 Welcome, everybody. We're going to start our webinar now. I want to welcome you to the second spring livestock drought outlook live webinar that we're doing. Today we're going to do have some discussions around feed considerations for our cow herds here in the state. I'm Zach Carlson, beef extension specialist here and joining me is Carl Hoppe, the extension livestock specialist here at Carrington. And online we have Dr. Brian Parman joining us too. And he's going to fill us in in the second half here of our webinar on a little bit more of the economic side of things. But if some housekeeping to cover here right away, this will be recorded and posted. And so you can find the recording in a few days through NDSU extension social media links, as well as our NDSU extension YouTube channel. And so I encourage you to go back if we cover something too quick or whatnot and want to recap that. I will also encourage you if you missed last week, Dr. Kevin Sedevec in Miranda Meehan had a good discussion on pasture outlook and Adnan accused did a great job of kind of capturing the moisture that we've seen over this winter period and kind of gave us a spring outlook. And so if you missed last week's webinar, I encourage you and those same social media links in the YouTube channel, go back and find that recording which is posted now. And so with that, though, I think we will get started Carl and kind of, you know, the looking at the drought outlook for this week and kind of where we're at for that. Essentially, last week in the what Dr. Kevin Sedevec kind of I think he highlighted a really good point that we'll get to here. And he did a really great job of kind of looking at the moisture that was captured in the fall in the across the state and as of course we're kind of dealing with this this drought outlook in the central to western half of the state in particularly up into the northwest. And I think he did a great job of talking through, you know, the impacts and how severe the impact of spring grazing can be on our basically our forage production not knowing of course what precipitation we're going to receive in the spring in the fall, but how impactful it can be if we don't have our pasture turnout right. And so again, looking back at that webinar encourage you to go there but I think it set the stage really well for us to talk about if we don't. If you're in an area where we don't have a lot of precipitation, haven't had some for years at this point, and looking at, you know, a bleak outlook into spring precipitation while hoping for moisture. And this is a good time to talk about how can we adjust and make some feed decisions that will kind of lead us into being able to delay pasture turnout so we're not affecting that spring growth. And but that is not an easy thing to do Carl, because what we're dealing with is some some really high feed prices right. And just being able to get a hold of feed has been a real challenge. There's been a drought during the whole upper, whole Midwest region that we have here and because of that drought there wasn't much feed produced last year and now we're just short on feed we had a bad weather as well, meaning that it was not, at least in our neck of the woods here around Carrington, we had several blizzards throughout the whole winter more than normal a lot of gusty winds it was bad weather conditions so we fed more feed all winter long now we're getting to be springtime. There's not a lot of extra feed around. So our option is to keep feeding the cattle, or like we got the slide there cell. That's a tough decision when you're a cow cat person, 20 moves cows but certainly can. We've dealt with this before, as you can see in the slide there that was actually from 2017 I believe we've had droughts before in North Dakota we've persevered through them. It's just, we got another one that we're dealing with now and it's still lingering on so feed considerations are a big deal right now so that's right. I've kind of thought about this in terms of if we're going to have to continue feeding what does that feeding situation look like is it a supplementation on pasture to try to reduce forage intake a little bit, or we completely substitute feeding in a sense and and and actually you know keeping the cows somewhere in a say a sacrifice pasture or an append setting up by the barns or something like that and feeding them a limit fed high energy diet, or is it sending those, those animals off somewhere where drought isn't impacting that area as much and we can feed them at a cost there and so we'll kind of go through these things and but but ultimately trying to find that balance between reducing that that grazing pressure, but at the same time, trying to find an economic way to do it when feed prices are just that's very very high. That's a hard decision, although I just got to back up and say with our dry lot or you're not going to take care of the pasture can feed these cows and dry lot and we've actually done dry lot feeding of our cow herder here at Carrington for 30 to 40 years so it's it's something that's been done routinely. A lot of people do it just because the cost, but it can be done. I should mention too as we move forward here. If you have questions please put them in the chat and we'll be able to answer those throughout the entire discussion here today. Yeah. Well, when we talk about feeding cows and the hard part now is so when did you calf. If you kept in January and February have some different decisions in the guy that's just starting to calf right now. So we need to take that in context so just this one issue of what do we do. It really depends upon when calving seeds so as calving season started. So one of the first things we've got up here is a January February calving there's a few people that still do that in North Dakota. They've got barns they find out to work extremely well in their situation, because in the spring time that's when they start farming so this winter time calving works out really well actually for them right now. They're short on feed, maybe they are short on grass because there's not much out there. Maybe they consider early weaning the calves in May which is just next month they've already gotten enough feed on and to feed these cows, because they're fall cavers. I mean, excuse me January February cavers they're used to feeding lactating cows in the winter time. Put the calves and dry lot and at that time you can either put the cows out on grass their nutrient requirements are going to be a lot less because they're not lactating. In any grass you can put them out on out put them in a dry lot and feed them there. If you're a March early April calving operation. Well, maybe you consider early weaning them in July. The calves need to be old enough in order to be really be weaned off the cow, but that means you're planning on feeding them them right now because you really don't have much choice. So if you're going to feed them probably they'll be in dry lot and July time. If you don't have grass you can certainly wean them and put them into dry lot for the calves and both for the cows. Or if you do have enough grass by July it happens to rain, then you run the cows out and grass a lot of flexibility in that situation, just give a little time and like we spoke a little bit earlier, we can always supplement. So if you really don't want to early wean and there isn't much grass out and pasture you certainly take the cows out to pasture and provide some extra feed there or rotationally graze, or do some type of extra grazing thing or feeding thing that will get them through so it's some options We got one more scenario though yet and that really is we got may June cavers. A lot of us old guys have decided that calving in the wintertime is too much work and you let nature come to come to place and we're going to be calving in May and June, which means we don't have much choice and what we're going to do with these cows and their calves we're going