 Well good afternoon, it's noon so I'm gonna we'll get started and I welcome all of you to our Agriculture Challenges webinar series that unfortunately we are needing to host. Today we are going to talk about cow calf management. A lot of what we're seeing the focus is then on crops and some of the issues facing our farmers but we also need to remember the challenges that our cow calf producers are facing across the state from difficulties putting up pay short potential shortages of forage and with cows being out in wet pastures and there and folks are already starting to feed hay because of difficulty accessing their pasture and what they normally would graze in the fall to where do we put these cows and calves when we bring them back with with the muddy lot conditions. Before we get started I want to have a few housekeeping items. If you are not speaking please mute your line so we don't get feedback. We will answer all questions at the end so if you have any questions please hold them to until the end. If you're worried you're gonna forget your question type it in the chat box and we'll make sure it gets addressed and you can either ask your questions live or through the chat box whatever you prefer. So we will get started. Our first speaker is going to be Jana Block the livestock system specialist at the Headingbird Research Extension Center and Jana is going to be talking about strategies for feeding cows. You see my slides okay? Okay so let's set the stage a little bit here. There are a lot of challenges being faced by producers across the state and obviously we have a lot of really variable situations. Down in my area in southwestern North Dakota we definitely got a lot of precipitation this summer but we don't have a lot of standing water unlike areas in the central and eastern part of the state. So we're trying to kind of cover a lot of potential variables but definitely there's gonna be specific situations that we're gonna have to try to deal with as they come. So like Miranda mentioned some cows are kind of maybe stranded out in summer pastures still. Standing water muddy can't get them out of there. Potentially forage shortages maybe the calves aren't weaned yet. We've got lots of unharvested crops it's kind of challenging sometimes you check with the feed stores and different suppliers they're really uncertain about what the crop is going to end up and where it's going to end up and so it can be challenging to get an estimate of what's going to be available and what prices we're going to be dealing with. A lot of hay is still sitting in fields and people can't get it hauled because it's too muddy. Also we have a lot of hay that's sitting in water which obviously is undesirable and then the climate predictions center is saying there's a 33 to 50% chance that we're going to have a wetter than average winter and so bracing ourselves for what could potentially be coming and then the cherry on the top of course is all the financial challenges that have been faced by producers both crop and livestock producers net farm income challenges credit is tightening and so obviously you can't just buy more feed and so you have to be really strategic and work with what you've got and try to really cut into your bottom line to you know maintain nutrient requirements but without breaking the bank. So where to start I think it's really important to assess and document document document if fences went out if you've got damaged hay talk to your people at FSA talk to NRCS programs like the emergency livestock systems program can cover things like damaged hay and fences and so those county offices need to hear from you guys and get an estimate of the damage that's actually you know going on out in the state. Do an inventory of your hay and other feeds you know what are you going to have on hand and what where might you have to supplement. We will talk through that a little bit more next week as far as getting specific about hay inventories and matching that up with nutrient requirements with all the potential damage mold mycotoxins damaged grains it's going to be really important to evaluate those and send those in for analysis to the diagnostic lab and then this year if you've never sampled and analyzed your forages for nutrient quality before I would urge you to do that this year we're going to have a lot of variation in forage quality just based on the stage of maturity that harvested where forages were harvested different environmental conditions and so the only way that we can really get specific and help you allocate your forages in the best manner is by knowing what the nutrient quality is. Dr. Montanholy will talk a little bit more about evaluating body condition but I will just say it's important to take a look at that now it's a really good time of year at weaning to evaluate where those cows are at and then if they're a little on the thin side start working on that winter feeding program and getting them bumped up so luckily for us here in North Dakota we have a ton of feed options we've got a lot of alternatives a lot of different things to work with so we're better off than a lot of states and we have some resources here since we don't have a lot of time today I just kind of wanted to throw up a couple of different ideas here and then give you some links to potential resources related to all these topics so we've got information research results and recommendations on custom feeding what you look for in a lot if you're sending a cow somewhere else maybe you think about bale grazing if you can't get the bales hauled in maybe you've got some swaths that never got put up and so we've got information on that on the NDSU website dry lotting or limit feeding is as an option if you're short on forages there's some information out of the University of Nebraska where they have mixed crop residues