 Well, I guess the topic I'm going to talk about tonight is adding value to calves in several different ways Carl Hoppe just mentioned implants a little bit. I'm going to talk about them as well as we get through this But before I get going I just want to thank everybody for coming out here tonight we've got a good turnout here in Fargo and thank you everybody for coming into the respective locations and This is also going to be available Online so the meeting will be broadcast will be able to hook into it from from our website So if you aren't here today, thank you for joining us over the internet All right, so this is a fairly Typical picture that we see out in the country these days We've got some guys that are starting to pull calves off and get them into their lots now The question is what the heck do we do with these things? So the guys here have given us a pretty good overview of what our current market is doing By the time you get to my talk in the day You've already made a decision and that decision has been to background those calves So what we're going to do is we're going to talk about backgrounding from an industry perspective Where does the whole backgrounding fit into the beef industry at all? I'm going to talk about several factors that influence the prices of feeder calves and How we can potentially use these to our advantage if we do decide to keep our calves around Then just the importance of some vaccinations implants ionophores Carl covered that a little bit And then I'm also going to talk about agent source verification So agent source verification picture is a little bit different this year Then it's going to be next year at least that's what the the indications seem so timely to talk about that now and point out some Some fundamental things that are going to be happening to our industry over the next year All right, so this slide we're going to talk about industry perspective So for people who are out finishing cattle What is the absolute hardest part of their job? Anybody got any ideas here? What's that keep them healthy keep them healthy number one thing we've got to do We've got to get our calves to eat and we've got to get our calves healthy That's the number one most difficult job in a feedlot setting Everybody who is backgrounding calves is taking the work out of cattle feeding Once you get cattle up over a hump you get them healthy you get them eating Then it's a lot to do with management and making sure things are done right on a right schedule So anybody who says we don't have a potential to ramp up or cattle feeding industry in the state You know just keep this in mind that we're already taking the hard job away from the cattle feeders So why not feed the cattle is here All right, this this slide illustrates what happens when calves come into a feedlot So this is the day that the calves arrive and this is a simply the percentage of calves that start to eat The day they get there okay We got about 21% of those calves are actually eating the day they get there move this all the way out to day 10 Still 10 days into the feedlot. We've got about 85% of the calves that are getting up and eating on a regular basis okay, now this was a group of Very high stress calves. We're going to get into some risk categories a little bit later but keep this in mind when We do make the decision to bring calves in and start backgrounding We can have some pretty serious health issues that we need to take into account So if cattle aren't eating what's going to happen? Pretty simple math This is a study. I'm not going to talk about what they did But important to point out that as we go from day zero to ten remember those days that they're not eating This is that same particular group of animals. You see how we were already at 50% morbidity by ten days into that or yeah well by ten days into that feeding period We're about 60% morbidity So again just things to keep in mind to prepare ourselves for for what we're going to see if we do happen in background some groups of high-risk cattle and There's some market indications out there right now. Let's say we may want to consider this adventure So again industry perspective majority calves in the US they get off to a kind of a rough life you weenum Put them right onto a truck they get hauled into a livestock market They get thrown with a bunch of other calves actually this commingling happens as they go back on the truck Then they will arrive at a feedlot. They get a new home. They get new feeds all this stuff That's happening. This is where a lot of stress comes in This is why we have a pretty high incidence of illness once we get into a feedlot. Okay, this is a traditional calf Coming into here and in backgrounding and preconditioning for all practical purposes right now. They're the same word Okay, so when we precondition calves when we background calves, we've got them weaned We've got a bunk broke water broke Vaccinated all this stuff happens if you're backgrounding your own calves. It all happens on the ranch. They were born in So you see there's a major difference between those two types of management strategies so with that in mind What is the greatest value in preconditioning Again industry perspective get them to eat get them healthy Decreasing feedlot morbidity and mortality from an industry perspective the question I always see is Cow calf guy even see this Absolutely not Okay, this stuff impacts the feedlot sector and it's a very very important piece So when we talk about some of these higher prices being paid for backgrounded bunk broke calves This is why these guys really love these backgrounded calves So if we can make it jive if we can make it cash flow to background calves Locally, this is all a bonus and so we're going to have profit in our pockets And we're also going to have a feedlot sector that's pretty happy with good healthy calves So this is just to kind of illustrate that a little bit and I kept it simple I kept it at feed intake. So