Hi-Line Farm & Ranch April 2017

After 2016, when cattle prices dropped to as low as half the prices seen the previous two years, cattle producers are working their way through a typical weather-diverse Montana winter and spring to get calves on the ground safely and start the progress to the sale market again.

Though calving season most often starts in January or early February for the purebred cattle breeders, Klint and Lori Swanson of Shipwheel Cattle Co. south of Chinook wait until March, calving their herd of 350 registered black Angus cows along with their 1,000 head of commercial cows.

Klint Swanson said March 26 that he was halfway through his band of first-year heifers and just starting the cows.

"We're not your typical purebred operation. We raise coming 2-year-old bulls, so we don't have to calve early," he said. "We calve later, then hold them over, and we grow them out slow."

Swanson was raised on the family's ranch in Valier where they calved early in the year, and he said he came to the conclusion that the January-February weather was too tough on both humans and livestock.

But, he said, he also feels calving later gives him a good product to sell to his customers during his bull sale.

Registered cattle are born as early as possible in the year, he said, to give them the longest time possible to grow before being sold the next spring as yearling bulls. The problem with that, he added, is that the bulls have to be pushed with a more aggressive feed program to physically mature enough in size, but nothing can guarantee mental maturity.

Sometimes, these bulls are pushed too hard to create early growth, and this cuts back on their useful longevity, he said, and as yearlings in a herd, older bulls will likely run the young bulls off the cows, limiting the number of cows they will breed. Sometimes young bulls get hurt in this fight for dominance, he said.

His 2-year-old bulls are allowed to grow slowly and gain mental maturity with the extra year, Swanson added.

"Yearling bulls work fine if they don't get worked too hard, just kind of depends on what kind of terrain that they get run in," he said.

"There are some guys that really like the older bulls," he said. "Typically, guys that are running in big country and need some bulls, they don't like the yearling bulls because they just can't cover the ground that the 2-year-olds do. And when they come in in the fall (the 2-year-old bulls) are not so run down - they don't have to baby them. The 2-year-olds are more mentally and physically prepared for the job."

Dennis Kleinjan spent March calving out a small herd of 40 cows for a friend, and the first heifer calves in his herd of 200 commercial cows had started arriving by March 19. The rest of his cows were due to start around the first of April, he said.

He said calving later in the spring makes good business sense in the long run.

"It makes it to where I can graze them a lot longer in the winter and don't have to put near as much hay in them - and then calve them a lot closer to green grass and get them babies on grass a lot quicker," he said.

He started the later calving season about three years ago, he added, after attending a Ranching for Profit seminar that was held in Billings.

Despite the shorter growing time for his calves, Kleinjan said, he sees little difference in weight come sale time from those who calve earlier in the spring and feels like he makes up the difference.

"We're off maybe 15, 20 pounds is all," he said. "For the amount of money I save in feed and everything, boy, it more than offsets what little we're down in weight. And I hardly ever lose one from cold or frozen ears or anything, so I think the death loss alone more than offsets the weight loss."

He also cuts down on feed expenses through careful pasture rotation, he said.

"We have a lot of grass," he said. "We try to graze as long into the winter as we can."

He said he began the intensive grazing practice three or four years ago. He turns his cow-calf pairs out on pastures of crested wheat in early May. He grazes large numbers of cows on small acreage for three to four days then moves them on to the next patch. Most pastures are grazed only once a year, he said, and he only puts out straw or hay in the worst of winter cold spells and in early spring before calving.

"We've had really good luck with that, really improved the quality of the grasses and the way they use them. You're forcing them to eat spots. You know, a cow is lazy by nature. She'll stand there and grub everything around the watering hole if she can and never go to the far end of a pasture," he said. "Where we got them in, like, 20-acre parcels, and we force them to be up there utilizing it all."

This pasture rotation requires some extra fencing and development of more water lines or hauling water, he said, but it was well worth the effort and expense for the improvement in production and pasture health.

"There's a lot of re-growth ... and a lot of the native grasses are starting to come back," he said."

Tim Cowan, who ranches 10 miles north and east of Turner, said, unlike typical operations where the cows are brought to corrals, calving barns or even smaller pastures closer to the barn so they can be brought inside for birthing, his herd of about 650 mother cows are left out on pasture, using coulees and natural shelter for calving.

He said March 23 he was in full calving season, with his son and himself checking the cows first thing in the morning and again before dark, adding a few extra checks if the weather was bad.

Cowan said he runs mainly black Angus because he feels like they have the right mothering traits for his production methods.

"We select for motherability, that's one of the things we look for," he said. "Cows that can save that calf no matter what happens are the cows that we want the heifers kept out of for our replacements."

Sometimes protective cows can be aggressive with humans, he added, but they are careful to cull the ones who are too aggressive, as well.

