Latest / The Source – The Jorgensen Land & Cattle Podcast / Episode 21: The Cost of the Sort | Why Measuring Matters
Transcript
- Bosten Morehart: Mm-hmm. Over a hundred years of experience lie in ideal South Dakota. The team at Jorgensen Lan and Cattle is going to take the time to offer insight into that experience along with many other industry experts. If you're ready to learn and grow, this is the Source. What's up everybody? It's your host, Jamie Wolf, with another episode of the Source Podcast. I hope everybody's doing well. here in October in South Dakota, the weather is up and down, so We know that that's great fun for all of our guys that are out there weaning Kevs and sorting and pragging and and trying to to get things done this time of year. It always makes it tough. you know, at JLC we've been weaned for for a couple months here, so the the registered bull kivs are off and running. was in ideal yesterday and man they sure looked apart. really excited about this set of kibs that's gonna be coming. Man, everything that the mother load project was designed for is gonna show through this year. with this set of set of herd sires that's gonna be bringing you guys a set of bulls. They are they they have done exactly what you expected them to do. as always we're we're off and running, getting ready for some more sales. October twenty ninth, which is next week on Thursday at Jordan Cattle Auction, San Saba, Texas. 60 Head of Smart Bulls. Andy and David Thomas and Larry Grant will be down there along with Shannon Kubick that you guys have met. They'll be there representing the kettle. The kettle will be there. Videos are online. You guys have seen the new sales platform. Check that thing out. That's quite a set of bulls that's going to be going down there to San Saba. And then Arcadia, Florida, November 13th. Andy. Greg Jorgensen will be there representing the kettle. He is in Florida now. If y'all have any questions for Greg, give him a shout. Andy and myself will be going down to that sale in Arcadia. looking forward to meeting anybody down there that's a that's a fan of the source, come check us out. Yeah, it's just a just a busy time right now. getting a lot of wean kiosks in from the genetic partners. Kievs are doing good. excited to to keep rolling towards a new year here. I'm gonna fly solo today, guys. Gonna be a little bit of a different episode today. those of you that are familiar with if you listen to this podcast, I imagine you listen to to several other podcasts out there and the Bonsma approach in effect has been talked about. And Jan Bondsma's book is titled Man Must Measure. And I I've spent a lot of time thinking about man must measure and and what that measurement actually means. and it's not just phenotype on a cow. You know, you guys have heard heard Cody talk about phenotype versus performance and and what what we need to expect out of these cows and I wanted to dive into some of that today. with with cattle going to the sale barn today. you guys that that are spring Kevin you're you're thinking about weaning, marketing those cattle if you haven't already. you know obviously the video is is one way to go and Really what I wanted to dive into when it comes to to talking about measuring is the sort and what that sort means to you as a commercial producer at the sale barn, the money that it costs you and not just that but all the different things that if you're not measuring you have no idea of knowing what is costing you you money when it comes to these cows. And these cows have gotta work for you, right? You don't work for them. they need to make a living. And there is just things that that sometimes hurt us if we're not paying attention from a financial standpoint. And if we're not measuring it, we have no idea of of going back and and making the adjustment. you know, 'cause we've all got we've all got cows that maybe aren't doing their job. And so so when we talk about measuring, you know, and you get into a drought year like we had this year and you're going, I need to I need to get gonna have to lighten some cows up to to make this grass work and make my feed this winter work. And then you go, Well what cows do I get rid of? And you you really if you have no no prior information on those cows, there there's no way to objectively make that sort. And those are the little things that that can be the difference between staying in business and running down the road and and things being pretty tight and and having to make some really hard decisions. So the the first thing I I guess I want to dive into with you guys when we talk about understanding the measurement and you know, capturing some data on some individuals. let's talk about when you've got your kibbs and you're you're ready to head to the sale and you load all on the truck and they go to the barn and we we work in We work in load lots, right? And and fortunately in the north country, most everybody that that's gonna be following along, a lot of you do work in load lots and that's always a blessing, when it comes to getting the best price at the barn. However, when you get there, they're gonna sort them. They're gonna size they're gonna color that's that's what the sale barns do. So I I got busy here and I pulled a bunch of data. over the last basically thirty days at the at the sale barns. I looked at Valentine, Fort Pier, St. Ange, and Faith and really just kind of dove into those those different lots that, you know, this all all public information that's out there that a guy can a guy can look at and dig into and really kind of parse through what some of the information is and you know you figure a load of cattle is is roughly fifty thousand pounds obviously but guys are also dealing in in pen space at the at the feedlots that's another another factor when we start talking about selling these cattle. but let's say you've got, you know, eighty head of steers headed to the sail. and they sort twelve of So now all of a sudden you've got that that set of sixty eight that weighs five hundred, and then you've got those twelve odd ones. some of that data shows, you know, those those lighter lots, from a from a headcount and a value standpoint, they're gonna be somewhere between a hundred