A newly-developed
calculator helps beef producers weigh the costs and benefits of including pregnancy testing, or “preg-checking,” as a management decision. “The benefits of preg-checking include the evaluation of herd or bull fertility, the identification of a calving date, and the cost savings of overwintering non-pregnant cows,” says Brenna Grant, project manager at Canfax Research Services.
According to the 2015 Western Canadian Cow Calf Survey, only 60 per cent of cow-calf producers include preg-checking in their management. “By using the new calculator, producers can input information about their own operation such as winter feeding strategies and costs, veterinary costs, and current market prices to determine the value of preg-checking on their operation” says Grant. The customized results will compare losses or profits between selling open cows in the fall, overwintering cull cows as a separate group and marketing them in the spring, and overwintering all cows together without preg-checking.
The calculator has both a basic and an advanced option. The basic model only requires six pieces of information: herd size, winter feeding system, month of preg-checking, calving month, current cow price, and which month that cow price is from. The calculator provides four different winter feeding scenarios with typical costs, but producers can also put in their own costs, as well as days on feed and average daily gain in the advanced model to get more accurate results.
Source : Agriculture and Forestry