"That's one thing we watch for, and we select for that, too. There's a fine line," he said. "If they're too aggressive they go down the road, too. We do put ear tags in every calf so we can follow them through up to weaning. If they're aggressive toward humans we don't want them around. It's no benefit to us. ... if they are aggressive when they calve, they will be aggressive in the coral - in other words, when you wean the calves, preg test the cows, stuff like that - and we rely on neighbors to help us to do those jobs, so we can't have that. There's a fine line, and we try to keep that line within reason."

Another rule he said he strictly follows to ensure hardiness in his herd is to sell any cow that doesn't have a calf at the end of the summer.

"They're gone. We don't keep them - they don't get a second chance. It doesn't matter what the reason is," he said. "They're gone."

Sometimes the calf might be lost to bad luck, he said, maybe a cow slipped on the ice, or a storm hit, or the coyotes came in, or some anomaly occurred and the cow didn't get pregnant or lost a calf later - but maybe the cow is lame, or failed to be protective during a storm or against coyotes, or she has a disease that caused her to be sterile or abort.

Culling these cows has made his herd strong, he said, and he has a high ratio of live births to cows with a positive preg-test as well as calves surviving to be shipped in the fall.

"We shoot for between 95 and 100 percent - which a hundred percent, as far as I'm concerned, is unreachable in our situation," he said. "But normally we're in between 95 and I'd say 98 percent. We're pretty consistent with that."

Calving later in the spring would help with calf loss due to cold, Cowan said, but he and his son, like many other producers, also juggle farming into their schedule. March calving gives the calves their best option for weaning weight, but gets the calving done in time to start seeding their crops, he said.

Cowan said he keeps 70-100 replacement heifers each year.

Kleinjan runs black baldy Angus-Hereford crosses because, he said, the crossbred cows have more vigor and put on more pounds, adding that he got started with this cross following one simple philosophy.

"Seems to me like all the studies they do, everything they compare, they compare to the F-1 baldy calf, which is a Hereford-Angus baldy calf, and I figure if everyone is comparing to that why not be raising it," he said.

July 4, Kleinjan said, he put bulls out with his cows, crossing his straight Angus cows to a Hereford bull and his baldies to an Angus bull for his baldy cross.

Most of his Angus bulls are Shipwheel-bred, he added.

Swanson said, he breeds bulls that will give his customers cow herd improvement.

"We truly try to stick to the basics," he said, "just cattle with a lot of longevity that are going to make our commercial customers money. They're going to be good mothers, have good flushing ability (for embryo transplant), ... have good feet and udders and disposition, and some carcass traits as well. That's our main focus ... not to get too extreme in anyway. Not small, not too big."

Come sale time, the second Wednesday in December every year, Swanson's focus is on getting his registered bulls sold. He said, they have a feedlot to finish the bulls, a sale barn for the auction right on their place and set up the auction for live, online and telephone bidding. Customers also can preview the bulls via videos on their website.

Swanson said they sell a few bred heifers at their sale and retain some registered heifers as replacements, but any heifers beyond those numbers get sold with his commercial cows in October.

Shipwheel bulls typically sell across Montana and into Idaho, the Dakotas and Iowa, he said, adding that they deliver the bulls for free to the buyers after the sale and before their calving season starts again.

"We enjoy seeing new country, and we've had the opportunity to meet a lot of great people in this business," he said.

Kleinjan said he keeps his sales simple. He said he doesn't try to speculate on the ups and downs of the market, because it can change quickly, so he just secures a contract for his calves in July, and gives them their preconditioning shots prior to shipment in the fall.

Once the calves are gone, the cows go back to winter pasture with a protein supplement, he said, adding straw and hay when a big cold snap hits and in the spring prior to calving.

Cowan, who said he did OK on cattle prices last year despite the market, sells his cattle through Northern Livestock Video Auction in August, and said he has had good luck with that system.

Bidders purchase weanlings by pot loads which is, depending on weight of the calves, how many will fit in a tractor-trailer load. He said he contracts steer calves for a set weight with an allowable variance.

He usually sells only one load of heifers and keeps the rest of the heifers for replacement, he said, adding that if he has extra heifers he just sells those at auction because mixed loads of steers and heifers haven't sold well for him in the past.

His steers, he said, usually sell at about 560 pounds and the heifers at 520. Years with good grass can bump those numbers up by 20 pounds, he added.

"Last year we had all kinds of grass. They should've been heavy," he said, but with an abnormal 25 to 30 inches of rain last summer the grass either didn't have a chance to mature or the moisture leached nutrition from the plants, so it looked good, but didn't add weight to his calves.

"It's something that I've never saw, and the guys that are older than me say the same thing," he said, adding that he was luckier than a lot of producers in the area and harvested his crops and hay between wet spells.

Some of that hay, though, and other hay that he bought got wet in the bale, but he said he was able to feed it using a processor to knock the mold out and using supplements.

"What this year will bring I don't know," he said with a laugh.

"It is a good lifestyle. I'm not going to say it isn't. It has its drawbacks, it definitely does," Cowan said, "but you show me something that doesn't."