Gage County
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News Column

Paul C Hay, Extension Educator

Beef Cow Rations

For some time I. have been expecting to see a major reorganization of the beef industry. I believe this will happen because of new technology advances and the gap between what is known and what is applied by the average operation in the field. I see the need to track animals and management of those animals from birth to meat case. I see the difficulties in the current system for packers/marketers to acquire a uniform type of animal and a uniform managed animal. I see the emergence of more fully-cooked, fully-prepared beef product for the consumer. I see the contracts for uniform case-ready meat in large volume delivered to retail chains.

I bought a package of Hormel fully-cooked roast beef the other day. We added a few vegetables, a bit of rice and we had a quality family meal at an affordable price.

The poultry industry organized by vertical integration. The company owns the birds, provides the lion's share of the management, contracts for labor and some building needs with farmers, and realizes the profits in accordance with their risk. Swine has followed this model, with changes reflecting the increased care needed for the animal. The integration model seems to be changing in pork and the first glimpses of the reorganization in beef seem to be a vertical coordination model.

What do I mean by vertical coordination? How do I see it as different from vertical integration? I see the management coordination being directed from top to bottom. I see opportunity for producers to follow and meet management contract specifications for delivery to the feedlot, to the packer/marketer, and to the retailer. The company will direct the management via contract specifications versus ownership. This would represent a significant challenge to our small independent cow-calf producers. There are vast differences in herd breeding & feeding programs, health plans, etc.

I help direct the 4-H Catch-A-Calf program at the Ak-sar-ben 4-11 Livestock Exposition. Twenty-five youth get calves of the same breeding, hand selected to be as uniform as possible. When they return to Ak-sar-ben they have varied in weight from 1125 to 1680 pounds. Feed costs have varied from 25 to 65 cents per pound. The cattle look uniform only in the color pattern.

The small operator will only have access to the waiting pen in the feedlot if the pen can be filled with matching cattle. Matching in breeding, management, and performance. Various packing/marketing operations would have different specifications for their cattle, so there would still be room for considerable diversity.

These are my thoughts and they are probably about as accurate as killing flies with a dart at the side of the barn. I think I have the right barn! I believe in focusing on changes and trying to identfy the opportunity. I spent too much of my life already trying to rale against changes.

View other Gage County News Columns & News Letters: http://gage.unl.edu/news/news.htm

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