to have to supplement some extra feed to them. We don't have to feed them out in grass we could actually leave them in dry lot and feed them there but we don't really have an option to really not feed them as much feed we have to procure feed for these late calving cows because they're coming into their peak nutritional needs when they start milking up fairly well in six to eight weeks after the calves are born. What we always need to be concerned about is that cows don't lose weight when we're in this type of scenario it's really easy to underfeed cows and maybe you can do that for a little bit I'm not sure if Zach would encourage that but we'll talk about that later but if they lose too much weight in this type of situation lactation it might affect your breed up in other words number of cows that are pregnant as time goes on. So you have to find people and that is you got to look at the stage production of a cow. When she's lactating that's the most amount of nutrition she needs and if your cows are like the January, February cavers. They're already past their lactation peak and weaning them will save you some some energy. Okay. That's called early weaning. That can certainly be done. But if you're calving in March or April, you're in your peak lactation within a month. If you're calving in May and June, your peak lactation is yet to even happen. That means your energy required in the diet is going to be the highest and you're still approaching that means you really need to look at the ration and provide some extra feed. But I always like to put up this slide to remind you that early lactation takes the most amount of energy, late lactation takes less. When they're weaned, it goes down to a maintenance ration and it'll be a long time between now and when the cow is pregnant in their six or seven months, six or nine months of gestation before a nutrient requires continue up but if lactation is ahead of you, your peak demand for nutrients is still going to be showing up here. So maybe I should let Zach talk for a minute, but if you don't mind Zach, I'll just continue on. No, no by all means. Thanks. I like to talk about feed, feed prices. Energy is what our cow herds need. We need extra energy in our cows. We need them to keep growing, producing milk, get calves to grow. We look at the energy costs, it's not based off the oil price, it's based off the corn price. Corn price is what sets the prices for all feeds based on their energy content. Why is corn set the price? It's easily stored, it's transported. You can move it across state borders or in railcars, whatever the case is. We can do a lot of things with corn grain. You can have it as dry grain or you can have it high moisture if you put it up in the fall time. Ear leaching corn silage is certainly something you can think about, but it's too late for our season right now if you're trying to look for some. Normally, if people do have some corn silage for sale, you can certainly sell it at work. Just either going to have to repackage it if you bring it home and want to keep it for a while or you need to feed it up rather soon. The other thing is stover. We've got the corn grain, but there's still stover out in these fields. We've had a pretty dry winter and who knows what spring is going to be, but eventually it's going to have to dry up enough for us to plant. And there are people that do put up stover in the springtime before planting. So that is a feed resource that might be capitalized if you're sure it's on place. Carl, we've got a question here and I'm going to defer it to you simply from, I know you have a good idea of kind of where things are at here in the state for hate price. Okay, I see the question. What's hay selling for in North Dakota? Report of a Tuesday auction sale near Lares, $280 a bale for a 1600 pound alfalfa bale. Wow, that's really high when you consider corn is $250 a ton, and then you need to add freight and processing on top of it. But alfalfa hay has got extra protein as well. It does have some energy and cattle are ruminants. So alfalfa hay is something they need to have in their dag if they need to have some ruckage. $280 a bale certainly is the manned issue. If it's third-cutting alfalfa that has a relative feed value of $200 or $250, it could easily be priced that high. That's definitely what it's worth. But if it's a relative feed value of $100 or $150, well, that still seems kind of like a steep price there might be other opportunities to go for. Hay is a really tough thing to put a price on in North Dakota because we don't have necessarily routine hay auctions throughout the year. If you go into Minnesota, there are some hay auctions that are routinely held every year, every month. And you get a pretty good pricing what hay is sold for because people raise hay to be sold. Around here it's more of an issue of we're in a situation where we need to buy hay, how much do we have to pay? And you can look at that $280 a ton and say, you know, if they're going to buy it at a hay auction at $200 a ton and add on another $80 worth of freight, that's the same as buying it from your neighbor at $280. So do what you can as long as you know what the feed quality is. If you do know what your feed quality is, feed test, that's the best way to know what you have. That means please do it. Is there a good reference or can you think of, you know, like for a baseline as we go through the year to check, right? You have some references, some auctions that you check into to kind of give you an idea of where those prices are. What are those auctions that you kind of use? The auction I tend to routinely go to because as close as North Dakota is the Hay Auction at Salk Center, Minnesota. And one of the things they do, the county extension agent there provides a calculation based on relative feed value on the different types of feeds. And I hate to report, I think it's somewhere around $1 or $1 or $2 at the latest report. That's what the value is per relative feed value. So if the price was $1 and the relative feed value was $200, which is extremely high. Well, $2 times $200 is what, $240? $240 a ton? And then you'd have freight on top of it. Of course, $200 relative feed value is that's like third-cutting candy fed to sheep. I mean, that's the good stuff. The deer will find it out in your field first before the cows ever will, but that's some pretty high quality feed. There are other Hay auctions in Minnesota as well. We have a hard time identifying Hay auctions in North Dakota, although there are a few that routinely are around. Energy is important in a ration, but so is protein. A lot of times when we buy energy, we buy protein with it. And if we're needing an 8% crude protein ration for a gestating cow, a lot of our feeds will tend to have that except for corn stover wheat straw, some other other byproduct feeds. But in reality, when you get to a lactation ration, they're going to need 11-12% crude protein, and we're going to have to add extra protein to the ration. We have a lot of production available in North Dakota through the oil seed mills. They're crushed here in North Dakota, Angolan, Belva, West Fargo. I'll have soybean mill, canola mill, sunflower mill, linseed mill crust at certain times of the year. It's available. A lot of it's being shipped out of state. We do have other protein feeds like distillers grains, and that has lead to the top of the number one use for added extra protein. Field peas work quite well if you can procure them, bind them. Lentils work in that same situation as well. Self-alcohol, like we just had with that question, is a nice protein source. Well, the energy source. Don't forget the clovers. But if you do buy sweet clover, these realize that you can have sweet clover poisoning, and that is not a nice situation in a cow herd if they're afflicted with sweet clover poisoning. We can feed some oil seeds like soybeans and sunflower seeds, canola, human flax provide extra protein as a true seed. Just