The announcement that Japan will drop its 20-month age requirement on Feb. 1 and begin accepting cattle that are 30 months of age or less removes a major obstacle to exporting product to what used to be our number-one customer (and still our second largest market). The U.S. Meat Export Federation estimates this will equate to an increase of around $20/head for every fed animal in the U.S....More

In my last three articles, I’ve discussed managing toward a 30-day calving season, developing and selecting replacement heifers, and culling cows and selecting bulls. If you were to review those articles, you would find some repetition and some interconnection of ideas. The question posed by this article’s headline relates to that inter-connectedness and ideas presented in earlier articles....More

The commodity system used to let low-cost producers get away with producing a low-quality product. Meanwhile, the value-based marketing revolution allowed producers to get away with not being concerned with costs of production. Those days are gone....More

Cattle numbers are tightening and will continue to decrease as a result of drought conditions that made 2012 another liquidation year. The industry will need to increase heifer retention to maintain numbers, but expanding the cowherd will require a substantial increase in the number of heifers being kept back out of the feeder mix....More

The 2012 summer drought hit much of cow country. Derrell Peel, Oklahoma State University Extension economist, summed up the situation in late August this way: “The percent of pastures and range rated as poor to very poor is 59% for the entire country, with higher percentages for the Great Plains (77%), Corn Belt (69%), and Southern Plains (66%), along with the Western region at 54%.”...More