or low quality forages with the co-product kind of in you know a silage bag or something like that and had really good results feeding that to cows and then of course also consider all the alternatives we have in terms of co-products we've got you can work a little bit with straw liquids all those things so we've got an alternative feeds publication that might be helpful when you're considering some of those I think the key thing to keep in mind when you're you know kind of figuring out what your feeding management needs to be look for look for feeds that are local look for different options maybe there's a neighbor up the road that couldn't get something harvested and he's willing to graze it and he doesn't have livestock of his own and so you might have to step outside of the box a little bit and think about something that you haven't done before when we are feeding forages it's important to try to limit hay waste and so things like bale feeders you know the cone bale feeder can cut hay waste down to a little over 3% and so sometimes when we're rolling out bales that wastage might be as high as 30 to 45% and so you might need to kind of change your feed feeding strategies a little bit and maybe not put out more than one day of hay at a time that's what I mean by reducing access make sure that we're supplementing correctly and again this comes back to that nutrient analysis and making sure you know seeing where we're short on nutrients and saying where it might be adequate and then filling in with that correct supplement rather than giving you something you don't need really recommend sorting the cattle based on body condition score and age that's the most efficient way to feed cattle some of your cows with the lowest nutrient requirement so your mature cows where the calves are weaned you can use your lower quality forages with them and then save your higher quality forages for weaned calves pregnant heifers things like that of course with cold weather coming you're going to have considerations such as you know providing bedding when breaks again here's a link to a publication that covers some of that information so just to kind of summarize here I think you know we do have a lot of options out there it's easy to get emotional about the situation I know a lot of people are feeling a lot of pressure and stress get somebody to help you through this and talk through it of course wean extension are always here for you will help you with ration development will help you get your samples and help you interpret that analysis might need to get a little bit creative keep an eye on herd condition and of course always take care of yourself and your family first so it's sure an emotional time and we're all feeling for you so be sure and use us thank you Jana our next speaker is going to be Carl Hoppe the life-success and specialist at the Carrington Research Extension Center and he's going to talk about the calves component of our cow calf operation and strategies for feeding those calves the delayed weaning if thank you again Carl Hoppe at the Carrington Research Extension Center talking about all calf feeding strategies we've had a difficult fall this year there's been a lot of delayed weaning sometimes people would have most of their calves weaned in October bunk broke and fed and then this year it appears people haven't even bothered to look at their calves yet since they're too busy looking at harvest and those other issues we've had some severe snowstorms we've had flooding we've had bales under water in our part of the world so consequently it's been rather difficult so one of our choices now is just leave the calves on the cows for a longer period of time of course that comes with issues on having enough feed available for the cow and the calf and if our pastures are short this time of year we're going to see cows losing weight and calves that don't have enough weight again or just maintaining their weight this time of the year so this issue of needing excellent feed or grazing whether you have a cover crop you can turn into or a pasture that has not been utilized yet that will work quite well for these cows that still have calves on them another option is look at the creep feed for a calf unfortunately we like to adapt cattle to creep feed and doing it at this time of the state this time of the year with fully grown calves and lack of feed quality out in the pasture might lead to a real problem on on having performance without having bloat or acidosis those issues by feeding creep feed but that is a possibility and there are some additives that companies have that will limit the intake and so creep feeding can be an issue here be sure to consider the cost we're going to gain though and then of course when you're looking at that you need to consider if you're if the creep feed was designed for supplementing grass and adding the extra things that grass doesn't have like protein and and a little bit of energy or is it in replacement for grazing which means it's really utilized as a ration creep feed sorry and then of course rate of gain you'd have different goals that you like to have which be two pounds a day three pounds a day or maybe even a better average day to gain it's up you decide where you need to of course the next issue we run into is we're going to sell a calf off the cow right away we're going to do some weaning and then feed them for a little bit longer it's a catch 22 neither one is really a good option for right now if you just sat I mean selling off the cow is definitely an option of feeding and weaning definitely doesn't get them sold right now but if you are going to feed and wean depends upon what your facilities and equipment are like a few days ago our facilities were filled with mud and now they're frozen over so perhaps that might work if you're going to vaccinate