there were three different groups here One was preconditioned background for 45 days One was weaned and shipped right away The other was weaned and commingled with a bunch of other calves and then shipped out And if we look what happens to just their feed intake those calves that were commingled and Running with other cattle run through the sales barn. They ate about 15.1 pounds Okay, we move that all the way up to those ones that were backgrounded now We've got almost a pound and a half advantage in intake to those backgrounded calves So again just another example of what backgrounded calves do once they come into the feedlot So if we think about Some factors that are going to influence the prices we get from feeder calves Okay, we've got all these different types of calves across the bottom of the screen What's going to bring us more money? There was a study that was done at NDSU. I've presented this slide at a couple other meetings So forgive me if you've seen it before But this study they went through sales barns in North Dakota, Montana, South Dakota John Dooveter can tell me what barns I'm missing But anyway, what they did is they broke down all the factors that contribute to a sale price So the number one thing was steers Okay, steers sold higher than heifers. They talked about this already There's some certain reasons for that in terms of you know What are these heifers going to do from an efficiency and performance standpoint steers always sold for more money than heifers? But look at the top one and this is lot size So the more calves that you can get into a lot that are of a similar Frame a similar muscink muscling a similar color the higher dollar value that lot was worth So a single calf walking through there heavy muscling good frame He gets About a seven dollar discount Just because he's by himself and this is people who are trying to put together groups of calves They want them all similar so the more calves you can get a lot the better off you are now I talked a little bit before about Some of the risks run with commingling calves But we also looked at those break evens Okay, when you background a lot of calves you got to ship them out somewhere And if you're running them back through a sales barn, this is a great argument for buying up groups of little calves and Putting them through a background lot Now somebody who wants to take that adventure again remember the illness That's going to come with this and some of the other management concerns Yeah, they're going to be there, but it's it's great opportunity to pull together and buy some of these calves The other thing that I'm going to point out right now is the color issue Now we've got four different marketing seasons in this graph and in each of those four years calves that came in as a solid black color sold better than Cavs that were just a totally mixed group. So the thing here to remember is just a key is consistency So we can get a consistent color. Yeah, here black was better, but we can't really change the color of our cattle overnight So again consistent groups other things that people That'll impact what the feeder price is we've got Vaccinations there's only one year or one marketing season here where it didn't make a difference whether calves were vaccinated or not And each of these other three years We had a $2.50 $3.36 and about a $1.60 advantage to calves that were vaccinated and this is advantage per hundred weight Okay, so we multiply this out You know over 500 weights or whatever we've got and we can pretty easily pay for vaccinations in our calves the next two these are the ones that I Get a lot of questions about and they say well, I'm not going to implant my calves because buyers don't want them implanted and If we look at this graph in particular This and D means no difference So there was no difference in the price that people got from calves that were implanted and calves that weren't implanted Okay, but remember these were calves that were just brought in and sold through a sales barn You can get some some differences if you're trying to direct market calves You've got contracts for calves at state. They need to be natural or not implanted But this is just calves running through a sales barn. All right So the whole thing with vaccinations is that we're trying to protect these calves from bad things and in theory That means healthier calves I've got a question of does this always mean healthier calves and I'm not going to get into that necessarily today That's a topic for another day But one of the things that we want to talk about is classes of risk Okay, so if we're going to be grouping calves together or we're just going to be feeding our own calves We've got to look at things a little bit differently and maybe manage these cattle slightly differently as well so Again, this is and a lot of stuff we come in when we talk about feedlot animals low risk So these are ranch raised calves state at home, you know, maybe if they didn't stay at home They were shipped to a feedlot real close by Also precondition calves fall into this category. Okay, and on the other extreme, we've got high risk We don't know where the heck they came from but they came from about 50 different people No vaccinations truck them all over the country real high stress situation and we got moderate risk Which is somewhere in between When we come into these high stress situations, if we get a group of calves, it's really really high stressed We pull them off the truck Generally not recommended to vaccinate those things right away. Why? because our immune system is all messed up and they probably won't respond to the vaccine that you give them So this is kind of a double-edged sword. We want to have these calves get an immune response And we want that to happen as early as possible But if we bring them in real stressed, they're not going to respond to that So how do we address this issue? That comes right back up here up into preconditioning a lot of