Generally, they're in that feedlot for two to three months and exposed to a high concentrate of grain as well as forage. We, typically, will see 40% to 60% of the total ration fed as grain. And of course, what this it is allows a higher weight gain per day to achieve. So these animals end up reaching market weights much sooner than the cows, the steers that are placed on grass. If we step back and look at what the common feeds are throughout the whole life cycle of the animal, we can see that for the most time, the animals are exposed to forages in the form of pasture or harvested hay. So they compete very little with human consumable grain, such as corn, and maybe soybean meal. The only grain that's fed to these animals during this time might be a creep feed, might be offered to the young animal to encourage it to have a higher weight gain. And also to get it used to eating feeds other than the mother's milk, so there's a creep feed. Then if they go into the feedlot, then of course, they're exposed to a much higher concentration of grain often 40 to 60%, of the total ration will be grain. And generally, they're in this phase of their life, for maybe 60, 90 days. So most of the animal's life is on grass. And then of course, during these last few months, they might be exposed to grain. Now, this can vary in the industry depending on what the cost of grains are. If grains are very expensive, then the beef animals will stay out on pasture longer. If grain is very cheap and we have a bountiful harvest, then they'll move them into the feedlots. So the beef industry provide a wonderful rheostat to deal with the variation that might occur in terms of crop yields and corn harvest. So it's a wonderful way to deal with excesses of inventory, or when we have less than adequate yields, we can keep them on grass longer. Now, a common metric that's used is what's called feed efficiency. This looks at the total kilograms of feed fed to the weight gain that's occurred. And while this is a rough number, it has some nuances that I think are worth explaining. If we look at the feeds fed to a beef animal, and we'll focus initially just on the feedlot situation. We'll see about 40 to 60% of the ration can be forages, or that the animal is on pasture. Then it can be exposed to grains, and grains are complex and that some of them can be by-product grains. These are grains that have no use in the human food system, such as wet brewer's grains, or cotton seed, or candy waste. And then, of course, they can be exposed to grains that do have alternative uses in the human food system. And so we often talk about the total pounds of feed fed to the amount of weight gain that has occurred. >> This is a candy meal, it's a byproduct we utilize, had some candy in it and some licorice sometimes. It's a blend that they put together that we can utilize instead of having it hauled to a landfill. This is a corn gluten product, it's a byproduct from the process of corn starch manufacturing. And we utilize that also to supplement energy in the feed. This is corn a [INAUDIBLE] stored in horizontal silo as opposed to a vertical. It is put in here, and we pack it down with a tractor or a weight and just keep driving over it to make it tight. And it's the whole plant ground up or chopped up for feed. >> With that eight and a half pounds of feed conversion, I think you have to keep in mind that the vast majority of that is forage. They're on about a 70% forage diet when the cattle come into the feedlot, and a 30% grain. So if you calculate that out, it's a lot less grain than what you might think are going into the cattle. As they get finished, that green increases, but we never go above 60%. So even at the finishing level, our conversion rate is still in that eight pound range, with most of it being forage. >> Now, when we look at the industry typical numbers you might see, and this is a an analytic, that's interactive. Typically, we might see 8 pounds, 8 and a half pounds of feed, of total feed per pound of gain. But of course, we need to look at this in a little more detail. If we look at just the grain that is fed, we will see a number that's closer to about 5 pounds of grain per pound of gain. And furthermore, if we look at the amount of the grain, that is true grain not byproduct, we're down to 3.3 pounds of feed per pound of gain. And so we can see as we start to look at these feed efficiencies and partition them into the types of feeds, that the beef cow is actually starting to challenge or be closed to what we see in feed efficiencies in the poultry and swine industry. In poultry and swine, we typically might see three to one ratios of feed to grain. But those industries use considerably more grain in their feeding and have very little, if any forage base. Furthermore, when we look over the entire lifetime of the animal, m ost of the weight gain of the animal is occurring when it's on pasture. And if you look at the feed grains then that are used over the lifetime weight gain, we're down there at about 1.5 pounds, 1.4 pounds of feed per pound of gain. So it's very critical to look at what the the types of feeds are when we look at these feed efficiency numbers. In other words, all pounds of feed aren't the same. And what dominates the life of a beef animal is, of course, the forage base. We're going to look at three different types of feeding systems. We'll look at a low gain per day. This would be a steer that is raised predominantly on pasture its entire life. So grass fed, a pasture based system. Then we can look at a mid gain. This is where an animal might be exposed to a little bit of grain or concentrate feeding, and the rest of the ration being the forages. And then, we'll look at a high gain per day. And this is where the animal will be fed in the beef lot situation where we expose them to a lot of concentrate. And let's look at the situation where our desired goal is to have these animals finish out at about 1,100 pounds. This is a body weight that we like to see deers achieved because they tend to harvest the maximum amount of profit per pound of gain at that weight. Now, the cost, the feed cost, of course, is going to be a function of the weight gain. So as we expose the animal to these higher gains, we're going to be feeding more concentrate, and therefore, the expense is going to go up. And in this example, we'll use a conversion of feed energy into a pound of gain of 1.8 to mcals of energy per pound of gain. So when we look at this, here's a graph showing the time to reaching that finishing weight. And we can that on the low weight gain of 0.7 pounds per day. It takes almost four years for that animal to reach its finishing weight. And so that's a really extended long time that the animal has to be managed and cared for to achieve this finishing weight. As we expose the animal to higher and higher levels of concentrate, we see that we can achieve that 1,100 pounds much, much sooner. If we look at the economics of this to the producer. So here, we're looking at the three different systems, where we have the pound of gain at 0.7, the 1.9 pounds of gain, and 2.9 pounds of gain. We can see that the daily return are timed to finishing weight is going to be very extended, as we saw on the previous graph. If we look at the economics, we can see that the return per day for the high weight gain is much much higher than the return per day on the low weight gain strategy. And so it's because of this economic scenario, that we see a lot of the beef industry moved to exposing animals to this concentrate feeding system called the feedlot, and exposing them to more and more concentrate. Of course, if the cost of feed goes up, and the cost of that gain goes up, then it will see that then the return start to migrate down. And maybe we expose the animal to more of a feeding system that's based on the forage base. So in summary, the beef life cycle generates replacement heifers, as well as steers for the meat production. The life cycle can vary as a function of available feeds and resources, as well as our costs. So as the cost of grains go up, we'll feed less of it to cattle, and they'll be exposed to longer periods of time on grass. Forages, pasture, dominate the cow's diet throughout the life. Certainly, the replacement phase is dominated by pasture as well as the brute cow, and the early phase of life of the steer. Grains can supplement forages and lead to higher gains per day that ultimately reduce the time to market improving producer economic returns. And so as we look at the livelihood of the beef producer, this is going to be of deep concern for him. Economic conditions, the price of beef, costs of forages and grains will ultimately influence which pathways are pursued in any given year.