be careful to limit the amount that you put in the ration so you don't over provide too much fat in the ration because soybeans come with fat as well. So you limit to whatever protein supplementation you need, and you'll probably be okay at about three, four or five pounds per day. If you go above that, you might end up with some decreased in performance due to excess fat in the ration. Like I said, we have lots of options with feedstuffs in North Dakota. We've done a lot of research here at the Carrington Research Extension Center on co-products that we can buy from North Dakota. Of course, there's been a lot of other projects done in North Dakota too. I just got to make a comment. We've got a publication that's been around quite a while. It's just recently was updated by my colleague, Zach, and it's our publication called Alternative Feeds for Ruminants, AS 1182. So it describes a lot of different feeds. I really like the ending because it has feed composition tables. So the feed composition tables, rather than finding a book or going online, these are values produced for North Dakota from North Dakota that are included in this. It's available online. It's available in print. Put it in your county, essentially, agents office. You can probably get it in print there. Do you have any other comments you'd like to share about that, Zach? Because it sure has a lot of different feedstuffs in there. It's quite in-depth and encompassing in terms of alternative. So there's a lot of those unique feeds that we get questions on, even, you know, think about last summer and things like that. A lot of that is entailed in that document. It's 20-some pages long, and so certainly encourage people to take a look at that, go to their agent and get a copy. You can find it online as well. There'll be a link in the chat to find that publication. A little side note here, our previous predecessor, Medan Johnson, developed this and has a respond to drought back in the 1980s, about 34 years ago. He originally started out as a fact sheet or a quick sheet at that time in response to drought because people are wondering, can we feed Kosha? Well, we put it in writing. You certainly can. But that's the heart behind it. It certainly expanded from then. It's a great resource, and thanks for updating it, Zach. I guess I'll keep talking here and say one more thing here. We've got some co-products in North Dakota. This is the map I always like to share. If I go to other states and talk about co-products, they don't have near the breath and number of co-products we have in North Dakota. It's almost staggering. They might have ethanol plants. But where do you find ethanol plants? Wheat mills, beet pulp or sugar factories, high fructose cornstarch factories, potato waste, excuse me, potato processing, even malt production, barley malt, has been done in North Dakota. We have all those available in North Dakota. If you're living near the Red River Valley, you've probably figured these all out because freight is a lot closer for you than if you lived in the western part of the state. Although if you look at your drought map, you quickly find out that we're not really in a drought out here, but we are out there. So freight is a big deal. And I think that's when you find out the ethanol plants that are located in the western part of the state are pretty well booked up on availability because people have sought them. I know the beet pulp out of the Sydney Montana plant is usually booked out a year in advance because ranchers realize it's a great feed to have. And I do like to point out that North Dakota, we've got our own bank, we actually own our own wheat mill, excuse me, wheat mill also. And the wheat mill, the North Dakota state mill in Grand Forks is the largest mill in one location in the world. So that kind of underscores how much wheat mills we produce in our region. And of course we've got one in our back door here at Carrington right now that produces wheat mills as well. So there's a lot of opportunity for different feeds available in North Dakota and you certainly can work for it, work for them if you certainly want them. Alright, so with that and kind of talking, maybe to kind of go back a little bit, we've talked about, you know, potential supplementation, bringing in energy feeds, protein feeds maybe as a way to reduce our pressures on our pastures. If we think or we know we're going to see reduced production in those pastures at least here in the springtime. And so we did mention Carl covered early weaning too and that certainly can be considered, you know, a reduction in the when we do wean and those cows are no longer lactating we've taken that pressure off the energy requirements and protein requirements. But what I've what I've got here this slide, if we think we can in and it does vary a little bit depending on what grain we're using and how much starch is in that grain for instance corn or barley and things like that but but then even into concentrates and think about, you know, we highlighted distillers grains or even bringing in soy holes in that sense or something like that, roughly estimating it's about a pound of grain can substitute about a half pound of alfalfa that table I've got there in the center is actually some synchronization of some old data but really good data on basically it does depend on what the quality of your forage is so for thinking about trying to to feed some some feed bring some feeds in to reduce pressure, either right now on our grain inventory or reduce pressure on grazing. What I've got there are those that forage replacement is is in a decimal form for one pound of grain slash concentrate would equate to replacing their in low quality forages about a quarter pound of that forage. And as we see that actually as our values get higher is that is that quality of hay or quality of that pasture gets greater if we're using quality crude protein as a proxy for quality in that sense. So as our protein gets higher we actually get a better replacement closer to that one pound of of energy or protein feed to replace about a half pound of pasture. So some research here in the next couple slides actually highlighting some work that's been done on evaluating that. But I do want to put out there we typically for guidelines on supplementing in pasture situations. When we talk about mostly our grain supplementation, but even into concentrates the sales grain soy holes. So that our beet pulp maybe even you know our our energy feeds, we really kind of want to stick around if we're still trying to graze pastures or or use hay as our primary energy stick around that 0.4% body weight. So 1400 pound cow it's about six pounds of grain. And that really just gets to a point where at some point we're going to see less energy capture from the forage that's being digested. And as the bacteria population shifts favoring more towards that supplement you provide. And so to balance that, we really kind of don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves and and have too much of an energy feed. When we're talking supplementation on pasture. So good work by I will actually where they you had some heifers that they fed 1% a little more in their body weight of dried distillers grains, and they looked at kind of the pressure and the pasture, and they saw about a 20% reduction in the early spring providing that distillers grains on forage production so they kind of estimated that to be forage intake they had more production in their pastures when they have that supplementation of distillers grains just kind of you're replacing some of the energy those animals need from the pasture by supplementing it through those those various feet. Just like to so the really issue on the first part of this slide is that we need to have enough protein ration to utilize the energy that's provided. So while I talked about we need energy for our cows. Don't forget we need to provide enough protein, so they can use energy is that