For Release December 11, 2001

AGRI-VIEWS
by Chuck Otte, Geary County Extension Agent

It has been said time and time again, that the difference between average and above average agricultural producers is the attention that is paid to the little things. It seems that everyone manages to catch the big stuff. But it is invariably the producer that takes the extra time to check out the little details that is in the top of the pack.

For instance, some recent numbers out of Texas A&M simply reinforced what we’ve been seeing in Kansas data for years. They looked at the average Texas cow-calf producer compared to the top 25%, based on net income. Calving percentage and calf crop percentage were less than two percentage points different. The top producers were not producing that many more calves. What made the difference? Feed costs did! The top 25% had feed costs that were 30% lower than the average. That difference in feed cost translated into a total cash cost per pound of calf sold that was 30 cents less for the top producers.

How did those top producers reduce their feed costs so much? Well, it wasn’t through discounts from buying large amounts of feed. It was the attention to the little things. Feed cows by body condition groups. Analyze your feed and then make sure that you are not over feeding them, which wastes money, or under feeding them, which hurts production. Another critical little management item is to make sure that you aren’t wasting feed.

We too often take hay for granted. We raise it, we bale it, we sometimes move it in out of the weather and then we feed it when we need to. Since we often don’t have to actually buy it, it develops a value of zero. But if you figure out how much time and effort you put into it, it does have value. All you have to do is look at the weekly Kansas Hay Market reports and you can see that they don’t give hay away, especially in a year when it’s in short supply. Good quality prairie hay is ranging anywhere from 45 to 80 dollars a ton right now. Bromegrass is ranging from 50 to 90 a ton and good alfalfa can range from 70 to 130 dollars a ton.

Okay, even if you didn’t buy your hay, it still certainly has value. When you do have to start haying your cattle, how do you feed it? Do you grind it and feed it in a bunk? Do you place it in a rack in the pasture or do you just roll it out on the ground?

Ground hay fed in a bunk will usually reduce waste down to the 3% to 5% rate that we would expect with most bunk feeding. Using a rack, which allows the cows access to the hay without trampling it down or bedding on it is a great, and inexpensive way to reduce waste. Using a rack we expect waste to be under 10%. Taking the same hay in the same size bale and just rolling it out in the pasture can cause waste to skyrocket. Losses in the 15% to 43% have been reported from studies.

Let’s assume a best case scenario, with hay rolled out in the pasture, and you only have 25% waste. That instantly increases the cost of that hay from say $75 a ton for good native hay to $100 a ton. Or consider it $25 worth of wasted hay. It doesn’t take too long until you can pay for a bale feeder!

If it were easy to make money in production agriculture, we wouldn’t be losing farmers and ranchers at the rate we are. It’s stiff competition and only the good managers will survive the long haul. So remember, it’s the good manager that learns to pay attention to the little details!

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