be sure to look at a vaccination protocol and and background these caps for a period of time after weaning so they actually have a chance to build immunity and get over the process of being weaned or we can look at extended backgrounding periods here which can basically mean marketing at a later time after the first year next March April just selling into a different type of time yeah that's selling into a different time frame might really drive the post weaning calf period in other words some right now our calf prices may not be as high as we'd like to see them as in previous years so we're looking for a better price thinking maybe after the first a year it might be better I don't know if that's the case but that certainly is one of the options people look at we might be selling after first year just as a tax reason sometimes you need our income next year rather than this year this year it's kind of unique if you're selling calves right now heavier calves aren't discounted as much as we would have anticipated so that may or may not maintain itself after the first year but it's something that we'll have a consideration corn prices are an issue we don't know if corn is going to go up an extra 50 cents or not but right now we do have some corn available for people to feed our calves now where do we feed them well if we're going to creep feed we definitely feed them out in pasture perhaps pull the creek feeder into the pens and feed them with that thing of course the issue is do we do it with or without cows that would mean weaning so we've got an extra step if we do have the opportunity to feed them at home we can feed them at the farm with the ranch if the lots are in good shape not muddy and the manure is already hauled that definitely is an option that could be done if the manure is still there and they're filled with mud of course things are frozen recently so that may not be the case to allow an opportunity on farm or you can check out a custom feed lot of course they're going to charge for feeding yardage they might also charge on a cost compound again but be sure to identify their costs and do a budget for backgrounding to see if this is a viable option but if you don't have if you need to wean the calves and they're not heavy enough you don't have a pen at home to go to professional feed lot might be a place to enter those calves like I said mud was a problem for the past month today it froze overnight so the lots could be frozen be sure to remember that vaccines nation vaccinations for calves are important and if they aren't vaccinated you probably will get discounted at the market if they're not vaccinated by now you should at least wean them vaccinate them and like I said earlier like the back 40 product program feed them for at least 45 days to get some weight back on the calves from weaning as well as building you're looking at backgrounding calves for a longer period of time consider what your rate of gain should be maybe if it's for heifers you only want to do one in the quarter one and three quarters a pound a day gain maybe two if you're backgrounding calves you might go between two and three spears might be two to three pounds a day average day the gain the options roll over there's a lot of options and how you wish to feed calves and grow them depending upon how long your backgrounding period will be so with that I'd enter any questions later on in the slide series on how to manage calves with that I'll go back to you Carl so Carl touched on this a little bit but our next speaker Dr. Jerry Stucca our extension veterinarian is going to talk about livestock health considerations. Yeah, thank you, Miranda. I hope everyone can hear me here. Is this showing up? Just let me know if this is showing up. Yes, not yet. Oh, we just see you. Okay, hang on. Sorry. Here it comes. How about now? Is it showing up? Just nod your head so I can see. Yep. Okay, very good. Yeah, thanks. Thanks, Miranda and Carl and Jana. As you might expect, we're going to overlap on a lot of things here but that's okay because it's okay to reiterate some of these points. I'm going to focus mostly on the calf and a lot of things that Carl talked about. I'll probably talk about as well. I just want to make one point at which we start. You know, this is an unusual year and it calls for unusual management but that's okay. You know cattle can be stored. Grain can be stored but grain doesn't gain in value unless the price goes up. If you manage this properly, if you store calves whether it's still with the cows or in a pen and you feed them right, they gain value because they're getting heavier. The grain doesn't get any heavier but cattle do. It's a little unusual this year but it'll be okay if you can just kind of manage your way through it. I think there's still a lot of opportunities out there to manage this thing properly. I just put this picture in here. These were cattle that just came off grass. You expect them to come into nice conditions and it's still muddy and kind of wet. That's what we're dealing with. That's the reality. Carl talked here, so I divided this into risk. I talked about risk and health. What are the stressors that are facing these calves this fall? Well, pen conditions. Carl already talked about pen conditions and they're better now with frost and you can still haul manure if the ground is frozen. Get the manure that's accumulated and you can still move that. It'll move a lot easier now that the temperatures have dropped. So that still can be done but that precludes sometimes weaning into these pens if there's still a lot of manure. Consider feed supplies and the rations, the quality and the delivery. Whether you can do this or not, whether there's too much mud in your facility, you can't even deliver rations. All those things kind of been talked about. I want you to think about reading