Air January 23, 2002

Thank you Mark, and good morning everyone. The Farm Bill Meeting is this Friday over in Manhattan. We need to get reservations called in today so give me a call if you are interested in attending!

As usual, the 4-State Beef Conference last week brought some outstanding speakers in the beef cattle industry to Kansas. If you want copies of the program, give me a call and I’ll run some for you. I’m not going to try to condense four hours of presentations into 150 seconds, but let me pull out a couple of excerpts that may whet your appetite enough so that you’ll want a copy of the proceedings. The proceedings are also available on the web, contact me if you want that address! Preconditioning - Probably the most important preconditioning that you can do, is to not stress the calves. Don’t wait until weaning to work the calves. Castrate and vaccinate prior to weaning. Wean the calves, at home, not on the truck. Weaning is probably the biggest stress on a calf, and a lot of problems that occur later on may well trace back to weaning stress. Year Around Grazing - Take the time to look for opportunities to increase the amount of grazing your cattle can do. Most estimates point to 50 cents a day savings when cattle can graze adequate forage compared to when they have to be fed. For every week of quality grazing, you can save yourself $3.50. There are many alternative grazing possibilities that you can look at and consider IF you’ll take a step outside of tradition. Mineral programs for beef cows and stockers. There is probably a lot more mineral supplement being sold than actually needed. We are in a fortunate location where many of our forages contain adequate quantities of micronutrients. Phosphorus, sodium and magnesium are the most likely elements to be deficient. Don’t be buying expensive mineral supplements IF you don’t need them. Developing a marketing plan for your cattle - what this boils down to, is knowing what the buyers want. Spend extra time at the sale barn and see what kind of cattle the buyers are paying premiums for. If you aren’t bringing the kind of calves to the sale barn that the buyers are willing to pay extra for, maybe it’s time to reexamine your own production plan. Well, that was just a quick sampling - contact me for a printed copy to fill in the blanks!

This is Chuck Otte, Geary County Extension Agent, with Ag Outlook 2002.

Return to Radio Home Page

Return to Ag Home Page