  with good drainage and locations with greater sand content experienced steady renovation. Those areas with the typical “black gumbo” heavy-clay soils  prevalent in the eastern portions of Refugio, San Patricio, and Nueces Counties fell further behind.
    As of the first week of March,  the weekly summary of crop condition reports for Texas indicated that corn planting was estimated to be 6% completed compared to 19% as of this time last year.  The five year average of corn planting completion for this time span  was 17%.   The numbers verify the degree to which wet field conditions and cool soil temperatures have delayed farmers in South and Central Texas with planting their corn acreage.  Fortunately, the report was not as bad as some had expected.  Texas is only 11% behind its five year average.   With continued good weather conditions, the five year planting progress analysis could narrow into single digits by the end of March.     
    In the Coastal Bend, sorghum is the feed grain of choice for dryland farmers because of that crop’s superior drought tolerance over corn’s.   Planting of grain sorghum accelerated during the second week of March and is expected to continue throughout the month.   This year’s cotton acreage is expected to increase following three years of declines caused primarily by soft market prices and higher production costs.  Cotton acres are expected to expand by 12% to 15% in the Coastal Bend area in 2010.
    Those South Texas farmers who managed to get some spring wheat planted during a brief four to five day window of opportunity during January had vivid green, vigorously growing wheat fields as temperatures started to warm in mid-March.   The winter wheat  in Kansas is rated at 60% of their crop as being “good to very good”.   That report may do little to boost the wheat futures market.
    Improvements in pastures and rangeland conditions have many Texas beef cattle producers analyzing the feasibility of restocking  their breeding herd  to pre-drought levels. Unfortun-ately, drought seldom provides cattle producers with the opportunity to “sell out high and buy back low”.    The timing and approach to restocking can be  a difficult decision. Your choices are deserving of thoughtful scrutiny to what options are best for your operation and what restocking resources are available.  Furthermore, you have the opportunity to decide if this is the optimal time to upgrade your breeding herd.        
    Recently, some of the purebred cattle sales have posted sale averages for bred heifers ranging between $1,050 and $1,250.  Pairs at those special purebred  sales were running between $1,200 and $1,800, depending on the breed and the size and quality of the calf-at-side. Commer-cial grade pairs offered at auction barn weekly sales across South Texas and the Gulf Coast Counties were also in good demand. Early March prices for pairs in that part of the state were ranging between $750 to $850 for the lower end, up to $1,000 to 1,100 for the top end.   
    Restocking decisions are difficult following a drought.  Usually post-drought livestock prices are stout for quality replacements.   So, it  boils down to paying the higher prices for the good “proven-producer” kinds and hoping  they will be highly productive and their calves will wean heavy and sell high.    Or, you can spend a lot of time picking breeding age heifers or bred heifers trying to save two hundred to three hundred dollars per head in an effort to get a few more head with your money.   
    If you choose the latter path for restocking, be mindful of the fact that your next marketable calf crop is likely to be 15 to 20 months away. Further-more, there may be time delays in having a market ready calf to sell when the proceeds are needed to help pay for the expense of owning that breeding cow.  This is an important consideration particularly if the cow was purchased using  borrowed funds.
    The last time I opted to restock with open heifers, I got a “refresher course” in why that is not the best option for me.   If you don’t live on the place where you are calving out those heifers and are routinely more than four to five hours away from viewing those heifers, you are at a major disadvantage.  Furthermore, if you don’t have, adjacent to your backyard,  a small pasture with some well-lighted pens complete with a covered shed for protection from the cold, wet weather, you are also likely to have a challenging and disappointing experience.
    You also need to be on a first name basis with a good large animal vet who will come out after dark to deal with those serious calving problems beyond your expertise. My most recent experience included only eight heifers.  We managed to get five live calves with seven of the eight heifers surviving their first calving season.  Only one veterinarian call resulted, but since he saved the heifer trying to give birth to a backwards and upside down presentation, the cost of the “house call” wasnít for naught even though that calf didn’t make it.  One heifer with calf died in the pasture. The third calf lost was pulled with the aid of a kind neighbor, hence no out-of-pocket cost to that mortality as yet.   That  payback is still to come.
    From an economic standpoint, those heifers had a cost average of $770 per head.  Good pairs were selling in the $1,000 to $1,100 per head range at that time.  When all was
said and done the $230 saved on the per head average did not offset the loss of three $500.00 calves ($1,500)  plus a $770 heifer with 10 months of added feeding and breeding expenses. 
    The bottom line is that restocking is an expensive proposition.    Granted,  a $1,000 middle-aged crossbred commercial cow with a small heifer calf at side still sounds real “pricey”.   But remember, the open-heifer alternative may not be the best choice for you. The associated risks of higher mortality, grow-out costs and time delays before you have a market-ready calf from that heifer, kept those  $750 to $850 heifers  far from being a bargain!   In my case “a penny saved may not be a penny earned”.   But we can’t forget that all cows were open heifers at one time.   Hats off to the guys who develop them into good productive mamma cows.
SLS