 Well, beginning as we start this talk, and I'm listening to Jerry and listen to John, and talking a great deal about all of the effort that it goes to to wean these calves, do it correctly. I'm not sure a balling calf at the sale yard is correct, but the producers that do that think it is, and they don't have to take care of sick calves or whatever. My talk actually this afternoon or this evening now is really one in what you're preparing or we're going to talk about actually preparing what you might do next year, because we're talking about feeding extensively, probably not in a feedlot right away. Eventually these calves will move into confinement, but we're talking about weaning calves and doing things in an alternative way, and it's really, I mean, it's a night and day difference from what we've been listening to John talk about and Carl, and so as we do that, one of the questions we have is you look at a set of calves like this in the picture, and I'm going to have several pictures and maybe not quite as much data for you today, it'll save me a lot of words. But you ask the question, when I wean my calves, what am I going to do with them and how am I going to handle them, and Gerald talked a lot about that as we talked about different methods of weaning, and a lot of those methods of weaning had a lot to do with stress, and a lot to do with how do we minimize stress to maintain this calves ability to get up to the bunk, to eat, and we know that this calf has just come from a grazing environment such as these cows and calves that you see in the picture, they've been out grazing. So we move them into a feedlot and where there's dust, a new waterer, a bunk, and a lot of things that are totally unfamiliar to them, and then we commingle them close together. We gave them some vaccines, probably did it earlier and did it like our veterinarian had told us to do, but we still run into some problems. We have, we can have some health problems with those calves, and the question that came from the audience asked the question, what about double vaccinating even these calves if the producer told me they've been vaccinated? And so we're concerned and we know that those vaccines work, but we still have good possibility of having some BRD. So if I take a different approach and I think a totally complete paradigm shift here in looking at weaning those calves, perhaps in an environment they're more accustomed to and that is a grazing environment. What will they be fed? If I wean them into a grazing environment, what kind of grazing will I have? And then I'll also ask the question we talked about a lot about labor. I saw labor as we feed these calves and John was talking about feeding these calves. We're talking about a lot of labor. So the question is that labor actually began not when we weaned the calves, but that labor actually began when all of our farmers and our cowboys are swathing, baling, they're hauling and they're stacking hay, and in some cases a lot of those bales still need to be hauled into the farmstead or into the feedlot where they're going to be fed. And those many many guys are chopping corn right now and hauling corn costs them 80, 85 dollars an acre to get that corn chopped and hauled to the pit. Plus we got packing and other expenses to go along with that as well. So I asked the question is there an alternative to weaned for weaning backgrounding calves than this picture right here moving these calves from that grazing situation into the feedlot and putting them in a bunk line situation. We've been doing some work going back probably as far back as about eight years ago. I began looking along with some help and some cooperative work with South Dakota State University and the University of Wyoming and we looked at should we wean these calves early and we really were looking at a situation of drought or crisis management under drought conditions. And under that situation we began to study well what happens if we early wean these calves. And Gerald alluded to some of that in some of his first slides as he talked about what happens to that cow when we interrupt lactation and the requirements for lactation drop by some 30% and actually a lot of that energy that wasn't going into that early weaned calf is actually going on the back of that cow making her more prepared really for the for the winter that's gonna that she's going to encounter and she's better prepared for winter by putting a little bit more condition back on her back. Let's move away from mom and take a look at those calves. I'm not going to really talk about early weaning and normal weaning although that's what that study was we compared conventional weaning to early weaning that early weaning was in August and mid-August this is September and then the normal wean was more the first in November. Actually early weaning was extremely successful and by the way it was profitable. However for producers early weaning calves is unpopular. They don't want to do it. Why? Interferers harvest if they're cut and wheat they don't want to be doing monkeying around the calves. They're basically not ready to take calves in. Corn is supposed to be chopped and low and behold if you feed corn which is what we did fed on harvested corn you chop it or you combine it. You don't have calves graze it but let's take a look at some of the data and see what happens here. Why would you want to graze corn? Our data shows as I've said that it's profitable to graze corn but also the corns that we use are not the high grain corn that dampens down and dries down and is ready for combining much earlier than a silage type 90 to 95 day corn and that plant actually is a very versatile, it's very erect, it withstands wind and it retains its nutritive quality actually quite well into the fall. If we take a look at that nutrient quality and we begin in September about the time the guys are going to be chopping corn and hauling it into the pit by the way costing $85 an acre to get it in there. You look at that crude protein in September about 9.2, you look at that across the top line, NDF that soluble soluble type fiber 61%, the insoluble fiber component about 30% and then in vitro dry matter disappearance about 75%. If we move into November which is kind of the timeframe we're going to be working with, you see it hasn't changed a great deal, it has