the recommendations We have prior to shipment if we can get vaccine in those calves two to three weeks before they ever get on a truck That's when it pays to vaccinate cattle that includes people who are selling calves right off cows now If you give a calf a vaccination as you pull them off of the pasture and put them under the truck That vaccine is not going to have enough time to develop any type of immune response Once those calves get in a feedlot or get in a backgrounding lot, they're going to be re-vaccinated anyway most likely So if you're going to vaccinate calves out on those cows Or vaccinate calves at weaning do it two to three weeks before All right, and and in general we're looking for a healthy animal as opposed to a sick animal And here's what the performance of those animals looks like so we've got big big groups of cattle here They were classified as either healthy or sick so sick animals They had to get pulled and treated for something or another We look what happens with our average daily gain So quite a lot lower average daily gain our net return We've got almost a $90 difference in net return between a sick calf and a healthy calf And then we come into quality grades and the feedlot end and we see some things happening there in terms of Basically not looking good for those calves that were sick So this is why we think vaccinations are important and not only vaccinations, but timing of Vaccines so if you're going to go out and spend the money to do it Do it when those calves need it and also follow through with booster shots when appropriate All right Carl talked about this a little bit, but methods of improving calf efficiencies now This is something that gets to be pretty important if we want to add value in the animals So we're going to talk to just a couple seconds about grain handling some optimizing basic management And then ionophores and implants All right, best thing we can do to improve efficiency is feed efficient cattle I'm not sure if I can look at any calf and tell whether that it's an efficient animal or not Okay, this is a reason why we like repeat buyers We don't like repeat buyers repeat buyers are a fact of life if you get a guy he feeds your cattle He likes the way your cattle feed. They're efficient. This is where reputation comes in and will sell you all kinds of pounds Okay, so I can't look at a calf and tell you whether it's going to be efficient But we can certainly have a good history of that Corn processing Gets into feeding dry rolled corn versus whole corn Another consideration we have right now or at least some of us still have Some corn out there is still high moisture I Heard some people had to shut down the other day because the corn was getting so dry that it was cracking as they were Combining it. So we've got some people who can take advantages and some people can't But the bottom line at the end of the day is look at the bottom part of your slide here when it says change in efficient efficiency When we look at our whole corn that basically sets a baseline for us By rolling that corn we bump our efficiency up 10% Feeding that corn as a high moisture corn That efficiency bumps up about 16% Okay, so we get a nice bump in efficiency when we do either one of these methods and this again is for lightweight feeder calves The optimizing management This is basically talking about little things that we can do every day to just tighten the screws a little bit We talked about sick cattle in a previous slide If you're going to have a calf that gets sick get on him as fast as possible Early or early treatment these cattle respond better. They'll perform better If you see him kind of hang in droopy ears one day I said well, I'll get him in the morning and then the morning doesn't happen. You don't get to him the next day Or maybe two days later That is a tremendous economic loss that just happened by not getting on that calf And then the next things the bunk management feed mixers and feed delivery times these are all things that Just have to do with consistency and making the things the same for these cattle every day as closely as possible so Bunk management, you know, how much feed are we delivering to these cattle? Are we limit feeding? Are we giving them ad-lib or as much as they can eat? How are we doing that keeping it the same? feed mixture The ingredients the load order of ingredients as they come into the mixture and how long the mixture is actually running for If you can standardize these things It's much better than having variation all over This is a this is kind of a classic thing when you've got three four people feeding even two people feeding Well, I mix load this way and dad mixes load the other way Okay, just simple little communication thing happens all the time, but just talk about these things Say, how are we doing it? How long are we doing it for cheap little stopwatch costs you about five bucks in target Walmart? Something like that. Just have it there. Here's my mixing time and make it as consistent as possible And same thing with you know, what time of day do you get up to feed those cattle? Ionophores Carl talked about these a little bit basically approved for use in all classes of cattle improved feed efficiency and Also, take care of some coxidiosis causing bacteria any of us who've had coxidiosis on her operation No, it's not a pretty thing any of us who have had coxidiosis in ourselves. No, it is even worse All right, so here's a label a big room ensign. We got that on there We need to be really concerned about one little part of the label says do not allow horses and other equines access to this feed Blah blah blah blah blah blah my translation is here's a horse you give it room ensign it dies very simple All right, so back here This is just the way it acts. It's changing ionic balance inside the cells I'd be happy to talk about this with somebody if they're interested Shifts and VFA populations now. Here's what happens in the feedlot So