and sixty five and 250 bucks back of what your load brings. That's a substantial amount of money no matter what market we work in today. When those twelve Kievs are worth twenty five hundred dollars less than your load, that that dings you pretty good in your pocketbook. And you know, we just we'll look at some exam we talk about some examples here. When you look at a set of cattle, You know, the the big cut on this set I'm looking at at Fort Pier was a was a hundred and two head weighing four sixty. They dollared out at twenty one sixty six sixty and then there was a set coming behind seventy nine. They're same same set of cattle, just a setback. actually a a good example here because another basically load, seventy nine of but they come in at three seventy seven. So they're eighty three pounds back on the light end. That 79 head that was 83 pounds back on the light end. Now per hundredweight they bring forty-eight dollars more, but total value they were at $19.56.63. So they were $209.97 back on that 79 head that was the light end. So if we do that math, at $209.97 back. That producer. Left sixteen thousand five hundred and eighty seven dollars and sixty three cents off the on the table being eighty-three pounds back on that second load. Now running good numbers of cattle, those two loads, that probably is gonna make some sense. But are there things that you could do to tighten those cattle up to where that's seventy-nine is the same as the hundred and two? is it genetics? Is it Kevin date? Is it Windows? you know, are those kids just younger? Did those cows not get it done? all of those questions now when you look at it, can you answer those questions? And then are there simple things you can do to adjust that? Another example here, forty-eight black white face steers at five eighteen and then there is a sort of six black and red steers that were a hundred and fifty nine pounds back, six head of those that they sorted off from that load. Those kettle were five hundred and fifty two dollars and eighty cents back of what was in the main cut. So you've got weight and color playing a factor there. And then they sorted another five red and red white face steers off that that actually weighed more than the main cut. They were they were plus six pounds against against the main cut. They were two hundred and ninety-eight dollars and eighty five cents back of the main cut. And that was a straight color sort. so those little things are things that that cost that producer a pretty good amount of money. that through a time when you have to make a decision on a cow herd, you could truly make a change to what the value of those cattle are. yes, I understand having the cows you have and and making making it work on But there's there's things there where if you didn't have if those five red and red white faces were were the blacks that went with the main load, that's another three hundred dollars in value per head on those five individuals on cows that you're still running and paying to feed and expecting to make a living for ya. So, you know, there's a ton of examples here off those, you know, five barns over the last month, basically, you know, the the weight gap that fifty to a hundred pounds back averaged a hundred and sixty five dollars less than the main load. A hundred to one hundred and fifty pounds back was two hundred and eighteen dollars and a hundred and fifty plus is three hundred and ninety six dollars back of your main load. So that's that's a substantial amount of money on those tail enders that we're that we're leaving on the table. And is there ways in which we can mitigate that? And some of the things that that we can do there to maybe mitigate having that obviously every year we're gonna have the sort, right? Like Kievs get sick, it happens. But if we don't have tag to match and know what the what the Kievs that are making the sort are, how can we ever manage for that? You know, is that is that Kif out of a seven year old cow that every year her Kif has been in the sort. And if we don't know that, she's cost us over seven years at even at say a hundred dollars, she's cost us, you know, five hundred dollars against the rest of the cows that are doing their job and you could have replaced her with one that would do her job. sooner if you knew that every year she was putting one in that sort pen. color's the easy one. the color sort it kills you those Kiev's are back and that is a that's a simple fix of when you have the opportunity to replace that cow and make them all the same and more consistent, that truly gives you the opportunity to push forward and even those loads up on those cattle. So I'm not saying you have to have a scale, guys. I know that there's cost restrictions there and you probably don't want to individually weigh all those Kios, but but we know that everybody wants to go to the sale and watch their Kios sell. Well when you've got this the set that they sorted rolling through and you've got them tagged to match, you can just write the numbers down on the ones that that were in the sort. Well then you know going back to the cow herd, and you look back at your data and you go, Well well shoot, this has been three years in a row now that she's put one in the sort. that cow's costing me money, when we have the opportunity, let's make a decision and move her and replace her with one that that is gonna be more effective and efficient. And at the same time we know that the maternal side matters and that daughters of those cows that get it done typically get it done. So then as we're making decisions on replacements, well, we probably don't want to keep one out of her that she historically puts one in the pen that that isn't getting it done. So there's there's a million ways to take that data and use it to drive it forward. the other thing when it comes to the sort of sale is it's just Kevin Dates guys. you know, we turn the bulls out for ninety days the the KIF born on the first day, well he's got he's got a full ninety days of grow ahead of the the one that kills at the tail end and my goodness, ninety days at two pounds, that's 180 pounds. that one born on the last day, he is never gonna catch the first one. And so you know we we then drive