right. I'm so glad you said that yeah you're absolutely right Carl yeah for sure what you you have to make sure because in my mind a drought situation usually means you're not going to have enough protein for energy, but you have to meet the protein needs before you can move into any type of energy supplementation and you're absolutely right right when we're thinking of providing some energies or even protein and energy right the distillers grains and we'll show you that in a little bit. It's a really great way to both meet your protein and energy in that way. Great point. Let's think about substitution and so not supplementing but actually substituting Nebraska did some work and actually looked at at trying to actually replace a portion of pasture with pretty much like a diet so we're we're at levels that are kind of what they did was they compared basically what they called their control stocking rate compared to double so they wanted to see if they could increase the number of cows they had on the same pasture but provide in that double group that double stocking rate. They provided half what they anticipated was half their diet through this blend of 70% corn stover 30% modified distillers grains mixture and so they provided 15 pounds almost 16 on a dry matter basis of this mix in hopes that they could actually reduce the amount of forage intake on the pasture and increase and of course then double their stocking rate. Well I think this has a great compliment to when we're looking at drought situations and we think or anticipate we're seeing 20 to 30% reduction of forage production you know start looking at some of these alternatives and I think substitution could potentially be a great way to do that. You know specifically when we're providing this low quality feed corn stover and blending that with an energy and protein feed such as the silver screen. So what they saw was it was nearly a one to one replacement. When they did this and so one pound of that this supplement corn stover modified almost replaced nearly a pound of forage on a dry matter basis. And so and and of course the amount they provided they actually saw that reduction in forage intake 3035% and so I think there's some some tools we have available to us to look at what we know about some research and kind of think through that in a very similar situation instead of corn stover now it was wheat straw and so as you can see in this table here the wheat straw to wet distillers grains ratios across the top there so moving from 30% distillers to 50 from left to right. And what they saw actually was in that same forage replacement if we look at the bottom there. They replaced or tried to anyway half of the forage intake on pasture and they did that pretty well and they almost got a one to one replacement. So it seems like if we use these very low quality wheat straw corn stover blend it with a high energy and high protein feed. We can actually replace some of the pasture. That those those cows are going to consume. So we talked or kind of want to move from substitution or on pasture to what if you don't even get to get go out there. Right we talked dry lotting and Carl outline kind of those favorable situations where this may work depending on your your having season and I want to make sure when I talk about limit feeding I'm really talking about providing an energy dense diet right we're not limiting a low quality forage in that sense. We're making sure we're meeting the nutrient requirements the TDN protein and we're doing it at a concentrated level right to reduce the amount of of concentrates the high feed. You know that high feed prices trying to limit that. And so there's certainly been lots of work we have a publication that outlines even some example diets and the dry lot beef cow cow production publication that we have. But it's very doable and so limit feeding really kind of gets at that less than 2% of that animal body weight. But I think it's important. If people are considering this. We can't forget the calf. We've got to be able to provide not only that 2% or less percent of body weight on intake for those cows. We've got to keep in mind those cats especially once they get two months old three months old they're really starting to consume about a percent of their body weight percent and a half. So so in that situation do you know and cows are all great calves are all grazing with the cow the calf mimics what the cows do and it's crazy the same thing and a feed lot situation are the cattle or in the dry lot situation. Are the calves eat now the feed bunk with the cow and your limit feeding are they getting access to enough, or is this situation really if you're going to do dry lot with cow calf pairs, you really need to have a creep area for the calves. But yes, that's a great question. I've got some pictures here. So let's just move from, but make sure you provide about two feet of bunk space when we limit intake here. That means that that feed is going to be consumed pretty well right after feeding for the most part anyway, those cows just look it up. And so you want to make sure every cow has enough space at your bunk area or even if you're providing it on the ground to to hit that and then also providing space for those calves. So to your question then limit feeding, you need to provide space for those cats, whether that's at the same bunk as the cows, I think that's preferable in creating almost a creep area. If you can block off a section where the cows can't get at that bunk, but you can still provide feed. They would definitely follow that area. They also probably need a loafing area. And so that far right picture. This is some some work I did in graduate school. We just simply put a hot wire in a pen and those calves could go under that hot wire and into that grass and hang out and get away and try to create a dry spot to and when we're dealing with dry lots and always dry. I like that matter with the picture. I like to point out the calves there need to make sure the feed bunk is sized to the cabs. Some of them reach in the bottom that one little one looks like he's still staring at what's going on there but I certainly like that loafing area idea that certainly. Yeah, yeah, it's a nice place for calves to get away. Encourage people when they are limit feeding it can be a scary thing to think about or such a new idea to use body condition scores help you guide. Obviously, we need to get someone that has can help balance rations in this case and things like that but utilize body condition and monitor it quite often at the bottom there. We kind of recommend you know doing it 90 days before calving well we're probably pass that at this point doing it at calving and then reevaluating leading up to breeding season. But if you're going to be in a limit fed situation for an extended period of time. It's a good idea to to be monitoring that condition over the course of you know every month and periodically checking in on those females and make sure you are hitting those targets and in terms of nutrition. It's important to look at body condition scores are just the body condition of our cows. If you're starting off the cows are by conditions for seven. If you look at the data. They can lose a little bit of weight and still breed up really well it's when you get to body condition score for that reproduction drops off quite a bit. So be sure to avoid thin cows although when you're in this type of situation of drought. You might have managed cows to lose a little bit of weight over the wintertime just be careful how far you go before you are on the tip of this iceberg leads to a reproductive wreck. That's right. That's right and so as I said if this is something you're thinking about but necessarily haven't done before. Reach out to an extension specialist or encourage you to go to your county agent. They have the capabilities they have a ration balance or tool brands is what the one we use. And so they'll be familiar with that