we've got about 5,500 calves in each group pretty big sample of animals Highlight a couple things when we get down here. This is the percent change in daily gain Okay, about 1.6 Carl said it was a little higher Maybe he was talking about the overall efficiencies come and look at the average daily gain and the feed efficiencies Yeah, we're right there just shy of seven and just over seven. So these things work They decrease voluntary feed intake. So they're also great things to use in forage fed cows improve feed efficiency and they work both when you feed forage-based and grain-based diets Implants there we've got some miscellaneous implant devices Some considerations with implants. I think both Carl and John had scenarios about well If a calf is gaining a pound and a half This is what your cost of gain is and compared with a calf that's gaining two point two and three-quarter pounds whatever We want to match our implants that we put in background and calves to the gain that we want our calves to get So couple of numbers to remember if you are targeting a gain That's below about a pound and three-quarters Something like that don't even bother with an implant If you're up there and you want that calf to be oh Could be a pound and three quarters up to say two and a quarter maybe two and a half We want to fall into this low potency category Okay The other thing you need to consider in addition to how potent this implant is and it basically Talks about the metabolism of the compounds that we're putting in there is how much time are we going to keep these calves on feet? So we've got 50 to 75 days with our Ralgro come into our Cinevex C some things like that the relatively short windows is called a payout time Relatively short amount of time now coming into these moderate potency diets These are for those calves that are gaining above yet about two and a half pounds a day or you want to target them for that Now we're talking about a payout time Up to about 80 days some of these ones down here. They do have a 60 day payout time What are the consequences of not having your cattle around long enough to meet this payout time? Nothing you just basically are missing out on some of the money that you put into that calf so match the implant potency and type with Gain of the calves and how long you want to have them around and if you do that This is an old slide that looked at return on investment Okay, suckling calf implants But a 10 to 1 return Pretty easy money Backgrounding calves with one implant. We're looking at 12 to 13 bucks return for every $1 that you put into that calf Now the other side of this is going to be what happens with our marketing options Coming into some of the natural programs and things like this I guess before I get to that slide. This is a survey that beef magazine did in 2010 and they interviewed a bunch of purebred breeders and interviewed a bunch of commercial guys and Asked all kinds of questions. This question here was what percent of you guys offer the following services? Okay, so about 80% of the people who responded said they'll give an age of their calf And then so on so that's what this means Just want to highlight this one right here 44% of the people who responded to this survey said they didn't implant their calves Okay More I talked to people around the country here There's a big percentage of people that are not implanting so Some of the Reasons they give for not implanting are again. I want to have these calves more marketable to come into some of these natural markets this is a slide that John Lawrence did John's a extension guy down in Iowa State and what he's looking at here is Comparing a natural program Versus a conventional program How much extra money do you need to get for that calf that sold naturally? Compared with one that's got implants in it. Okay, this is considering your performance differences Considering all the efficiencies things like that What he came back and said is that you need 28 bucks more for a calf that was fed in a natural program Compared with a calf that was given an implant Okay He extended this out into the feedlot. So just focusing on a feedlot period And a feedlot period again He said you need almost $70 more for that natural calf compared with one that was given an implant 12 bucks more for one that was fed natural versus an ion of four He added up all these things. So he's got antimicrobials beta agonist These are Optiflex Xilmax that kind of stuff dewormers total is a hundred and twenty six bucks extra That's you needed for a calf that's fed in a natural program compared with one that is Given these kind of technologies now am I saying this because I have something against Natural markets absolutely not I want to be very clear about that what I'm saying is that if you've got a natural market you need to understand What you're giving up in terms of performance and in terms of dollars if your break evens That you're getting for your natural calves are this high above what a conventional or traditional market is Go for it absolutely sell that calf in the natural market every single time But if you're not getting that extra money, I would be really Concerned with that because you may be giving some money leaving some money on the table Again, that was just kind of summarized out All right, so last thing I'm going to talk about is agent source verification Anybody know what this is got that there Get the rib tips top of the thoracic vertebrae So if you're out hunting and you've got an elk at tops of his thoracic vertebrae or rib tips are about this tall You get a cows are about down here dear. They're like here The way we traditionally age carcass in this country is looking at What we call ossification of the thoracic vertebrae? So these little white tips and again, we're way up here behind the back These are the tips of that up towards the spine top line would be right in here those little white tips I've got outlined right here as An animal gets older