the sort and when we drive the sort that decreases the value, first of all, on the on the front end load, because maybe we're not getting as many into that load to make it a full load. We know the feeders love to buy the full loads against those cattle that that got sorted off. And that's as simple as making decisions based upon, you know, whether we we don't turn the bulls out as long or we use ultrasound and and we market the lates and and that drives another conversation here about measuring and value guys and and that's the same same conversation we can have on on bread cows versus open cows and the value of of bread cows versus open cows. And you know at at JL C we obviously we sell the leaseboat program really hard. You guys know that you get those bills for sixty to ninety days. we deliver pick back up. Great, great program there. But so again, in those same barns, we look we can look at bread cattle against open cattle and way up cattle and and look at the value of you know whether it's having that open cow to sell and shortening our Kevin window to to be able to even those loads up. Or it is, you know, leaving those bulls turned out the full ninety days, but then having the discipline of no matter who she is, if she's behind this date, she's gonna go to town and we're gonna we're gonna make sure that we've we've squared these these loads off to where when we haven't go to sell that next set of feeder kettle that we're getting all the value out of we can and and you look at Just on this year's data, guys, we're looking at the last thirty days. I'm not an economist. There there's obviously guys that do a better job of this than I can, but I think it's pretty striking when you start talking about, you know, bread heifers versus, you know, those heifers sold as a pregged open yearland heifer. the bread heifers right now are averaging, you know, about thirty seven forty five and those those pregged open yearland heifers are are averaging about twenty nine ninety. that's seven hundred and fifty four dollars worth of value and in all reality just leaving the bulls out an extra thirty days on some of those open heifers they would have got bred we would have added another seven hundred and fifty four dollars worth of value to that heifer just for her having a Kiev in her even though she is a cull in our system. she's still coal, she's still leaving, she's still going down the road, but we added value. And so at seven hundred and fifty four dollars on say fifty head, if you catch, you know, five more of those heifers in those last thirty days and you sell that way. a s three thousand seven hundred and seventy dollars worth of value that we just drove. That pays for the lease on one of the bulls on on a female that would have still been a cull. so that's opportunity to add value your young cows is is really striking there. your bred heifers against those that were sold as heiferettes, you know, weighed up that way, that's an even even higher value. That's eleven hundred and forty three dollars back. that's That's a significant amount of money. your young cows, that's really a driving factor there. right now three to six year old cows, those running age type cows are bringing, you know, thirty four eighty one against you know, a comparable weight. the way I ran this analysis it did pull comparable weights on what those bred young cows were were weighing against what way up cows were weighing. So in that same price range, you know, way up cows, comparable weight at at around thirteen thirty against those young cows that have sold. their fourteen hundred and fifty dollars back is a way up. So if we are disciplined about pulling, leaving bulls in, but then at Preg check, being disciplined about, you know, those last thirty or forty five days or whatever it is of those cows going to town because we we don't want to keep as long and we want to even up the the window. in those last thirty days, we added, you know, almost fifteen hundred dollars worth of value to a set of cows that we're gonna cull irregardless. But we did add value by and by adding value we maybe helped pay for our bull lease, use that as a driving factor. now those things do get the change gets less when you go to older cows. your your broke mouth cows, you're only down to adding six hundred dollars worth of value against them being bred. that's just a proxy of the market, but you did still add value to those older cows by getting them bred and then marketing them as a bread cow. And these are all things, guys, that it's pretty simple to measure. especially if we ultrasound for Kevin dates or we just record Kevin dates and you know that you have a cow that the last four three to four years has keved, you know, fifty days into your cycle. you haven't caught her up, you haven't moved her, she's keved behind. she's hurting you both from a how many days you have to Kev and then the load of those Kievs going to town because that Kiev is gonna be lighter than the Kievs on the front end. And that then drives how we get to adding value to that cow while replacing her with one that will hopefully Kev in the front end. so really really just just measuring, having the data spreadsheets today guys. record keeping. It's really not all that hard and then it's not just adding in the the record keeping but it's then the using it and you know there's a lot of a lot of things out there about different record management systems a and all of that and you know if you work with no matter who you work with from whether it's a seed stock provider or nutritionist or veterinarian, somebody will if you don't want to go through that data, somebody will help you get through it and be willing to help you make decisions based upon what your data's telling you. Because I do understand the the pushback of, you know, hey, I've got all this data but I don't know what to do with it. It's not in a form that I can use it in. really guys with artificial intelligence today, you can actually really, really easily use that data. but I understand that some of you some of you won't want to use that and that's that's completely acceptable. but work with somebody that can take your data and understand it. get it into a format that's digestible. you