PeruzeIt

Make Your Product Unique It will become increasingly important for cow/calf operations to differentiate their product (calves, yearlings, or fed cattle). While other major beef producing countries like China and Brazil are increasing their production of low cost beef, the U.S. must focus on producing high quality grain-fed beef. Within the U.S., regions of the country are being forced to differentiate their calves in order to overcome the growing gap between local calf price and calf price in the Cornbelt, where most cattle are fed. Similarly, marketing healthy calves that were preconditioned can return $4-8/cwt and calves eligible for natural or premium branded beef programs and alliances can return $3-7/cwt. In this time of high input costs, it is important for cow/calf producers to add value to their product by meeting the demands of the marketplace grain fed, highly-marbled, and differentiated beef that has a story behind it. It is becoming increasingly important for calves to be as heavy as possible prior to entering the feedyard, in an effort to reduce total cost of gain while on feed. Since feedyards don t have enough labor to manage newly-weaned calves, you will receive more for your calves if they are healthy, heavy, and ready to gain when they reach the feedyard.

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Posted Under: Beef