procedures because separating cows from cows no matter how you do it is a stressful situation. The calf loses its companion that said for the last five, six months and it loses its pacifier. Loses that ability to nurse that cow. So that no matter how you do it it's a stressful thing. Even vaccination by itself can be stressful if done at the wrong time. I always prefer that we vaccinate while the calf is still with the cow. And then a big one for me is this consideration because this can be a stressor. Perhaps even one of the biggest stressors that cattle face because our ranches these days are much larger. There's more cattle. We pasture cattle during the summer and many different pastures. When you bring all those calves together as a group, now we have called mingling stress. So I want you to consider that as well. So let's go to the next slide and go away from stress and talk about the options. The colder weather will firm pens. You can still move manure when the pen is firm. I said that already. Got to think about bedding. If I'm going to move into this pen, I've got some manure I can move. Now I'm going to wean calves. Make sure you've got some bedding on hand. Whether it's stover, whether it's straw, some type of bedding to insulate those cattle from that full ground. And you've got to think about not only now but even later on. So bedding is a big deal when it comes to weaning calves and it's in our part of the world. And this is another one as well. And Carl said this, leave cows and calves together. Just wean later. There's no 10th commandment that says thou shalt wean calves on October 15th. It's okay to leave them together. It's just the feeding becomes a little bit more aggressive when they're still together at this time of the year. But it's okay. You can do this. And you can vaccinate the calves while they're still with the mother. And one of the benefits of leaving cows and calves together is that you can feed them together. And those calves get used to eating a similar to ration to what they're going to eat when you actually go ahead with the weaning process. So take part of that weaning stress away if they know how to eat already and their ration's familiar to it. And then if you leave cows and calves together, it actually reduces that co-mingling stress. The contrast would be putting all those calves in a pen together without their mothers. You co-mingle stress, you wean stress. If you leave the cows and calves together from all these pastures and you feed them together, you actually reduce that co-mingling stress a great deal. So those are some of the options as I thought about this whole issue of risk and keeping calves healthy at this time of the year. And it's, you know, even if we get conditions like this and we're not too far away from there, it's okay to feed calves out on winter feeding grounds. It's okay. It's to feed cows out there. There's no rule that I know of that says you have to wean into a pen. The challenge there becomes maintaining at least for the first week or so, a separation from cow and calf. So anyway, that's what I had to share with you today and thanks for listening in. And it just, just remember that it's unusual but we can get ourselves through this this year. So thanks. Thank you Dr. Stepka. Our next speaker is going to be Dr. Yuri Montinholi. He is our new extension beef cattle specialist based here in Fargo. And he is going to be talking a little bit more about body condition scoring and how we can use that to make decisions. All right. Thanks Miranda for the introduction. It is my great pleasure to be presenting my first webinar at the NDSU extension. And I hope it will be of assistance. Just a little thing here. Sorry Miran, do you see my main screen, my presentation screen? Okay. All right. So this is a beautiful picture and I would enjoy more if it wasn't a soybean field floated with water. So this is a year that you're you're handling a lot of that. And I could witness this farmer here trying to pump water for over two weeks in a row from a field until they simply gave up with doing that. So it was really tough and hard to watch that, to witness that. And we see that we still have a lot of crops to be harvest and when it comes to livestock production, I just got this article from the Jamstow Sun from this weekend showing that it's been hard to to get our bales and be ready to feed our cattle. So with that we probably it might be short of feed or even feed might be of poor quality. So we need to work on that. And from a most science perspective, there are many ways of handling those issues when you look at our toolbox. And one of these techniques would be the manipulation of body condition score. However, before moving into the details on that, I really would like to address some general bar keeping points on this. So basically you need to look at each farm at each scenario and understand like what's the feed resource. So how many bales are stored, how many area the farmer would have for fall grazing or for winter grazing and now supplementation. And when I say supplementation it's not even protein and carbohydrate, but it's really the minerals because sometimes when they're short of coins we start cutting corns on that and then you might have issues some issues later on. And then the next step on that would be the number of cattle to be fed. And this is important. I think that if there is a good year to be a bit more strict on what is cool animal to remove animal from the herd, probably this is the good year to be strict on that. And think about the the older cows that you have if they really drop a heavy cow every year or not. So be a bit careful and mindful when doing that. And something applies to like replacement animals or even the number of bows that you might have on farm. Do you need all those bows or could you do without