and can work through some of the scenarios that you may want to play out in different feeds and things like that as well Carl already hit on this but when we're dealing with alternative forages and and feed that you find make sure you test those so you know what you're actually doing with that that feeds right into that ration balancing. And in your agent can plug those actual values right in. So we know what we're dealing with. And of course they can work through balancing that on a least cost basis. And so I just kind of wanted to highlight Carl already did a great job that when we move from late gestation to early lactation you can see there I've just outlined the amount of protein and pounds of protein and pounds of TDN energy that we need going from late gestation to early lactation so it's really important as we look at pasture turnout possibly coinciding with early lactation and don't forget we're leading into breeding season right right to follow that we are making sure those cows get the right amount of energy and protein they need. Well, now comes the question of how do we figure out what we should buy costs a lot of money to feed these cows so I always look at the issue of looking at calculate our cost per pound of nutrient whether it be energy or protein, you calculate it I always say it's pretty easy math but it seems like people always use doing it. It's just the price per pound of the nutrient that is equal to the price per pound of the feed divided by the nutrients content. So for example here we're going to look at TDN which is a measure of energy right, and our feed costs $250 a ton. That's actually corn at seven bucks a bushel. It's $250 a ton so that's 2000 pounds because we're going to do our cost per pound, not cost per pound and then we divide it by the as fed TDN value which on this example is 76.5% TDN so you take that do the math divide divide divide and you end up with 16 cents per pound of TDN and that's what we do the math to find out if other feeds are worth that same amount. And then there's another way that because we don't always buy feed that's dry or air dry we end up buying feed that's wet silage distillers grains beat pulp all those have moisture and so we should probably actually be more correct to use a dry matter and now do the dry matter basis routine to it, which we just added another value there. That means we divide. So if you see down below it's cost per pound and TDN are $250 in our previous example divided by 2000 pounds divided by the dry matter TDN value which is 90. And if you don't know what that value is go to that publication we just talked about earlier that as 1182 alternate feeds for new for feed stuffs in the back the page and then there's the dry matter value there. And this is 85% dry matter so you divide divide divide and divide and just got to remember divide you're really tempted to multiply. Don't you got to keep getting a number that's bigger and you end up with our 16 cents per pound of TDN value and in this example TDN is our measure of energy content. You do the same thing with net energy for maintenance it's just a little bit different math as long as you're comparing everything and you do the same thing for crude protein as well. Here's a table of different feed stuffs available in North Dakota with some recent prices. Maybe you want to say a few words about this first Zach and then I'll say some comments. So Carl goes around and gathers prices from different areas different plants of all these different types of feeds and so what I just did was those calculations Carl just went through and I did it on a dry matter basis. And so what you're looking at is just the as fed amount or what you would buy it from the plant and then worked all my way through protein dollars per pound of protein and dollars per pound of TDN usually it's cents we're looking at. And so those three highlighted of course if we set think through corn sets the price kind of for a lot of our energy feeds and a lot of our feed stuffs in general. And the two I just wanted to highlight quickly here was distilled grains and wheat mid in the sense that they're both the some of more of the economical on the protein side as well as on the energy side so those two really factored in and these are relatively new prices are not that old yet and those both factored in quite well on both protein and energy basis. Yeah, if you look at just the cost per pound of energy of feeds you find out that corn was is one of the cheapest ones out there, which is what we talked about earlier. Wheat mids can end up being fairly competitive price to of course this market always changes the flux weights. Sometimes it's not it's higher than what corn would be unless of course wheat mids. All the starch has been milled out of it what's left over is fermentable fiber so and some protein. So it certainly is an option if you look at protein prices that's the crude protein up there under CP. The cheapest one is. Well, the stillish grains. That's right. When you look at some of the protein mills sunflower mill soybean soybeans really expensive. But if you look at wheat mids they're all that same area, but I like to bring out is distilled grains is one of our cheapest sources of protein. And it's actually an excellent source of energy like you just said so no wonder it's used in all the rations. And with that will go ahead and use some more rations. And so I put together some situations here that look at a cow herd. It's going to be June and July and we're going to have to feed them because we don't have enough grass out there. Even though we're getting some snow today around here. How much grass we only going to get we don't know we're just going to have let's plan ahead here. If you're January February cavern. I've seen those calves at this point in June and July so now you got a cow that that can either be fed out on pasture and take less feed or we can feed her and dry lot. I've got a ration up here to feed her and dry lot. She's a 1350 pound cow. We only need for her to maintain her weight. She's only 1400 pound is a mature weight. So she hasn't lost that much weight. Okay, it's in the summertime that's a lot different the nutrient requirements in the middle of winter when it's sub zero and wind is blowing so it doesn't take as much feed. We recognize though, some cows will eat more than this, they might be bigger, they might have more energy needs, maybe they're just buttons and want to eat a lot more, whatever the case is, need to watch the condition of the cattle and use this as a guide. Here I used eight pounds of grass say eight pounds of corn stover a pound of corn grade and some extra energy and four pounds of dry distillers grains add energy and protein total cost that turned out to be $1.68 a day. Not bad. Actually, I think some people are spending three bucks today this winter to feed cows. It's okay that's a pretty reasonable ration price and we're using grass at $150 a ton and stover at $1,000 at $100 a ton almost at 1000 maybe it should be people want to pay that much. But if you're going to win the calves you're going to have to feed them too. So we're going to have 400 pound calves we might have to feed them let's make them gain and give them some weight they can gain three and a half pounds a day if you give them the feed to allow them to gain that much it'll be a rational it's actually going to be pretty heavy and concentrate so it's, I've got two pounds of grass a two pounds of corn stover four pounds of corn grain and five pounds of distillers. It's not balanced for calcium and phosphorus, let's you add in limestone at two ounces bread per day and your cost then is about $1.46 so if you combine the two together, you're spending over three bucks a day to feed a cow calf pair even though they've been separated. Come next June if we don't have grass three bucks a day. Wow. What is that got to do the math in my head I'm not going to do it right now but if you start looking at