 This is Alex Digg, regional extension agent and coordinator of the Album and Pasture Rail program. In this video you will see updates on each of the 9 loads of cattle we shipped from June through December 2019 to High Plains Feed Yard in Montezuma, Kansas. As you'll see in the videos, the pens are rather muddy due to about a half inch of ice that was received at the feed yard just days before we arrived in January the 20th of 2020, and since then they've received about another 8 inches of snow. Outside of those events though, weather conditions have been good and health has been pretty fantastic for the cattle throughout the program. This is the second half of Lot 1403. We shipped these calves out here in June. It was 78 head from Vista Farms over in Fayette County, registered Angus Outfit over there that the cattle got a lot of performance. The first half of those calves we harvested back in December. They ran a 100% choice, almost 60% certified Angus beef, 6-7% primes, less than 20% yield grade 4s and 5s. On top of that gained over four pounds a day while they were here, and I expect this younger set is going to do, the younger smaller end of that set is going to do very similar. These calves are going to go on the show list today and will be harvested sometime next week. These calves always do good. Vista's put cattle on the program for the last four years and every time their cattle grade, yield, grow, and do pretty fantastic, and I don't expect these calves to be any different. Unfortunately, we did have a little bit of a health hiccup with these cattle. About 55 or 60 days on feed, ran into a little issue there, had some problems, but they're up over that and doing well now. And then the other unfortunate side effect is these cattle shipped out here just before the Tyson Plant Burnt in Holcomb, Kansas. So from a contracting perspective, the market went wild. Any of you guys that were paying attention to the market at the time, the market went pretty crazy then. And so we're going to be real close after we contracted the cattle after the fire. We're going to have just right out of breakeven on these cattle, unfortunately. But because of the way those cattle are going to hang on the rail, they're going to hit all their group premiums, hit the CAB premiums, the prime premiums, they'll end up still doing really well and actually beating plant averages for price that day. So this is lot 1603. These would be a group of 60 head of cattle that we shipped out here in early September last year. The bigger end of the cattle, the ones that you see with the red-ear tags in their left ears, like the couple right here in front of us, those calves averaged 879 coming in. We had them at a breakeven of about $1.06 and we contracted those calves back in the fall at 115.55. The lighter end, the cattle that don't have those bright red-ear tags, those calves averaged 688. So we had a lot of variation in this pin from size on the front end, but 688, we figured them in there at a breakeven of probably about 109 to 110. And so we had those cattle contracted for a late March, early April kill with National at 118 and some change. This is one of our early groups from October, lot 1699 instead of mostly heifers from producers in Northeast Alabama and Central Alabama. There were two pins of this group. This is the heavier end, roughly 60 head or so of these calves. When they came in back October the 18th, averaged 817 pounds. Our calculated breakeven on these calves, they're going to kill mid-March to early April. The calculated breakeven on them of about $0.97 a hundred weight and we were able to get them contracted with National Beef at 122 and some change. So we're going to be able to do pretty well on these calves. Haven't had really any real health issues in this set, pretty nice set of calves all the way around. This is lot 1,767 head, mostly the lighter end of our early October shipment. One half came from several producers in Central Alabama and the other half from a bunch of producers up in Northeast Alabama. These calves showed up out here in early October. This group weighed 669 on average. They had a calculated breakeven at about $1.550 and we got these calves contracted at 122.51 with National Beef for a mid-April harvest. So again, being mostly heifers, heifers got really, really cheap in this past fall in Alabama. They didn't have a ton of value when they got shipped out here and we're going to wind up doing well. No health issues at this time, 67 head, all 67 head are alive and kicking doing well. You can hear a little bit of cough in there in the background, but nothing major. All right. So this is lot 1723, a group of 62 mixed steers and heifers that we shipped back in late October from Somerville, Alabama. These would be Mr. Doug and Rance Wiginton's cattle. We had these at a breakeven when they came in at about 123 for an April, late March, April kill. These calves weighed 851 when they showed up out here in High Plains and we were able to get them contracted with National Beef at 124.575. So usually these calves grade pretty well, do a pretty good job on yield and quality grade. So when they get on the grid, they should do really, really well. This is our late October load of Alabama pasture to rail calves, a mixed