less one or less two? And then the third part to consider are aspects to management per se. So it is a good year to do investments on windbreaks. Windbreaks are something that you carry on over the years you can be using. When the animal has a shelter, has some protection, has some good environment, the animal will be losing less heat. So then it will be preserving more the reserves. Also when it looks to bait feeders, are those bait feeders like in a good shape or do need some renovation, some more content? So consider that too. And as Gianna mentioned, speed to the herd can be a good idea. So speed to the herd according to body condition score. And also according to the age of the animals that could be quite helpful. So talk about body condition score now. So there is a few ways of grading the animals. In the US use the grade one to nine. And it's basically it is an indication of fatness. You look to those body locations about indicator here in the slide and then you see how fat the animals are with a scale. And to illustrate this, I will show you what Mickey Mouse was doing in 1928 for body condition score. Take a look on this. So yes, we can manipulate body condition score by feeding the animal. And this is the best presentation, best pictures that I found on the internet about that. Showing the nine grades, so one to nine for body condition. If one being the leanest guy animals and the number nine being the one with more fat. And most of the times when I'm managing a herd it would be between five and six and seven. That's pretty much it. And you'll be talking about that according to the stage that the animal are. So basically there is a period on the yearly cycle of a cow that's very critical. It overlaps the last third of the gestation and the first three months of lactation. So in this area, in this shaded area here, that's where the cow needs more resources to deal with fatal growth and then producing milk for junior. So this is quite important. There is that you need to feed the cows very well. If you're trying to feed there, then most of the losing condition and you need to deal with that. Also in tough years, you might be considering a quick feeding your cows at an early stage of life so then you can offset some of the burnout on the cow. So this is pretty much modern nature and then you see how that works with the calendar year that we have. So imagine an entire year, that's the situation here in this graph and then with animals calving the peak of calving a farm on February 1st. So let's say the early spring calvars. So if you translate that same graph from before, the critical period would be from beginning of November to end of April. So that's quite quite the stretch and we need to try to work with your animals so they would have a good condition score to calve and then to repress, right? Because you do need them to get pregnant again quite soon. And this would be the period that you probably you would be a bit more considerative when it comes to body condition score. And if you're not in that shape that you can be so considerative for such a long period, I would say that the 30 days around the calving that's probably where we could be doing some extra work to try to keep our cows in good shape. It's important that if you're to increase the body condition of the cows, you're writing the time for doing that because once they drop the calves, most of the energy that you be feeding to the cow will be end up converting to milk. So very little goes to recovering body condition. So that's quite important. And also for animals that are up to four years old, like the period that the cows are still growing, it's important that you consider these suggestions of body condition one degree higher. So we talk about six, seven and five because those animals also have greater demands than mature cows. And for those of you that have different peaks or different seasons for calving, then you can just move this bar around and see what you can see in terms of higher demand of the cows. So that's pretty much a general idea about this. Of course this would vary from farm to farm. And really I encourage you to work on this because this is management and most of the times management doesn't cost much money. It's more like planning according to the situation. So consider that. You're more than welcome to seek for assistance for your county agent. And also if you have other cow issues or nice things to share about cows, you're more than welcome to contact me. And if you can help, we are here to help you. Thanks for listening. Thank you Eury. So our next speaker is going to be Lisa Peterson and she is going to talk about and give some guidance on making some calling decisions during this time. Miranda, somebody's still sharing so I can't share. Okay, sorry. Just trying to be ahead of the game. Okay, so can you all see that? Yep, it looks good. Okay, all right, sounds good. So I'm going to talk about strategic calling of beef cattle herds as my husband said yesterday. I'm the hit man here. So we'll see what we can do to maybe minimize the amount of animals we have in the herd, especially if we're in a short feed or resource situation. So I think before we start calling, we need to determine what our calling criteria is. And with every operation I have ever dealt with, that is going to be different. It's different from the ranch that my husband and I run with his family than it is my dad's operation in southwest Colorado. And so before calling above the obvious, beyond the obvious, things like open cows set goals for your operation. And I think that that'll make your calling decisions much easier. Use records to help you make the decision. You can see here that this producer's calving book, they have some notations over here on the right side. The GFGU is a feet and utter score, so good feet, good