know if we're measuring and and now all of a sudden we get to a point where, you know, we're kind of measuring and and say we own our bull battery and we turn these two bulls out with this fifty cows that went over here and these two bulls out that went with these fifty cows over here and when we wean them and we've got tagged to match and and all of a sudden there's this set of that don't fit, then at least you have a starting point of an idea of well, was it a bull problem, was it a cow problem, was it a range problem? And then you add in once you start measuring and you start getting that data and you start to try to understand it, well it sometimes it leads to the next step and then you you start using say genomics where you got parentage and then you truly know what bulls are are getting it done, what bulls are failing ya. And again, it's a culling tool and the ability to say this bull is not performing against the rest of my herd sires. He's driving a sword at the sale barn. That's hurting the value of my feeder cattle. He needs to go. I need to replace him with something that will make kibs that go with the rest of my my deal. And as I've talked about already, there there's so much data that goes with that of of pricing and and cattle how cattle hit. guys all it takes is is simple measurements and you know saying that y records are hard to keep today and and so on and so forth. Well with Bluetooth scale heads and EID readers, man, guys it it's not that hard today to capture the data and get it into a format that's usable for ya. making decisions like this in the right way, especially say in a drought year like this this year has been where some of you had to make some decisions on some cows that just needed to leave. isn't it nice to just be able to to go into your your management however you're recording that data and and look at it and say, Well those are the fifteen cows that need to get on the truck. it takes any subjectivity out of it because we've all got our favorites. We've all got that cow that we just love. She knocks her socks off. Whether we we we know that she's out of this bull that we just loved and and she's gotta be that good. She's gotta be the one well, when the data says she's not, that makes decision making much simpler. then you can you can take what you know about her and make decisions based on it. Bulls the same way. guys there there's ways to get this done if we'll just just be be intentional about how we're doing it. we're more than happy to to visit with you about the the management software you're using, how you can do some of these things. we we work with a lot of great companies that that have scales or E I D readers and and we've played with and tested them all guys. if you're interested in in finding a system that will help you, all you have to do is is give us a call and and we're more than happy to provide our two cents as far as what we think works, what we think doesn't, what we like, what we don't like. obviously there's always things that that we need that you guys don't and there's there's simpler softwares out there to use. but just use one. even if it's just an Excel spreadsheet. Yeah, I do a million things in Excel. Excel's easy to use once you get into it. Anybody can do it. it just allows for so much simpler of a decision making process. And so so I just wanna wanna kind of cap this off with with the idea of you guys driving to measure, collect data, and just know that if you're not And you've got sixty-eight heifers, and then you've got thirteen that they sorted that were ninety-two pounds back, those thirteen were worth a hundred and ninety-seven dollars less than the other sixty-eight. If those thirteen pull up into that big load, not only does that add value to those thirteen, but it could add value to that other sixty eight because it makes that load bigger to fill a pen. these are all things guys that that the cattle feeders are thinking about. It's what the order buyers have orders for. that light sword at the cell barn is is just a killer. so again, it also goes back to to the genetics decisions that you're making and trying to put together a set of cattle that that can make that that one straight load. that I think is where we all wanna end up at to where when they go to the barn it's not that they're that they're all lights out and perfect and weigh seven hundred pounds at we ending time. That that's not what we're talking about. It's that when when somebody walks through and and goes to start sorting on that man, If it's replacement heifers going down the alley, I don't wanna have to do it without some more information besides just size and look because they're all the same. that is really the point that I wanted to get to today, guys, as you're as you're thinking about cooling this fall and preg checking and marketing your feeder cattle. Just think about the ways in which you can you can capture and measure data to help you make decisions moving forward. I think it can really help drive value in your operation. And we all wanna be around long enough to pass it on to the next generation and help them be set up to where They can just let it eat and not have to worry about it. So yeah, as always guys, this is the source. please if you if you get a chance, like, comment, subscribe, do all the things. make sure you're following the podcast on on any of your favorite podcast platforms. also Jorgens Atlanta Cattle Merch on the website, if you guys want to get some sweet hoodies or Nice vests, anything like that. Jorgensalanic Cattle branded. We have all that stuff available today. high end brands, good stuff, guys. if you're interested, check it out. And I appreciate you guys taking the time to listen to me kinda ramble today. But this has been been on my mind as I've been watching feeder cattle head to the barn and and just seeing seeing the amount of value that that's getting left on the table because of the sorted cell barn and and there's always things that we can do to help us push past that sort and and get to where those cattle all work in a straight load. So as always, thanks for thanks for tagging along with me today and and listening to my rambling and we'll catch you guys next time on the Source.