Research focuses on lowering input costs

By SUE ROESLER, Farm & Ranch Guide
Thursday, March 29, 2007 3:08 PM CDT

Cattle at the ARS research station in Mandan, N.D., graze on Altai wildrye this past fall and winter.

MANDAN, N.D. - Production input costs for cow-calf producers continue to rise, while the value of cull cows has clearly not risen as quickly, said a scientist at the USDA-ARS Northern Great Plains Research Laboratory in Mandan.

Dr. Scott Kronberg, an ARS research range scientist with an animal focus, said his fall and winter grazing research project is looking at ways to reduce those input costs with longer grazing.

“If calf producers get less for their calves, they may still be able to produce them profitably if they can lower their calf production costs,” said Kronberg. “I think we will see a move into lower inputs in cattle production, and one major way to do this is to lower winter feed costs.”

In this region of the country, especially, a major part of calf production costs are associated with feeding a lot of hay to pregnant cows in the winter.

He said the research is focusing on finding good forages that cattle can graze in the winter, even in some snowfall, so ranchers can save some on hay.

“Hay prices are certainly not always as high as they are now, but generally feeding cows hay costs a rancher more compared to letting the cows graze,” said Kronberg. He adds there are a lot of input costs associated with hay production including the costs of labor, fuel, supplies and machinery.

The research compares the nutritional response of cows grazing in the fall and winter on a certain type of pasture grass called Altai wildrye, versus windrowed millet, then windrowed corn and standard mixed grass prairie plus grass hay.

Kronberg said the study is not far enough along to present data yet. He and Eric Scholljegerdes, an ARS animal scientist at Mandan, have less than a year of actual data and won't complete the final results until 2009.

The initial data points to some promising research, however, and they may release some results sooner when they have collected more control data, said Kronberg.

Cows who were winter grazed this past season in Altai did well. And cows who were fall grazed in windrowed corn stalks also did well.

“The key to this (research) is economics. Until we know how the economic data bears out, it doesn't make as much of a positive impact,” Kronberg said.

A few years ago after the idea for the research study was formed, the ARS scientist searched for an alternative pasture grass that would grow well in the region, provide high-quality roughage and be able to be grazed long into the winter months when snow would be on the ground.

Kronberg narrowed his search to Altai wildrye, a large cool season grass that tends to grow very tall, often up to 3 feet, and is native to the Altai Mountains in central Asia.

“It tends to be higher in protein than other grasses - a good forage,” he added.

Altai can use subsoil moisture at deeper levels than other grasses, making it a good choice when drought is a factor. It also has a long season of growth, which is ideal since it will be in usable grazing condition in the winter snow months.

“Altai grows slow, and picks up in the fall,” he said. During the research project, the scientists noted the wildrye sustained through the late summer drought in 2006, then with the added precipitation in August and September, the grass grew fair and then “really picked up in the fall.”

Kronberg cautions that Altai needs to be planted in a clean field because the early seedlings are not as resistant to weeds as other grasses are, and costs to get it established in the ground are “fairly expensive.”

He hopes there is not the drought this year as there was last year so the project can harvest corn first before allowing the cows to graze the windrowed corn stalks.

“The idea with the corn, is to harvest the corn grain, then let the cows graze the windrowed stalks,” said Kronberg, adding that helps lower inputs because ranchers will get double use of the same crop.

“If we don't grow corn (in a drought-stressed summer), we can windrow everything and let the cattle graze it anyway,” he adds. That's what happened last year with the corn study. The corn crop was too poor to take to the elevator.

The research is utilizing smaller-framed Angus cows, Kronberg said.

The reasons the research chose the smaller-framed cows are:

- These cows may be more efficient calf producers, consuming less forage per pound of calf produced.

- These cows may produce calves that, once grown and fattened to Choice grade, will be smaller, around 1,150 pounds at slaughter. “So we want to use smaller cows and bulls to produce smaller offspring,” Kronberg said.

- The smaller-framed cattle produced from smaller-framed cows and bulls are easier to finish on high-quality forage during the short northern region's growing season.

Kronberg said that typical cattle in this region are finished at 1,200 to 1,500 pounds, and are difficult to finish because because of the short growing season. “We run out of forage growing season before the cattle are finished,” hesaid.

“There's a small but growing interest in this type of beef,” Kronberg added.

Costs to finish cattle in a feedlot are growing due to the high price of corn and other feedstocks are also becoming expensive. And there are studies going on at NDSU that are looking at alternative feeds at the feedlot, so ARS decided not to duplicate that research, but go a different route.

“When I first started out (in the research project,) I didn't expect $3 corn to come so soon, but we knew it was coming,” he said. “Plus, if corn and other grains stay high priced, we may see more interest in finishing cattle with less grain.”

Kronberg said there may be a move toward ethanol plants utilizing cellulose in the future.

“If a lot of grassland in this northern region is used to grow grass for cellulosic ethanol, cattle producers will have a lot of incentive to raise cattle that are very efficient users of the grass pastures and other feeds that are still available and affordable for them,” he said. “If our country gets serious about producing ethanol from grains and forages, beef will likely become more expensive to raise and for consumers to buy.”

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