The Mercers use rotational grazing via extensive hot-wire cross fencing to milk all the beef production they can from their acres in a sustainable manner. As such, they've been known to cull calves with lousy dispositions that make frequent movements from pasture to pasture tougher.

Exploiting available forage also means running some open heifers and cows during the summer to sell as bred females in the fall.

Managing risk

Of course, lightweight cattle provide their own unique leverage and risk management.

“We have control of the market one time, when we put out the orders for the calves; after that, we're a price taker,” Mercer says. In between, he believes management can best dilute the inherent risk.

“It's a sinking feeling when you get a margin call… Rather than managing risk on the board, would we not have done better buying calves back of the market and concentrating on doing what we're good at?”

What the Mercers are most adept at is buying lightweight calves no heavier than 250 lbs., from no further than 120 miles away, and then sorting out their health, adding weight and sorting up marketable groups of feeder cattle. This starts and ends with the indivisible tandem of health and nutrition.

“We're buying these calves one head at a time. Some are delivered to the auction 24 hours before the sale,” explains Mercer. So the calves have plenty of time to mix and get run down. That's why Mercer waits a couple of days after arrival before initial processing.

“With flyweights, you teach them how to eat and drink and then give them some time. All the medicine in the world won't help if the calf won't eat,” he explains. “They're babies. Even with metaphylaxis in the fall, we'll wind up with 15% morbidity, but usually that 15% will respond.”

All of that in mind, the Mercers leave bulls intact until they weigh 350-400 lbs. Because the calves they buy are so young, about 95% of the male calves are intact.

“Then when it's a straight calf, we can dehorn, re-worm, castrate and all of the rest… These high-risk, 250-lb. calves can only take so much. We think taking them back through the chute an extra time later on is less stressful than trying to do everything at one time,” he says.

Incidentally, he uses the Newberry knife and technique. Compared to traditional knife cutting, Mercer says it saves stress and performance, besides being more effective.

Typically, calves arrive Wednesday and Thursday. “We process new calves early Saturday and try to feed them beforehand because a lot of times they won't go to the bunk the rest of the day,” Mercer says.

Of course, part of managing health on stocker calves, especially such high-risk ones, boils down to understanding your limitations.

“We don't like to bring in more than 50 head at one time because of our setup,” Mercer says. “My theory is that one more head than you can take care of can become a runaway train. When you double numbers in the stocker business, you can easily quadruple your problems.”

Calves start out on a commercial preconditioning ration (12% crude protein) for 7-10 days. “It's the most cost-effective way for us to deliver that level of protein,” he says.

Cattle continue on a lower-protein ration in grass traps for another 14-21 days. “That's the time of year we're trying to grow frame,” Mercer explains. Then they move to pasture.

“We use feed as a supplement only. We want them to do everything on the grass we grow,” he says. “We'd still like to see more value delivered from our summer grass using stockers, and try to cut some expenses out of our winter-grazing period, but there's still no substitute for ryegrass in our region for putting weight on cattle so efficiently.”

Putting it together

Though there are days Mercer still wishes for a cookie-cutter blueprint for effective management, he's resigned to the fact that, “Every load of cattle is different and must be managed and sold with this in mind.”

The same goes for marketing. “Ideally, we'd like to sell every calf, but sometimes we think the cattle are worth more than we can get. Then we'll feed them, but we don't like to. We'd rather just do what we know we're good at,” Mercer says. They'll market cattle a number of ways, and rely on relationships and the reputation they've developed with feedlots, order buyers and sale barns.

“It's not any one thing; we've just evolved to the point where we can make a profit on most of the calves,” he says. “$100/head and a 15-20% return on investment is what we shoot for. It doesn't always work like that, but that's what you want to shoot for to stay in it for the long haul.

“We think we do a good job with the size of calf we take on to graze. We watch the pennies, and the dollars take care of themselves. For us, it's about doing a few things well and knowing what they are, as well as knowing what we don't do well, and what we don't want to do,” Mercer says.