 Well the major cost and backgrounding is incurred in buying the feed that it takes to put these calves through a gain program and to discuss some of our feed situation from the year I have Dr. Carl Hoppe. He's the area livestock specialist. He's stationed at the Carrington Research Extension Center and you know it looks like we're experiencing a big corn crop again this year or anticipating a big one. So what can we be expecting to pay probably for our feed grain prices, particularly corn, but how that also relates to maybe far earlier other feed grains? Sure corn is a fluctuating price throughout the whole year but this time of the year it's pretty reasonably priced compared to previous years. This $3.15 corn that's out there is really favorable for feeding cattle. If you go on the on the procuring sites throughout the state, in other words the places that use a lot of corn but not for feeding cattle but for feeding the distilling factories that produce ethanol, find out that the price is pretty constant. I see castings this week as a $3.31 when I looked as well as Underwood and Spiritwood. They're both at $3.31 for a price. Richardson is $3.15 so consequently transportation costs affect that a little bit and consequently if you look those on a ton basis you'll see that the price per ton is $1.18 up to $1.12 or down to $1.12. Our feed price costs are pretty low this year. Feed barley is another feed that's out there that's actually really low priced. At $2.20 a bushel up at Leeds, North Dakota that converts to about $92 a ton. Now the only way to compare these two feeds together is to look at TDN values and when you look at TDN values between those you look at the cost per pound of dry matter of TDN. Corn is around $1.54 and barley's at $1.33 so if you're into feeding some barley you might have some cheaper feed this year. Of course there's discounts for Vomitoxin, there's discounts for molds, light test weight, there can be some real deals and other feed stuffs out there this year if you're in the right location. It appears wherever you're at in the state there might be some things that might be price competitive and very much a local demand but they can be great feeds for feeding cattle. It sounds like our corn prices are considerably lower than they've maybe been a few years back and anticipate that will be a primary ingredient including in feeding rations but the other thing my rations have for background and calves is a mixture of forages and some concentrates and hay primarily our forage source and hay's a more local market. It looks like our bail counts pretty good across the state. What's that translating into in regards to what would cost to buy hay or what we should price our hay at when we're doing our own ration form relations? You know a quick thumb rule I always use is when you know what the corn price is on a ton basis take that in half and that kind of guides where your hay prices are going to be in the state. So I said earlier that there were $1.12, $1.25 so half of that's going to be around $75 a ton so that's sure just a average type hay. So we don't really have a market in North Dakota that's at auction our closest auction is in Minnesota and if you look the Minnesota hay auction you'll see that for last month because they don't have a September auction yet that the relative feed value prices that are high let me say this hay is priced on a relative feed value basis relative feed value would remain that a hundred percent full mature bloom 100% alfalfa hay is around 100 feed value if it's young bud small stem lot of leaves then the relative feed value is quite high and if you get up to around 175 relative feed value Darry's even backgrounders could pay a lot for this because there's a lot of feed value into it both in energy content and protein and that relative feed value price is around $1.22 for last month on an as is basis per ton it's $185 a ton that's some pretty expensive hay even more expensive than corn so it usually doesn't price into our background in rations not well let's look at the other ones alfalfa hay at relative feed value of 126 to 150 is 92 cents or 126 bucks a ton well okay if it's less than a hundred percent re relative feed value it's around 75 cents per pound I am consequently the as is dollars per ton is around 57 so you know if you look at grass hay price the same deal that's trading around 60 it it's all relative to the corn price again now I take kind of a question here when it comes to availability hay in North Dakota depending upon where you're at you may not have enough hay and hay really turns into a transportation headache there's a lot of cost in hauling hay around you might think you can you can do it you can haul hay we did it quite a few years ago but the cost really adds up in our local area around Carrington we didn't have much rain in April we didn't have any snow in March our hay crop for the first cuttings we're a half we're a half a crop if not less but we offset that through a lot of straw that was purchased that's been put up we've offset that with CRP haze it's been offset with ditch haze it's been offset with corn stover right now so everything's priced according so to answer your question hay straight and somewhere between 25-60 dollars a bale depending upon the weight of the bale and the feed quality of the bale but there should be enough roughage out there to provide that's feed to maintain the room and functioning now look for better feeds well it sounds like we kind of know where we got hay it might not be in all the right hands might be some trading but it's not going to be at the drought prices the southern boys had to pay and it's going to be a pretty economical source of feed as well the other thing that most of our rations include in more recent years is a byproduct such as the corn distillers great extra source of protein phosphorus any challenges on the supply or the pricing of those into rations this year well first let me say then there's a slide you'll see that that shows that we have a lot of processing plants in North Dakota for co-products it can be distillers grains beet pulp canola mill barley malt sprout pellets wheat mids we produce a phenomenal amount of byproducts or co-products in North Dakota now I didn't talk about this earlier but corn is relatively low on protein some of our grass days we have especially the straws and corn stover is low on protein the beauty here is co-products are high in protein they've milled out the starch or fermented out the starch what's left over is high protein feed it's usually pretty cost competitive I went and looked at the prices that are going for co-products in North Dakota recently and we've got four or five ethanol distillers in North Dakota if you look what they have for distillers grains they're all priced at around a hundred and twenty dollars a ton for dry product now if you want 50% moisture product out of these out of these facilities it's around 55 dollars a ton now we've got a plant in castleton that is produces dry and wet distillers grains of course it's wet so it's a more moisture they price it lower at 30 dollars a ton Hankinson is a huge plant as well and they sell distillers grains both wet and excuse