utter, to help them make calling decisions in. If you're not keeping some type of production records, now is a really good time to start. So some reasons to call beyond the three O's. And I call the three O's open, honoree, and old, are a shortage of feed, economics, and then traits beyond convenience. So I'm just going to lay this out here. This is probably a more of a long-term situation rather than a short-term one on some reasons to call beyond the three O's. And that is that a discipline calling program can return more potential value for heifer calves. And we've seen this fall a tremendous discount for heifer calves. And however, not in all herds, and there was some cattle that sold yesterday that I watched that did not have a huge discount for heifer calves. And so I looked at a couple herds in October of 2016 and just evaluated them. They were the same weight, same breed, sold on the same day. And in herd one, the heifers brought $120 more than the heifers from herd two. And in fact, the herd one heifers actually outsold the steers. So why was that? Well, that herd actually had a very disciplined calling program that they had implemented about 15 years earlier and an effort to add value to their cows. And so that has led them to have a lower calling rate in the ability to retain more cows and sell more replacement heifers. The replacement rates of herd one is about 8% and herd two is about 21%. And they have used that as a long-term strategy to improve profitability in their operation. However, today I think we need to look at some short-term goals for culling. And I would say start with the easiest decision first, which is to get rid of open cows. If you're not an operation that preg checks on a regular basis, this is the year that you need to do that. Don't skip preg checking. And that is going to be your easy decision to get rid of those open cows. You don't want to be feeding any more mouths than you have to, especially if they're not going to return something next year. And so after culling your opens, the decisions tend to get more challenging for most operations. The first thing I would do after that is get rid of the bad actors. And those are your honorary cows, bad dispositions, cows that don't like to stay in, all of those cows. So disposition issues are a human safety issue. They're typically heritable. We know that they decrease profitability at the cow-calf level. They decrease profitability at the feed yard level and they also impact carcass quality and livestock safety. This is one of my favorite photos. It's been around the internet several times. Somebody was selling a black cow that was the third caver. She was bred to an Angus bull who was turned out on June 20th. They knew a lot about this cow and down here at the bottom it says, wife is scared of cow, husband is scared of wife, cow has to go. Well, that's a good reason to send your cows to town that have bad dispositions. Next, I think it's easy for us to look at feet and legs and the structure of our feet and legs. Most of that structure starts in the shoulder area. When we look at bad feet and they get lots of calls about the causes of cracks in feet and long toes and all those kind of things, there's typically a genetic component that is not only related to structure but also related to vertical cracks like you can see in this left-hand picture. Corkscrew claws are highly heritable and then long toes. Bad feet affect productivity and profitability. They're well-being issues. They cause issues in the feed yard, oftentimes issues on trucks and so if I'm looking at trying to get rid of some cows, I would look at the feet and legs. Next are udder quality. There's been some discussion about whether poorly structured udders are less profitable or if the calves from those cows are less profitable. These things are often genetic. I consider them what I would call a convenience trait. Nobody likes messing with a cow and having to get a calf to suck. However, we know that clostrum is equal to calf health and profitability and so if that calf can't get to suck because those teats are too large or the cow has a pendulous udder, that can be a serious issue and if udders drag, we end up with increased incidence of diseases like scours. No doubt there's a lot more labor and management with cows with poor udders and in my opinion time is equal to money and you never have to deal with these cows when it's sunny and 60 and you have a lot of time on your hands. It seems like we have to deal with them when we want to get to the the kids basketball games. Late breads can be an easy place to call depending on your calving season and how long your cows were exposed to bulls. So if you have a short calving season, short days of exposure say two cycles, 45 days or so, you're probably not going to be able to sort out those late breads as easily as somebody who doesn't pull the bulls. And so we know that calves born in the first 21 days are more profitable off the cow, they're more profitable in the feed yard and in the packing plant on the rail. They offer more weaning weight and long-term the replacement heifers that are born in those first 21 days are more productive more productive and have more longevity in the herd and your cows that have in the first 21 days have a higher percentage who cycle back quicker and breed back quicker. And if we have another wet spring one thing for us to consider is do you want to be dealing with planting and calving at the same time if your lake heifers land you in that late April, May time for you. Yuri talked really gave a nice presentation on body condition score. Jana talked a lot about sorting cows. I think looking at your cows and if you have some extremely thin cows they would be a target for me to get rid of. And in many cases we're looking at a shortage of feed. They're going to be an increased