By Garth Ruff
When I teach Extension programs, I like to ask the audience questions to get a feel for the crowd. Usually, I ask about breeding season preferences, average cow weight in their herd (this one breaks the ice quick), their cost to develop beef heifers (cue the blank stares), and more recently: What did your cows “yield” last year?
This is an uncommon question in the beef cattle space, but one that is valuable to understand. Most grain producers know this number without hesitation either at the farm or field level. In a previous role I worked in swine production where pigs per sow per year, (PSY) was an annual metric used by that industry while pigs weaned/saved per litter was a weekly production target. However, as it relates to beef cow production it may take some thought as to what “yield” can mean. Let’s dive into it.
Many producers will have an idea as to what they sold their calves for and what they weighed at the time of sale. This is a good start to answering the question about cow herd “yield”, but it does not account for lost production.
Some producers may also have data regarding weaning and yearling weights which are great bits of information to track the cow’s ability to nurse and for the calf to grow, but once again due not count for production losses in the system.
Why factor in production losses? What losses are we concerned about? Accounting for lost production more accurately represents how the herd performed on a given farm. Production losses account for cows that did not have a calf and calves that for whatever reason died prior to weaning.
Thus, what I eventually get to in my cow-calf production talks is the metric of Weaning Rate. Weaning Rate is a simple equation calculating the percentage of cows exposed to a bull that weaned a calf. Example in a 30-cow exposed in a herd that weaned 27 calves: 27/30 = 0.9 for a 90% Weaning Rate.
Source : osu.edu