These white tips turn from this white shiny color looking into something like this They get darker they get harder that cartilage turns into more of a bony ossified structure Okay, if you go into carcass cutouts, we talk about cattle being hard boned this hard bone is again this stuff turning into Going towards bone so this is the way we traditionally say what age our calf is so to be Classified as an amaturity so the youngest maturity calf under 30 months of age We've got to have these nice bright white rib tips Tim help me out with the dates here December 24th 2004 2003 2003 leading into 2004 this was a cow who killed Christmas Okay We went from a situation where you know what and a lot of our business is built that way We're gonna sell calves to a neighbor or something like that. We'll look him in the eye We'll shake his hand and say this is gonna be our price We've gone from an era where that business model of just good faith and trust is gone And this is what's going on with our export markets So instead of having this be the way that we can classify age Now the people we export our calves to want third-party documentation They say well, I want somebody else outside of me who's buying the calves and you who's selling the calves I want somebody else to tell me how old those calves are That's what agent source verification is all about Some people say well that agent source verification Well, that's got everything to do with that national animal ID Where you want to know where my farm is and how many cattle I've gotten all this other stuff And we got to make a distinction here. This agent source verification has nothing to do with that Okay, this is a market-driven opportunity. That's a hundred percent about what our Customers in other countries want us to be selling them. That's what agent source verification Is So what do we have to gain with agent source verification? Well, I already talked about the export markets and what's out there. This is a Close-out of some cattle that we killed and right down here. This was the QSA quality systems assessment that is $3 per hundred weight of carcass that we got for having these calves agent source verified Agent source verification premiums are paid directly to feedlot operators I've got a whole different presentation that we can talk for probably an hour and a half about agent source verification and the intricacies of it Well, one of the things I want to point out is that Agent source verification premiums are paid directly to the feedlots when they sell those cattle By the time they buy agent source verified calves from you Until the time they sell them there's a tremendous amount of risk and a tremendous amount of things that can go wrong just because if I'm a feedlot operator I Bought calves that were agent source verified that does not mean that I can sell them as calves that were agent source verified There's no guaranteed premium. This premium runs up and down depending on Supply how many shipments have been sold that have been exported what time of the month is it all kinds of different things? so there is no guarantee on For a feedlot as they buy calves that they're going to get any extra money So what I'm going to do is talk about the cost of Enrolling calves in an agent source verified program. So Charnay wave your hand Charnay Klein she's a graduate student who's worked with me. She got the luxury of calling all of the agent source verified verification providers and We said how much does it cost to enroll our calves in your agent source verification program? I was a question and so each of these different lines is a different agent source verification provider And what we found was kind of interesting if we start I started at 50 calves because some of these have got a flat herd fee Where if you had one calf it might cost you almost a hundred bucks to get that calf agent source verified So you got 50 calves the average here was about four dollars and 38 cents now notice there are other things down here I believe this is a red Angus association They've got a pretty good deal by red Angus bulls you get about a dollar a head agent source verified That's what it costs you to do it and again. There's some other programs that have gotten in here since then But that 438 was an average number now come in to a few more calves 367 and as we go out You know at 500 calves cost you $2 and 81 cents calf thousand calves to 67 So the moral of the story is it cost you money More calves you have the cheaper this agent source verification thing is going to be So question what are the premiums? A lot of records are needed in order to get agent source verification status on your calves You need good records People who do this generally have pretty good nutrition Pretty quality genetics Pretty darn good management. I mean you've got to in order to make all these things flow So the question at the end of the day is what are these producers being rewarded for is it? The fact that their calves or agent source verified or is it the fact that they just had darn good calves to begin with and This is really really hard to tease out now I've talked with several of the sales barn owners Lately and they said this year if ever is a wonderful time to get your calves agent source verified You know even last year, you know before we get these big calves market swings I'll call up and say all right. What trends are you seeing? What's going on? How's agent source verification? What are the vaccines doing a year ago? I call them and said well They said we don't have a market for agent source verified calves We haven't had a lot of demand for them. So we're not gonna sell. We're not gonna have special agent source verification verified sales Take that back. I think there was one out in Stockmans and Dickinson last year But in general the feeling wasn't really great about it this year About a hundred and eighty degree turn and they said Everybody wants agent source verified calves some of the