level of management. They're going to probably have calves that that provide you some challenges if we can't increase their body condition score. So I would look at those cows that are in those body condition scores twos and threes to make a new career. I happen to be a fan of old cows. I have a soft spot in my heart for old cows. They're the cows that are profitable in our herds. They've stuck around for a long time typically under stronger culling regiments. And so you can look at your old cows, check their mouths, score their teeth, whether they have a full mouth of teeth or whether they only have stumps like the mouth on this cow on the right hand side. But sure make sure that they are still sound. Their feet and legs are still good. They still have decent body condition. They still have a good udder underneath them. And they are still able to produce at a similar level to their younger herd mates. I am not a fan of keeping an old cow around just because I like her in an effort and then I guess sacrifice some production out of her. Generally a cow has to be seven or eight years old before she becomes income and instead of expense. And so I would not just automatically cull based upon old cows but if you have some old cows that are thin and and going down in their production I would consider culling them. Poor producers are an easy target for me. You need to use records to determine that. And I say unless a cow has a good reason that she hasn't raised a decent calf this year. You know maybe that calf broke a leg or something. But if she has a habitual record of raising a dink I would say let her go to work for somebody else. In our herds today everyone needs to earn their keep. And then finally and Yuri brought this up. Don't forget the bull. Apply similar culling criteria to your bull battery. So if you have some bulls that got hurt they have hurt penises. Maybe they were have some fertility issues. Disposition issues. Feet and leg issues. I would consider culling them now. You don't want to feed those guys through the winter especially if you're short on feed resources. And you sure don't want to let them freeload. And then finally I would say we need to consider stopping the truck and making sure that we check all treatment records. Make sure that those animals haven't for example been poured with some type of antiparasitic and not met their withdrawal time. Are all cattle and a body condition score greater than two. And can they stand and walk on all four legs. Ask yourself are all the animals healthy. And my favorite question I think the most important on here is would you feed your family what you just loaded. And if that answers no I would unload them. So we wish you the best if you need anything please let us know. Many of us are living this challenge with you. And we're here to talk and listen and help you through your challenges. Thank you. Thank you Lisa and Lisa did a great lead in for our next speaker. Brian Parman who is our extension egg finance specialist. He is actually also joining us from the road as he is traveling with the rest of our extension egg economics. And as they're doing their egg lender series this week. So I want to thank Brian for taking the time to join us from the road as well as Carl and Jana. Yeah and I've got Tim Petrie here with me. Can you hear me all right? Yes. I know it looks like we're angelic but that's the lighting behind our heads. So anyway we're going to talk a little bit about the market and just some options that producers have to use. And I know Tim had some thoughts so I'm going to start off and have him lead off. Well yeah you know with this weather and we've already put out a news release but it's very very important that producers provide all the information they can to their market because we're in the information age and that's what creates value. So certainly you know when shots were given and even where they're given and so on but even be genetics. Anything related to information that might cause value to calves is very very important because any calves that are a little bit off from the average or something are receiving huge discounts. Always a case this time of year when we have big runs the livestock buyers can be more selective so certainly do that. And you know just looking at the market people are wondering why are the heavyweight 7-800 pounders selling for almost the same as calves right now. And it's a supply and demand thing. Not a lot of the heavyweights sold now like they were a month or two ago and then we're just bombarded with calves. And again unweaned calves, balling calves are going to be discounted at the market but I would suggest producers talk to their market in advance weeks if they can and get tips from them. Another reason why the heavier weights are selling so well is if you look at the futures today April live cattle futures are 124 and by June they're down to 113 so a big discount there so any of the cattle that can get the market for that April market are just selling a lot better than and you know than the ones with the June futures of by August it's even lower about 111. Yeah absolutely the feed tops right now and folks are worried about what corn prices are going to do so they're willing to pay for you to put weight on them if you can possibly do it and that's that thing with those heavyweight calves waiting we briefly touched on if you're going to do that you could have an option to utilize the LRP program for back grounding into the into the spring and locking into prices an option that somebody could take and for the most part that's really the only options we have I don't know if it should be touched on real quick again said though if you have those frozen-eared and frozen-tailed calves it's been shown that if you can get them up to seven or eight hundred pounds the discount that you're