what that what a cost of pasture would be pastures usually a lot cheaper than buying feed for your livestock. That's why we really want to have pasture available, but if we don't, we got to go to plan B and here's plan B. Well if you're cabinet March and early April, June and July is kind of a tough time because that's right when the cow is at peak lactation you really can't wean the calf at that time because he needs the milk you're feeding them if you don't have grass you're going to be in dry lot and we got to give them enough feed. So it's a little bit different third same cow 1350 pounds only going to gain a little bit when she's not losing weight just gaining a little. We're feeding the cow we can either give her a ration that's 16 pounds of hay and Stover, plus another 12 and a half pounds of dried distillers grains and corn, and we end up with a little bit of limestone to or a mineral mix so it'd be high in calcium and low in phosphorus and are spending half to $2.65 a day to do that or you can change around use a little bit less grass hay and Stover at six pounds, 12 pounds together between the hand and Stover and then we boost up the corn and distillers accordingly. And surprisingly we'd only changed our ration by five cents just costs a lot to feed I use prices that I think reflective out there in the market. And like I said earlier everything's based off the corn grain price which means everything's just at their price. Well now let's go to May and June. So what I say earlier it costs 265 a day to feed these lactating cows. Well here we got a mate. Well, they're on the backside of lactation is what I should have said, they're not at the peak there at the backside of lactation they're starting to decrease the nutritional needs. These cows just kept in May and June they're just hitting their peak lactation. So the ration has to be better to maintain the weight. So they're getting eight pounds of grass hay eight pounds of corn Stover nine pounds of corn grain which is quite a bit and six pounds of dried distillers but we're feeding the milk cow here. Oh I'm sorry they're beef cow but she's milking, and it costs almost $3 a day to do that. Say we don't have enough Stover and we're going to feed more grain and offset the Stover and hay that we don't have. That's surprising enough for feed costs still ended up at $3 a day. Just alternatives for you consider and what our feed prices are and what we can do. So I thought I'd just share that with you and there's lots of options and ways in which to feed cattle. By all means, please consider what they need based on their stage of production. I want to kind of, I'm not going to go through all of this right now by any means I want to get Brian's opinion in here on and get him talking but basically in a similar situation I put together some diets and looked at if if we're going to consider a lactating cow 45 days or excuse me a lactating cow with a 45 day old calf right just getting into peak lactation. I just gave some basically some ratios a different dry matter inclusion rates dry matter mine I'm assuming Carl yours were an aspect. Yeah, the amounts you actually provide. So these are dry matter amounts in terms of ratio. Right and you may notice some of these won't equal 100% and that's because I don't have limestone in there but all those with an asterisk that have included some limestone because those involve distillers grains or wheat mids and so we want to make sure we're balancing our calcium with our phosphorus and we get in here but to work through these just kind of quickly I started from most expensive at the top which might look similar to just supplementing some distillers grains with some grass alfalfa blends and then you can see those prices on the far right and how much you'd have to feed on as fed basis there in the third column. And then I work my way through or kind of a whole bunch of different scenarios to try to find some of that least cost basis and you can see at the bottom there with $50 corn silage per ton and drive distillers grains right now had the best price of all the distillers grains. So compared to modified or wet and so including wheat straw and corn silage wheat mids and distillers grains and several different combinations came up with some of those rations that were actually to my surprise, two and a half down to two and a quarter. And so trying our best now those are all limit fed right and so we're limiting the amount we're providing and to reduce the amount we need to actually to provide and still meeting those TDN and energy protein requirements, excuse me, but kind of with that I think Carl let's move into we mentioned here and this is this is where I want to transition into to and see what Brian has to think about some of this, but we did mention, you know at some point. If it becomes too costly, and you can't just simply find the availability for your feeds maybe have the same cattle where there isn't a drought right now. There may be high feed prices across the nation right now but certainly there may be some more favorable places to feed these cows relative we hate to see that happen. There's no producer wants to do that but if you do think in mind of you know, de stock or send these cows off in the amount that maybe you anticipate whatever your pasture stocking right can be, and that's the amount you use in order to send off you know certainly doesn't have to be the whole herd. And I think I think replacement heifers are a good one to utilize good candidates. You're not sending pairs you're not sending pregnant females off right and not trying to deal with that and so you're you're looking at and those are going to likely be your highest costing females. In terms of you're trying to provide for them if you do don't have the pasture and things like that that the cost for those heifers certainly is going to be so if you can find a heifer development operation you know obviously that would be ideal and certainly consider those and then out of state requirements brand inspection requires is required as well as health certificate. If those animals are going to leave the state and come back of course. I do got to throw out that be sure to look at farm service agency the US DA and some of their programs that are available. I know there's going to change the elapsed program emerged livestock systems program, so that there is a livestock. Well the feed transportation assistance program a part of the elapsed program is available and just recently. I think they announced I don't know the rules are out yet they announced that they were paying for transportation to feed your home. Now they'll provide some assistance for transporting cattle to feed, which is a little bit different so by all means please check out those programs and of course, what the emergency livestock relief program just came out this week so if you're short on feed funds to feed, at least that might provide some help to producers as well. You haven't heard about that program by all means please go to your FSA office and inquire. Brian we've been hogging the stage here and and and so what we'd love to hear kind of your thoughts as as we kind of work through some of these different things and and gain your opinion on on some. Thanks. So, I've done some presentations in the past, put some stuff together on scenarios for how to handle your manager heard for during during drought. I haven't been in North Dakota long but it seems like I've been dealing with drought. Every year I've been here which is good. I guess, in the sense that I'm from Southwest Nebraska where just about every year is is a drought as well so some experience dealing with that and I know that these guys talked about different rations and some some changing of feed stuffs that you can do based upon, you know the desired outcome and prices and so I'm just going to do a quick put up a few slides real quick, just to kind of take us through a conversation I want to have and then and