export market stuff that Tim talked about is driving that again This is a market-driven opportunity But what's gonna happen to that in the future? It's kind of interesting. I got a email from Larry Coro who works with CAB He saw that we were having this meeting and he said well keep this little nugget in mind Next year looks like this is gonna tank Okay And maybe that's a future prediction that I'll regret saying but this has everything to do again with our markets There's gonna be some different methods of identifying young calves All of our premiums right now hinge on the fact that Japan still wants calves less than 21 months of age If Japan says we'll take calves that are 30 months of age These markets disappear This is just a really good illustration of how foreign markets export markets will dictate the price that We producers here in North Dakota will receive for our calves So future premiums really questionable right now. They're good. So take advantage of it. So what does this mean for the future? Do we go away from source and age verification? I? Think it comes right back to here if we've got the records if we've got everything else in place Keep this stuff in your hip pocket You know if you didn't collect this in the first place you can't generate it You can't make it up but if you've got the records have them there have them available and this is something that anytime somebody's gonna go out and Have a group of calves to sell I say talk to your market outlets Talk to your auction market staff talk to You know any order buyers that you've got out looking at your calves be flexible with your marketing if they say we want Source and age verification have everything they're ready for them have it in place We don't know what those premiums are gonna be but if you've got the data you can't take they can't take that away from you So what we do know? Couple slides back. We had this pretty big variation in how much it cost to source and age verify your calf Okay, so we've got cost of source and age verification across the top here ranging from 275 up to 575 And and there's one little discrepancy here We get paid for our calves on a dollar per pound basis It costs us Dollars per head to age and source verify Okay, so that is what this little graph is teasing out Okay, so if your calf weighs 400 pounds And it costs you $2.75 to age and source verify that calf in order to break even with age and source verification You need to get 69 cent bid on your calf 69 cents more than had you not done anything So as this price goes up if it costs you 575 to age and source verify your calves You need to get a buck 44 more these bids usually come in what increments of 50 cents sometimes 25 cents So what do we got here six bids you need six extra bids on this 400 pound calf To make age and source verification pay at 575 That's an awful lot of extra buying power you need to have in the audience Okay, so as we go up we move from 500 up to 800 pounds again source and age verification is on a per head This gets cheaper. We need about a bit and a half extra on that 800 pound calf At 275 we come over here 575 We need about three extra bids to make source and age verification pay for itself there So that's really all I've got for you I didn't spend a lot of time making summary slides because I figured I'd go over my allotted time anyway Surprise surprise. So if you've got any questions about this material, here's my contact information call me Send me an email and I'd be happy to to address your questions that way just another note as long as I've got people out There in the audience I put together a monthly newsletter called the ranch hand and this goes out every month People the whole goal of the newsletter is to basically offer timely tips for people As they need them to make you think you know just into the near future over the next month What's going on on the operation? How do we need to proceed? So send me an email at this email and I'd be happy to put you on that mailing list. So with that I'll take any questions It's Carl Carl out of Carrington got a question on you on source verification can feed yard still back verify So in other words if they buy unverified cattle, can they back verify them? Okay to answer your question. Yes, they can a Couple things about back verification If you back verify your cattle the producer who sold those cattle has Got to take all the liability for that back verification So he needs to have all the records. He needs to be sure that those records are maintained for a period of about three years And basically what it ends up being is that there's a whole lot of risk and back verification That the producers need to be aware of can the feedlot operator Request it absolutely do all of the Agent source verified programs allow it No, they do not So you might have to shop around a little bit in order to find one of the agent source verified providers who will agree to do it And then from a feedlot perspective You need to convince the owner of the cattle who you originally bought these things from that You think back verification is a good deal and And he's willing to do that Right. Yeah, the other comment here was that those cattle can't necessarily go through a sale rank Especially with the the back verified cattle We had one question here in in Fargo. I'll get that to you in a minute kind of similar the source verification that basically I am Owners records Yep, absolutely. So the question if you guys couldn't hear it was a source verification whether that was reliant on the original owners records and Yeah, all of this I mean the the age of the cattle the source where they came from herd of origin All of that stuff is reliant on the producers records So some of the agent source verified companies or the providers of these services They will have trainings for producers who want to have their cattle qualified And they'll go through all of this stuff with you know, what type of records do you need? How