load, total of 94 calves in this group from producers from Jackson County, Coleman County, St. Clair County, down to around Prattville area, Montgomery area, kind of all over the state. You can see green tags on there would be our heavy end. Those cattle are going to sell in late March. The big end of the cattle or the smaller end of the cattle, excuse me, will be late April. Unfortunately, in this group, you can see there's lots of variation. I mean, anything from these right here that have kind of got a Holstein look to them, but a pretty barangasy type cattle. We've got Purebred Hurfords in the group, some Purebred Shorthorn, some Good Black Cattle, some Charley types that when the Packers came to look at them and wanted to give us some contracts, they were not interested in contracting these cattle at the time. They look a lot better than they did back then. But because of that, we went ahead and hedged these cattle. So the bigger end of the calves would have had about a breakeven of around $1.11. And we've got all of the cattle hedged in there at 127, around the 127 mark. The lighter end of the cattle had a little higher breakeven. I think they were 115. And we still were able to get them all hedged in there again at that 127 ballpark. So really no health issues. Again, knock on wood, hadn't lost any cattle out of this group. Nothing wrong major. So hopefully they'll do really well. What'll end up happening on that hedge is the cattle will get sold to one of the two major Packers in Dodge City more than likely when it comes time for them to kill. And then, you know, we'll take the proceeds from the hedge to add to that, but overall pretty nice. Pretty nice looking set of cattle, even though they've got a lot of color and variation in them. This is Lot 1797, it's a group of 62 head of mixed steers and heifers that were sent out here in early December, December 11th or so. These include 26 head from our Alabama junior pasture to rail program. So we've got, not 26, but 29 head of calves from six juniors across the state of Alabama. And then the balance of the load was made up by cattle from Mr. Doug and Rance Wigginton and Lake Majestic Farms, Nick Cranayis up in northeast Alabama. They helped us fill the load out and make sure our junior kids could get their calves out here. So the bigger end of the cattle, the ones you see with the bright green tags like this 90, 67 calf right here in front of us now. Those are our heavy end of the group. They were averaging up above 800 pounds when they got here back in December. Those will go on an April kill. Unfortunately, there are only 28 calves in that group, so it's not quite enough for us to get a forward contract with Cargill or National Beef. So instead those cattle have been hedged. We hedged them at about 127 and with a break even at about 105. So we've got a good bit of margin built into those already. The lighter end were more around the 680 range when they came in, 680 to 700. Those calves are a late May harvest. We did get contracts written on those with a plus one basis. So whatever the June board is when we get the price set, we'll get a dollar above that. We're working on getting those contracted actually tomorrow on Tuesday. Break even on the lighter end was at about a dollar 11 and we're trying to get them contracted at $119.50 which would put us at a net contract price of $1,250. So we'd be somewhere in the $8, $9, $100 weight profit on those calves. So very, very little health issues in this group so far. We haven't lost any of them. I don't see any snoddy noses. Nobody's in the hospital today. So calves look really, really good. This is Lot 1819. This is a group of calves from three producers in Cherokee County, northeast Alabama. You can see on some of the calves in the group, these bright green ear tags. There are 78 head in this pen. So the green ear tag cattle that have gotten the big bright green ear tags, those are going to be the heavier end. This cattle will be sorted off and sold on a June contract and the balance, the smaller end of the cattle will go on a July contract. So these calves were a little on the smaller side. The heavier end is going to average about six and a quarter where the lighter end was about 540. So we've got contracts written on these with National Beef but have not priced them yet. The smaller, the bigger end had a break even of about $1.18 a pound and the lighter end we have calculated at a break even of about $1.15 a pound which is almost exactly where the boards are running right now for those contract months. So we're kind of looking for a place to price these calves currently at a profit. This is a set of calves from the E.B. Smith Research Station in shorter Alabama that we are working on a research project with. We were evaluating, the second year we've been evaluating a couple of different backgrounding rations, looking at how those background rations affect transportation stress to feed yard and then the resulting feed yard performance and carcass performance of those calves. So these calves were shipped out here in late September and will go to harvest in the last couple of weeks of March or first week of April or so. See about half Hurford-Sired calves and half Angus-Sired calves, about 75% steers in this set.