then talk about it here. Alright, so as as was discussed, you know feed prices have been high, but so have livestock prices as well. So when when we're talking about what the best management strategy is as an economist we wind up having to sort of juggle a lot of variables all at the same time to try to determine what what what we're actually going to do. And you know when I was doing the feedlot school and things like that down up in Carrington as well. You know feed costs being high or fine as long as as long as the the price of the animals and livestock are high as well. Still showed that we were able to make a profit doing that and I only say that to say that if we're spending, you know as Carl said good large large quantities of money to dry lot or feed cattle over the summer. Yeah, that's that's that's a tough pill to swallow but at the same time if cattle prices remain high it's it's not so not so difficult but this chart here just kind of shows the Corn Belt average price of corn for the blue line is you know when it's getting up in that seven seven dollar range now per bushel which you know the last time we saw prices like that were you know late 2010 decade that eight nine and 10 period where they were corn was up over eight bucks. And obviously that's having a big impact on DDGs which is kind of approaching that almost $300 a ton mark, which I know we use quite a bit of in North Dakota. And then I just pulled this from a Minneapolis and some of the stuff that was being talked about being fed like a soybean meal 46.5%. This week was selling for around let's call it $430 a ton, which is which is which is getting up there. But you know it's similar to where it was last year linseed meal up around $350 a ton significantly higher than last year sunflower meal. That's that's up over $300 a ton as well and then canola meals approaching $400 a ton. So some of these a lot of these alternative is unfortunately have all moved in the same direction as your more, I guess, call it common feeds like like corn or or soybean meals and stuff like that they've they've tended to move that direction as well. With all the all the other commodities so while doing some mixing and Carl does a great job as he runs through these scenarios on the on the least cost yet objective driven ration that you're looking for. When commodity prices like soybeans corn DDGs and everything else is going up it tends to drag everything with it at the same time. So, you know, you're not going to run into the scenario where you're going to find cheap meal and and really expensive corn or something like it's not going to happen. It's going to be at the margins that those adjustments matter and they do matter, but but but it's going to make somewhat marginal differences, not not major differences. Okay, and this this one here just shows soybean prices, what's happened. You got May of last year, you know, kind of dipped here in November and then we're approaching 1617 bucks a bushel nationally so dragging those prices up and then we talked about hey already. And like Carl said it's pretty thinly traded in North Dakota. So ams doesn't really track hey sales in North Dakota but they have some around South Dakota and Minnesota is what I look at because that you know those are our neighboring states so they're the kind of the easiest to find you look at like alfalfa hay on average in South Dakota in 2020 was about 100 bucks a ton. That looks pretty good and and and other haze around you know that'd be more like your grasses around 80 and then you even and then you look at last year in South Dakota. And mostly I want to look at like alfalfa 200 bucks a ton for what's quality and there's there's differences in these qualities so when you're pricing hey, you know you're supreme and your premium stuff those mostly go to folks either dairy or people raising horses or something like that that's that's where that you know you as a beef cow producer you can't really afford to pay those those prices. But you're good to fair alfalfa haze or what you're kind of your your beef quality and those are going to be probably Carl can chime in on that but that you know 14% protein. Maybe maybe maybe around that up to 18% or so would be your your beef quality you get into that 24 to 26 stuff that's dairy and horses and stuff like that that are paying those those kind of money. So long story short, hey prices were basically double from 20 in summer of 2021 what they were in 2020 and I saw that comment about $280 a bail and and the thing about that is I got it in order for me to say that that's high low or somewhere in the middle I got to know how what the protein content of it was what was it graded out premium good etc so when you're setting a benchmark that that's what what I focus on. But the bottom line is hey is hey is expensive last year, and it's probably going to be expensive this year as well. I mean because just just the simple fact that we're going to have some still have some drought stricken areas in Western Northwestern North Dakota, especially the man for to be high and it's like Carl mentioned, there's not a lot of hate produced up in that area, not relative to some of these other states so it's got to be trucked a long way and shipping rates have gone up. I mean we've got the price of diesel fuel up over $5. And so that's something you got to think about there to you pay $220 a ton but it costs you another $80 a bail to ship it up there and all of a sudden you really are spending $300 a ton. Now I want to talk about this is just a quick comment on ranch land rates so our Minneapolis Federal Reserve. Covers our area, our region. And when I read this report that this little paragraph came out of, I was a little surprised that pasture land rents went up so high, suppose the 1314%, but then it then it occurred to me. You know if you've got a drought area and somebody has available grass, you know supply and demand demand stayed at least the same maybe it's went down a little as people did a deep coal, but supplies been shrunk due to the drought and the pressure and the difficulties with raising your forage out in your pasture. So for these rents to jump up 1314%, I guess shouldn't be a surprise in our region given the drought pressure. So that's something to think about too is that rental rates for actual pasture land what available grass there is is going to be much higher than before, especially during a drought season. Oops, what I did. Move that one. Now, like I said though cattle prices have been pretty strong. The green line is 2022. And so feeder cattle, the index was around $160 per hundred weight, which is pretty good just this time of year on average and 2021 kept him pretty high. Why do we bring that up? Because the value of your herd is important when you're determining how much you're actually going to feed them. Now, I will say this and I think Tim Petrie's on this watching this. So I got to say if you're going to pay the kind of prices it's going to cost to be able to feed your feed your herd over the summer and not thin them too much. You've got to take advantage of some of these prices while they're high as well. You're going to have to use some of the tools that are available in order to lock in these. It's the same story I tell the crop producers that if you're going to pay $1,500 a ton for fertilizer, we really need $7 corn and then we're okay. Well, if I'm going to pay $3 a day or $3.50 a day to feed a feed a cow or something like that, I'm going to need to get a pretty good value out of the calf in the fall. And right now prices are pretty strong. Maybe they wind up going up a little bit but pricing some of these, getting yourself one of the contracts that are available now that you can use, I think that's an important step. So one of the biggest questions we get calls on during a drought is should I keep my cows or should I sell my cows? Right? Carl even put up the choice there. He said, do you keep or do you sell? Well, there's