changed as that corn matures into November and we get as far out as January and it's actually changed quite a bit but now it's become in January, now it's become good grazing for cows. If we think about grazing extensively versus confinement and I'm going to allude to several things that Dr. Stucka referred to as well and so a lot of my talk was given by John and Dr. Stucka but in a little different way. We know for a fact that animal performance is good. We know that grazing cattle experience less health problems and we got some pretty good data on that where we're probably experiencing almost no health problems in our calves that are out grazing as compared to those cattle that are confined in the feedlot. In our data, I don't have a slide on it but we had upwards of 15 to 17% pulls in the first pulls and we worked our way down to second and third pulls where we had around 5-6% third pulls in calves that were in a commercial feed yard. So against almost nothing in the grazing cattle. In fact in these many years of grazing cattle and corn we have had one death loss which occurred about two weeks ago and it actually was in yearling steers around 1100 pound steer that went down. He did bloat so it can happen anytime we work with ruminants but over a period of time and many groups of cattle without almost no health issues. Never used a needle in one, never had to break one in and never found one dead. By the way when you're grazing corn it's hard to find the cattle. The other thing that's important and worth mentioning is that waste. As we deal with waste animals that are grazing the waste is distributed and returned to the soil and that waste and litter contribute to improving soil health. The other thing that grazing does is it reduces daily feeding labor, fuel costs, chopping costs, charges, equipment, maintenance and repair and equipment depreciation. Backgrounding cattle grazing corn has been profitable and I think I've mentioned that already. If we take a look at grazing management and performance. Now this is for corn and forage type corns. To begin with calves must be confined long enough so that they get over balling and that's probably from seven to ten days you just have to lock them up. If you're in simple unless you're unless we can take the other approach and that would be fence line weaning or one of those weaning approaches that Gerald's talked about but fence line weaning appeals to me a great deal and I would encourage people to really look at that using and it's done those who do it very successful very pleased with it. The other thing that you have to have once you do get these calves out on on into the fields is that you need to have good fences and you need good quality water. One of the major deterrents probably since so much land is rented. If we look at performance looking at four to five hundred pound calves that are weaned grazing days we've ranged anywhere in severe drought to as few as 30 days of grazing to as much as 90 days of grazing with calves. We've had a range of gain on the calves of 145 to 180 pounds in the range and average daily gains from 1.8 to 2.2 and in some groups of calves I've had at calves gain as high as 2.8 pounds a day so if you go back and look at those TDNs that that Carl was talking about using to get up there close to 2.8 we're talking TDN you know 67 to 70 percent TDN. What about the amount of corner takes to maintain calves? Standing corn unharvested for steers acres per steer per month about two-tenths of an acre per month is the way I think of it since we're working with fields. If you are going to graze calves in that those 75 days or so two and a half months of grazing we'd probably be looking at about a half an acre about point five to point five five acre per steer per month or for the total two and a half month period. Grazing economics. Steer price at Stockman's just the other day as I put the talk together we're $156 per hundred weight for 645 pound steers which is about the weight as these calves are coming out of our grazing studies. Corn cost per acre is $168 an acre. When we do the do the do the math the cost per pound of gain is about 53 cents per pound of gain and we're showing a profit of somewhere around $185 over the costs and expenses of our corn production. As I look at those numbers that John was projecting as I looked at his charts he's showing me cost of gains for those lighter calves at a dollar and 28 cents with a break even $1.56. If I look at those 550 pound calves that he was showing cost of gain of 130 to oh maybe down to 120 with a break even $1.52 and his heavier calves with a cost of gain of 125 and I'm working its way down to 110 with a break even $1.42. I'm saying to myself wow I think maybe we can take advantage of using these these extensive grazing approaches and have a lot less invested both in labor time management fuel machinery equipment depreciation and have an opportunity to make a profit with these cattle so I would encourage you as you look at these numbers to give some thought to that paradigm shift can we do this a different way instead of pouring so much money into feed and the machine and all that stuff it's just a thought. When I put beef gain on a bushel or corn equivalent equivalent in bushels per acre many of you have seen this slide when I checked at red trail energy at the ethanol plant last Friday they were paying $6.83 was a corn price which is right in the middle there and that would be equivalent to about 72 bushels per acre corn price drop just a little bit so we're probably somewhere between 72 and 76 bushels per acre on the board this morning when I looked at it. There are some other options and I'd like to talk a little bit about sequencing of crops to be used for weaning calves into a sequence of crops that calves could be fence line weaned on. One of the crops that just is really appealing to me that I've been working with is a combination of field pea and barley we're using Arvika pea and a Stockford grazing type barley and there's some other barleys that are out now that in fact are released from Montana State that's that's maybe even more appealing than Stockford but we happen to have Stockford in this evaluation that I'm working on. We lay those down because the calves aren't ready but the crop is ready so we lay that crop down in windrows and basically we're