do you need to keep them? How long do you need to keep them for? Any other requirements of their program? Yeah, it's all reliant on producer records and Then there are a certain percentage of producers both of the the cow-calf operators and Feedlots who are feeding agent source verified cattle that will get randomly audited every year And I forget the exact number, but I think it's about 10% of all calves. They're sold-off operations they can show up any time they want and Audit your records and again that that speaks to that back verification question before If you don't have the records you can't produce them now We've got some consequences that we're talking about not exactly sure what those consequences are but there there Can be some ramifications of not having the records in place Carl was a course suggesting that maybe Japan is going to raise the limit on upwards beyond 21 months It wasn't very clear on that. It was kind of vague. It just said fire beware So a lot more expects it to do it because of this Right, you have right Tim just pointed out too that a lot more people are expected to agent source verify their calves So maybe it's simply a issue of supply and demand the other thing that That Larry pointed out or dr. Korra was Into the future here. We're gonna get some quality grids and the feedlot and that Look really really good They talk about fancy northerns. All right, these big growthy calves northern climates They get on feed and again high percentage of them backgrounded got really good health status. They come in they gain well they're really efficient and The quality grades on them are really spectacular I mean, that's a competitive advantage that our northern calves have There's going to be some premiums some grids that come out on and this is a carcass kill-based grid that give really significant premiums to cattle that grade high choice into prime so that Coming into the future may also drive up the bids for northern cattle over the next couple years I Think we can take one more question out there for Carl We have about 12 more minutes before the system just shuts us off. So if there's any other questions, I Got one Carl you haul your calves to town All-natural bqa Quit shots in the neck in your age source Where do the ranchers need to? File all that stuff so The the all-natural stuff and the age and source and maybe I'll I'll take a step back and Say that if you do all the things right and You come in there Don't tell anybody you're coming and just show up with this group of all-natural Age and source verified calves everything else Quite likely you won't get paid for your efforts Okay, so How do you get paid for that and and this is why I say you always want to make sure your buyer is Either really annoyed by your phone calls or you become really good friends with them or whatever But you need to be talking with the people you're gonna sell the cattle to and let them know absolutely How many cats you've got coming what quality you've got coming a lot of this marketing stuff happens Before those calves even think about weaning those cats Maybe when those calves are born you're talking with people and again that speaks to some of the reference there That producers can make from the sales by consistently providing good calves now To get to the heart of your question the where do you? Certify this calves. How do you go about doing that? I should put a link on here or maybe get that out to you if you want to Maybe send me an email to that address There there's a list online of all of the providers of agent source verifications services That's on file with the USDA And we need to make contact with one of those providers and they'll go through the whole agent source verification Process and certification with you. They house all those records And this also brings up an important point once you are All through the record system You need to let these guys know Pretty well in advance of your sale that you're gonna be selling your cattle because there's papers that need to come with those Cavs wherever they go. So if you're gonna sell through a sales barn And they've got an agent source verified sale there You need to have a paper that documents exactly which calves went on that truck and How many there are what their birth date was and all these other things? so That Third-party provider that those companies that provide agent source those would be the people to talk to Okay, we talked about the importance of getting cattle on feed And how many don't start eating are there particular rations? That would really be helpful in that regard my memory is that Carrington did research and said something about peas is is a real positive ration Well, we could go on about what might work The real answer is whatever the caps are gonna eat So in general pretty high-quality feed that Pre of real dust and mold any anything like that, you know, it's got a smell good to you. It's got a Smell good to a calf You know we people bring in You know a lot of the oats into some of these backgrounding rations to get cattle up on feed But again, I think coming off grass one of the best things that you can give these cattle is a real high-quality grass Hey, that's most representative of what they were eating when they were out on path We try to do something real different I've started cattle by putting them on fermented feeds and silages and stuff like that right away And there's a learning curve associated with all of that stuff So that's why we want to kind of as similar to the grass they were eating out on pasture as possible and then I mean beyond that we can We can have further discussions about other additives that you might want to put in there and and things like that Some of the ionophores that I mentioned if you if you've got them in your diets right away at a higher proportion The calves will actually not eat them very well So you got to be careful with how to bring those cattle into diets that include ionophores