going to take is not going to be nearly as large as it would have been if you show up there a five hundred weight with frozen-off ears and tails. There's plenty of debate on if that should or shouldn't be so but the fact is that's what the market pays but if you can get them heavier that signifies to the market that hey there's nothing wrong with this animal other than missing ears and tails and therefore that discount just isn't as high and that's pretty much all we have to say on that matter as of now so with that we'll turn it back over thank you Brian and Tim for joining us from the road we re-appreciate that so that is the end of our webinar we're going to open it up for questions before we do I want to let everybody know that we do have a short survey so if you could please provide some feedback about today's webinar and provide some input on future topics that you would like us to share with you we are recording all the webinars so if you can't make this make another one you can find those on our website so if you go to NDSU extension livestock management team and scroll to the bottom there is a topic tab that links to all the page with all of the webinars and then also if you want to follow up with any of the specialists that talk today if you go to the contact connect page you can find the contact information for all of today's speakers with that I will open it up for questions Brian and Tim I have a question about our market cow and bull markets right now is there some value to adding some weight and condition to cows or would it be preferred just to send them down the road even if guys have some supplemental feed that they could put into them yeah sure if you've got to feed you know cow prices and and bulls too are at the low now because the checking is going on they're all coming to market so always the low for the market around here so if you've got feed which a lot of people don't and then the cows have to go to town keeping them putting some weight on them and waiting so the big runs are over here in a month or two uh usually that's made evidence yeah but the key point is you have to feed absolutely Joshua you raised your hand do you have a question yeah so I was wondering what's the best way to feed because all like I was feeding during that snowstorm and noticing that we had lots of mold in our our hay what is the best way to feed is the best way to go through a bale processor or do we get uh have a pig grinder come in grind that stuff up try to just try to knock some that mold out of there Jana and Carl I'm gonna hand that one over to you and start video are we still there yes uh Carl Hoppe um trying to reduce the extra noise in the room here mold is a tough question there um too much mold indicates poor quality feed decreased in feed value and if they inhale too much you can end up some respiratory problems molding itself isn't necessarily a bad deal as long as it's addictive of poor feed quality but there's a limit to how much mold you can have um in a cow ration you might have set the room in an environment you might end up uh causing some other uh systemic problems if she's pregnant perhaps a mycotic infection leads to a mycotic abortion so those types of things um you know when you're stuck between a rock and hard spot what do you do you end up feeding something but if your cows get sick from feeding the mold definitely stop doing that that's what i'd call a biological assay um in general yeah i suppose you could test for mold counts and see just how moldy it is although it's obvious it's moldy if you don't put on the ground like that refining from phenol would be a good thing there might be some other things you can add to the ration to uh extend it out or maybe only have just a small part of the ration be the moldy feed but um always be wary of moldy feed especially if it's moldy sweet clover then you'll end up with sweet clover poisoning and that will be a disastrous episode for you so um try to find good feed and if it's super moldy pick and choose wisely maybe let cows graze more than they need to provide more than what the cows need thinking that they might select only the good hay and not eat the super moldy hay Carl let me jump in here just a little bit as well he asked about what i would if i had moldy hay i would use a bail processor you're going to release more spores there's less chance of cows picking up more of those spores in a from a processed bail then if you just set it out for them to eat so that would be my preference and and mold causing problems in cows that's almost unpredictable we know like Carl says it can cause abortions with mycotic abortions although it's it's almost impossible to follow that trail as well so if they eat it that's that's probably okay but i would definitely process it and if it's real bad just like Carl says probably just you don't use it at all or maybe put it out for bedding i mean it just uh and i know it's going to be more of that this year that's going to be the probably the norm rather than the the unusual bail so yeah we have any other questions out there ryan and tim had to leave and get on the road again so if you do have any follow-up for questions questions for them please email them we're seeing that the line is silent we'll wrap things up again the these are all recorded and so you can go to our website to view these later if you need a refresher or to view one of the sessions that maybe you aren't able to join because you are busy trying to get things out of the field and in the lot and managing your operation if you have any any further ideas for topics please fill out that survey and give us your feedback we really appreciate that so we can know best how to help you guys out there address the issues you are having with that thank you for joining us and we look forward to having you join us for in the future