stockpiling that barley for grazing those windrows later into the fall. Another thing that we're doing and again it's along the lines of soil health but we're trying to marry up soil health as well as crops that are going to be appealing for grazing and if you look in the upper left hand corner you can see a Triticali harry vetch there and what we're doing is we're taking that winter Triticali harry vetch we're laying that down bailing it up about the middle of June and coming back in and seeding in a seven-way cover crop and you can see this cover crop here the upper right hand corner is out there in probably the middle of September is what that looked like and bottom one is just showing some of those cabbages and radishes that I've got in there. Your lower right hand corner that picture was taken just a few hours ago at the ranch and I had to hurry out and get back to put this slide show together for for Carl but anyway you can see that the that the the sunflowers have now frozen down there but pretty good seed in those heads and if we take one of the things that I was looking at when I put these crop or different crops together in the cover crop mix was was to be able to have crops in there that were pretty frost resistant freeze resistant and we've got a crop in there we've got our vika pea and a flex pea they're both frost resistant Ethiopian cabbage and a radish that's in there they're both in the foreground those bright green plants are the radish and and Ethiopian cabbage there's harry vetch in there that's resistant to frost and so we've got a lot of green material hasn't been frosted we've got oil sunflowers and probably a pretty good diet I haven't had a chance to graze that yet so I'm showing you some stuff that's fairly new in terms of research as I move forward and I take a look at the crops if I look at a crop sequence that I might suggest and I think this is a crop sequence that would make maintain somewhere between 2.2 and 2.7 pound a day gains and calves beginning with field pea barley moving to the cover crop and finishing up with a forage corn we could actually graze there for a pretty long period of time if we're using that that set of crop sequences and at the same time as we're using crop sequences one of the one of the beauties of doing that it also plays very well in the cropping program in terms of building soil health one of the one of the real caveats that beef producers have is that they have a competitive advantage for improving soil health because cattle and livestock grazing just dovetail perfectly into what our agronomists are telling us in terms of improving a below ground biomass and organic matter that's below the soil and so we can use livestock really take advantage of actually being profitable with our livestock and at the same time feeding those soils and actually by having a beef cattle involved in that program and in soil health as well as weaning and developing our calves to produce high quality beef and pounds of profitable beef we actually can accelerate the rate that soil organic matter accumulates and soil organic matter is one of the primary key movers in improving soil quality but what are the problems there's got to be some drawbacks and indeed there are adequate fences is probably one of your primary things and of course we've got traditional hardwired fences and heavy posts we also have access to within the field electric fences where we can move back fences and what have you and move cattle along through these through these different kinds of crops another one as we go deeper into the fall and winter season on these kinds of crops we certainly got to have good wind protection I didn't happen to add that to the slide but wind protection is important quality water is extremely important and one of the primary deterrence that I see to this is the unwillingness of cattlemen to change management systems to incorporate a greater amount of extensive grazing I would be open for any questions Doug Carlotta Carrington has a question on the cost per acre cost or corn cost per head and I'm trying to figure out when I see that slide that says corn cost per acre I assume that's the cap cost per acre and you can really run a two calves on an acre for two and a half months and so I'm just trying to do my math and figure out that you got a corn cost in there per acre around 800 some dollars is that right corn cost per acre is actually 168 dollars if you look I could move yeah I I know that's what it says but I'm just trying to figure out how did you value an acre of corn those are the exact crop cost I didn't value them I took the exact costs I should okay maybe I've given you a slide that showed us you our fuel our seed chemicals react ahead that explains it thank you we had some discussion over here it's actual cost okay are there any other questions for Doug yeah we got a question here in Fargo okay eastern part of the state corn yields are substantially higher than the area so our grazing rates would or could be substantially higher than a half an acre per head you know I can't hear you can you speak up or somehow give someone a mic your corn yields in Dickinson or where you predict we at the one slide showed like 72 bushels an acre is that correct and I'm from the eastern part of the state where our corn yields are probably 120 to 160 bushels an acre given that we should probably be able to push four calves per acre my question is the corn that you are you're talking about is that grain corn yes okay now the corns that we are growing are forage corns and I wouldn't expect that you would have anywhere near those kind of grain yields in forage corns okay for one thing you probably you know I really don't know much about forage corns corns that are chopped for silence in your area Carl certainly would I don't know much about that but our forage corns in Dickinson probably because they are forage and they're late maturity corns we'll get corn that's probably in that 35 to 55 bushel to the acre that's set on these on these plants so we're much lower in the amount of grain and that's one of the fallacies is most people you say corn and right away they think that's got to have a John Deere or a case combine going through it and our combines have no teeth on the bottom or no teeth on the top they only have teeth on the bottom of their cutter bar