 Hello, I'm Ken Kelly, a regional farm and agribusiness agent with Alabama Cooperative Extension System. This video will cover strategies 4 through 6 for reducing cost to production in your cattle operation. The fourth cost to production reduction strategy we want to talk about is having a controlled breeding season. While many producers have a breeding season, there are still a lot of producers in Alabama that can have year-round. January 1st to December 31st is not an acceptable breeding season. There's one big reason to have a cabin season or to tighten your cabin season if you already have one, and that is that it will make you money to do so. Cabin season makes you money in three ways, feeding, health and marketing. The nutrient requirements of cattle vary greatly between dry pregnant cows and lactating cows. The National Research Council in its publication, Nutrient Requirements of Beef Cattle, shows the difference in nutrient requirements for a 1,200 pound brood cow producing a 600 pound calf, varies from 6% crude protein and 44% energy requirements for dry cattle to a 12% crude protein and 63% energy requirement for lactating cattle. That's a difference of right at 50% for protein levels and 30% for energy levels. Most feedstuffs will contain 6% crude protein and 44% energy, while few will contain 12% crude protein and 63% energy. That means that only by having your herd in the same production phase can you really feed efficiently. Otherwise, you're either overfeeding or underfeeding and will be costing yourself money. Health protocols also become much more feasible when all animals are in the same stage of production. Many vaccinations need to be given at certain points in the production cycle, and if all of your animals aren't at the same cycle, it becomes cumbersome to administer vaccinations, and many producers in this situation will opt not to give them. Lastly, having a cabin season directly affects how you can market your animals. If you have a group of animals that are similar in age, weight and kind, you can offer them as a group in a graded sale or as part of a whole or parcel truckload in a board sale, or sell them as a group in the local sale barn. In general, buyers are much more willing to pay a premium for a group of like animals than they are for singles. The fifth strategy we have to reduce production costs would be the soil test. There's an old joke that whatever question you ask an extension agent, he'll tell you the first thing you need to do is the soil test. There is a reason for that. In just about everything we do in agriculture, including livestock, it begins with the soil. Livestock production is most profitable and sustainable when producers rely primarily on forages and grazing as their feed source. The most expensive part of producing forages, particularly hay, is adding the nutrients to your soil that it needs to produce the forage. The thing to keep in mind is that no two soils are exactly the same. That includes on your farm. One field might have a totally different soil and nutrient profile than does another field right down the road. It's impossible to know what your soil needs unless you sample. You can't look at your soil and tell what fertilizer it needs. Your extension agent can't, and the local fertilizer salesman can't either. Fertilized costs can range from as little as $25 per acre to literally hundreds of dollars per acre. Sometimes you can actually do more harm than good if you supply the wrong nutrients or wrong amounts of the nutrients to your soil. For example, if your pH is already low and you don't lime, but you do apply nitrogen-type fertilizer, you more than likely drive the pH even lower and the plants won't be able to utilize either the nitrogen nor the other nutrients currently in your soil. Soil samples are extremely cheap relative to the cost of fertilizer. They can be done at various university soil labs, including Auburn, as well as numerous private labs. No matter where you send your soil samples, if you will use the information obtained from them, it'll make you money in the cattle business. Our last strategy we will discuss as we try to reduce our cost of production is the use of enterprise budgets. Enterprise budgets provide an excellent planning tool for producers when evaluating or adjusting their current operation when considering a different livestock enterprise or as a way to compare their particular operation with the average Alabama farm. Enterprise budgets contain suggested costs, returns, and depreciation for cow-calf, stalker, and even niche market producers. Enterprise budgets are an easy-to-use Excel format that allows producers to customize inputs to reflect their particular operation. Enterprise budgets prepared by the Alabama Cooperative Extension System Farm and Agriculture Business Team utilize expertise of specialists in livestock, agronomy, and economics to prepare a budget that is both realistic and current. But using your numbers will provide a more accurate picture of your operation. ACES budgets also contain sensitivity charts that producers can use to compare how different prices, costs, and production efficiencies affect profitability. Enterprise budgets are routinely updated and available on the ACES website. Thank you for watching as we discussed a few of the ways producers might reduce their cost of production and increase both profitability and sustainability. These are only a few of the things that producers might consider. Remember that every farmer, and every farm is unique in situation, and therefore not all strategies will be equally successful for all producers. I would encourage you to consult with your regional farm and agribusiness agent for additional information that might have benefited you and your operation.