me dry and modified their price to 120 and then 70 well they're closer to a feeding region in South Dakota Minnesota so the price of it goes up a little bit if you go to spirit wood and underwood blue flint they're at 115 or 120 for the dry and distillers is at 55 so what I'm getting at here even if you go out to blue red trail energy in Richardson the distillers price is still around 120 so wherever you find distillers grains in North Dakota right now the prices are very much the same if you want it dry it's about the same price except you don't have to pay for the water obviously it's cheaper but you're you're hauling water now that's high in protein high in energy content you got a hole it though well what if you got a wheat mid plant right next door a little less than energy content high in protein not as quite as high what's the price well it's a little bit cheaper 115 you go to the state mill an elevator it might be around 110 for these spot prices that I have and if you want a spot price list contact your county extension agent they might have a dated price list because spot prices always change but there'd be phone numbers that they can call and find out what the current price is which you can negotiate barley malt sprouts are available out of Spiritwood North Dakota and they're priced around the same too so we've got all types of feed out there beatpulps another one we just availability is actually really good when you talk to them they've got it sold maybe for a month or availability is right now if you're looking for after the first of year we have access to a lot of co-products in North Dakota right now sounds like we had a lot of choices there location of what we're close to and transportation and access will you know determine what maybe works best for us but I do know that in the last year and some this year we've had some disease issues in our wheat crops we've had scab which is related to some bomb a toxin levels which is created marketing problems and some of that grain is probably destined as a feed because it won't work in the milling industry what are you got concerns about using wheat in in backgrounding rations and wheat that might have some scab or vomit toxin levels in it well we did some research at the Carrington Research Extension Center quite a few years ago Dr. Verne Anderson fed the highest level of barley you could find at that time that was contaminated with the highest level of vomit toxin in barley and by the time you feed half of the rations barley the other half is grain you diluted somewhat and even at that high level of dilution excuse me even at that high level after it's diluted we didn't see any problems in feeding calves backgrounding finishing we didn't see anything and in cows or replacement heifers there was no deleterious effects so the room and an animal has an opportunity to utilize some of those based on the research that we've seen now when you see one mold there might be others so you never quite know what might happen there so a good idea is to take a sample if you're worried and send it to the NDSU diagnostic lab and have what's called their mycotoxin screen and for a hundred dollars you can find out if it's high level of toxins because there's aphelotoxins and T2 toxins and T3 there's other aukrotoxins that are actually killed the liver in an animal so you'd hate to feed these stuff and end up with dead animals because of it or poor doing animals we can always handle a little we can't handle a lot so for a hundred bucks that might be cheaper than having a dead calf that real good bargain you had may not be such of a bargain but remember it's the dilution is our solution so if you got some really really questionable stuff have it tested and blended into your ration it's better than burning it well I think we're probably got a final kind of question I just wondered if you know we use most of our background in rations have hay maybe some silage some grains byproducts and a lot of guys feed for you know 60 70 80 days trying to get two and a half or somewhere that average day to gain other caps can you give us one example of a ration or a couple that might use those feeds and what proportion we need to feed them to accomplish that in our growing cap I got four rations here for you to look at oh thank for to consider it's 600 pound steers of course as they get bigger they're gonna eat more so you got to adjust the poundage but 600 pound steers 2.6 pounds average daily gain we're looking around 15 pounds dry matter intake that's the rations are based off they might eat more so if they eat more they're gonna gain more but first let's start off with a ration that would be a corn grain as our grain seven pounds of corn grain to this calf it's got to be mixed with nine pounds of hay and a pound of a 38 per 32% protein supplement that'll meet the energy needs the protein needs the calcium and phosphorus are balanced and it costs about it according to math here costs around a dollar 28 a day or about 50 cents per pound to gain gee based on today's calf prices that sounds kind of intriguing so we do have some I don't know this could be kind of good here now let's look at some of these other feeds we got corn gray here's a ration that's basically corn grain hay and silage okay corn grain at 3 pounds hay at 6 pounds that's an alfalfa grass hay corn size at 10 pounds and then we don't have enough protein in that ration so we got to put in some wheat meds so 3 pounds 6 pounds 10 pounds and 4 pounds of dried of wheat meds and that cost is 97 cents what's actually cheaper cost to gain at 36 cents okay we got another ration say you don't have corn you want to use barley okay barley got some corn size you chopped it instead and then you got a little distiller's grains because that's gonna need just a little bit of energy and protein so you use 4 pounds of barley 20 pounds of corn salage and excuse me I didn't mean barley I meant alfalfa hay I'm sorry 4 pounds of alfalfa hay 20 pounds of corn salage and four and a half pounds of distiller's grains 88 cents is a feed cost for the day at 34 cents pound to gain so well one more ration we got some cheap barley out there we're gonna mix a little bit of corn a little bit of hay and distiller's grains we didn't put up any silage so let's use three pounds of corn excuse me two pounds of corn six pounds of barley seven pounds of hay and one pound of distiller's it didn't take much distiller's a little extra protein 92 cents of the 35 cent cost to gain so we'll do some budgets here after maybe Tim did some budgets and if you did we can find out just this is pretty cheap feeding this year it looks like with the performance you're getting out of those calves with those feeds and those values in the marketplace right now generating these cost of gains feed cost of gains I should say yeah in the 30 cents I think we look at the prices of the calves going in and the potential for what those calves to be worth coming out and I think Tim's budgets that he talked about earlier have shown some margin in this business make a lot of sense so thank you Carl for kind of giving us the rundown on what the feed is and how we put these feeds together to make our calves perform thank you