a lot of research that's been done out of Wyoming and some in Colorado at Colorado State University on discussing what you do. And the answer is a mixed management strategy is pretty much the best option under any scenario. Now, how that strategy shakes out is, again, there's some nuance to that as well, but it depends on all these factors. And what I mean by a mixed management strategy is we don't sell all our cows. We don't keep all our cows. We've got options. You can keep whatever forage you have available. You put them out on grass. You do some feeding, whatever is kind of feasible. You may have to do some shipping of the animals as well and then possibly a deep coal. And selling out completely liquidating if you plan to stay in business is probably going to be, it's the least expensive in the short run, but it's probably going to be the most expensive in the long run. Because buying back and restocking, because what's, think about this scenario, you have a major drought and this has happened before. You have a major drought over a large area and a bunch of people wind up selling cows, right? So what happens to the number of breeding aged cows in the next year or so? It declines because large quantities of folks have sold and during the drought to basically cut costs. So then what happens two years later to the price of heifers? Because the size of the herd shrunk. Well, the price of heifers winds up going way up. And now I've got my grass back. I've had some rain. Everything's looking pretty good. So I want to get back into the business, but now I got to buy $2,500 bread heifers. A lot 2012 to 2014. That's an extreme example, but that's exactly what happened. So folks that were actually able to maintain their herd, or at least most of it, were able to reap the benefits or basically make their money back, whatever it costs them to keep their herd intact in 2012 and 2013, made it all back in 2014, right? On the higher end of the price range during that period. So that's something to think about and keep under consideration as well. Now, how much of each one of these you do may be dictated by or is going to be dictated by a weather and your resources. You know, when we discuss about it, so you would take, for instance, the highest quality, everybody's got a sort of a hierarchy in their herd of quality, right? You've got this group of cows who you think are your best set, then you've got maybe a second best, then you've got some maybe tertiary animals down low. And for the most part, you take the best animals and you put them in your lot. They're the ones that you're going to keep a closer eye on. You're going to be feeding them every day. They're probably going to get the better ration of all the animals that you have. Then the second amount that you're probably going to keep, you put them out on grass, spread out in way more thin than otherwise, whatever grass you have available. Obviously, make that's changed that stocking rate dramatically due to the drought. And then the third group, you're either going to, you're probably going to maybe do some kind of deep coal with them or you can ship them. And just one comment on trucking cattle. It is, if the drought is going to be long, and I've run these numbers several times, if the drought is going to be, and by long, I mean four months, something like that. If they're going to have to be fed four or five months, let's say, it is almost always going to be cheaper to truck them to where the feed is than to bring the feed in. Right? Almost always. If it's really short, you know, six weeks, maybe two months, all of a sudden that the, it's not the cost of shipping necessarily, but the hassle, the fact that you're going to be loading these animals up. There's going to be a lot of stress involved in dealing with it for the animals. Maybe they wind up losing some weight or you have some health issues with them might not make it worth it. But if it's going to be a long term, if the drought looks prolonged, if it looks like you're going to be having them on feed for many, many months. Shipping is the better solution. Now that said, finding a location to actually ship them to is a whole other thing altogether. And there are some, I think, some FSA regulations on shipping cattle out of state that you might have to deal with or insurance regulations that you have to deal with. I might be wrong on that though. So factors that determine which management strategy is best, the price of grains, obviously the price of hay, how widespread the drought is, right? Because sometimes droughts can be a little more localized. You know, you have a pocket in, let's say, northern North Dakota that just hasn't gotten any rain for whatever reason, the thunderheads roll by and they just don't get it. That's a better scenario to be in if you're the one being stricken by the drought because you don't have to go as far to find unaffected areas. But if it's widespread, which they tend to be, you got to think about that too. Everybody in their neighbor, your neighbor is going to be thinking the same thing as you. So there's going to be probably a lot of distance with hauling the feed in. And forage, as far as that goes, is just one of the most expensive things you can haul. Because the volume, the bulk of it, in other words, how many bales you actually get on a truck relative to a semi load of 1,000 bushels of corn and how far that goes as far as feeding versus 10 bales of alfalfa and how long that's going to last. The shipping costs get to be kind of enormous when it comes to shipping forage. And then, of course, cattle prices, as I already mentioned. Now, I do want to bring this up real quick. NDSU Extension has some available tools that folks can use to help you make some of these decisions on what it's going to cost you and can you afford it? We've got cow calf breakeven budgets, cattle feeding budgets, herd budget tools. Then we've got that livestock forage disaster payment calculator that you can find online as well. If you're stricken by a drought, there's probably a good chance that you might qualify for one of those. So take advantage of that. And then we've got our projected fall and summer grazing budgets. So one of the, I think I'll stop sharing there. There we go. So what I wanted to highlight, though, is it's almost impossible for us to, as economists, to put together a prescription for every rancher in the state of North Dakota, because everyone's situation is so different. Which is why we don't put out just a blanket economic comment on what ranchers should or should not do. So everyone's going to have to kind of go in, use some of these tools, use the prices that are put out there, and the recommendations from Zach and Carl on rations and body condition scores and do you want to gain weight or whatever. And then using some of this mixed management strategy that I've been talking about here. So hopefully we're not making the decision on do we get rid of, do we liquidate or do we keep them all. I can tell you about 99% that neither one of those choices are the best choice. It's going to be some version of culling deep, putting whatever you can out on grass and then keeping some up in a dry lot, or if you absolutely have to trucking cattle to where the feed is, which is in the long run going to be a lot cheaper if the drought is persistent and long. So with that. Yeah, I think Brian summarized today's discussion quite well I think we could probably talk forever on this certainly a lot to cover and and whatnot we want to thank you for tuning in today. And this will this was recorded so it will be posted and check those NDSU extension social media links and YouTube channel. Any last concluding marks. Again if you have extra information or need for more information please reach out to our county extension agents or our specialists for more information on this drought issues and winter feeding that we're running into in the summer pasture turnout. Thank you. Thank you.