RECORDS

W. Mark Hilton, DVM, Diplomate ABVP - Beef Cattle

In a beef herd, I consider the records as the "hub of the wheel" of herd improvement. If you can't measure it, you can't manage it. When you sit down and look at improvements in a beef herd, if you don't have something to benchmark against, some history of where the herd has been and then some goals as to where the herd is headed, it's very difficult to measure progress. So on beef herd records:

I. What are the important factors to measure? What is important to the profitability of the herd?

The first thing we have to do is remember that the #1 goal of a BUSINESS is to succeed and make a profit. If we don't have a profit in our beef herd, it doesn't stay in business.

When we're looking at herd records and we ask, "What are we going to measure?" We want to make sure that we measure things that are very important for the owner's success. We can generate thousands of numbers for the herd owner, but what good is it unless we can say, "This is related to the success of your business," and "Here is a weak link in the chain of your business." We need to identify the "big picture" items. We don't want to measure things that are unimportant and just minutia. Beef producers are extremely busy and we want to measure things that are worth the effort.

As we look at records, the first thing we can do is generate data. Data is a bunch of numbers and really that's worthless. It means absolutely nothing. If the average weaning weight is 475#, this really tells us nothing. How old were the calves? Were they creep fed? Is this the actual weight or adjusted to 205 day weight? Numbers are not enough. The next thing we want to do is take this data and convert it to information so that the owner understands something. If this is the adjusted weaning weight and this number has been falling over the last 10 years, then this is information. The third thing that we want to happen as we progress from data to information is to convert the data into knowledge. We want to find out something that we can do differently based on this number. Are our calves getting lighter because we have reduced mature cow size and herd efficiency is actually improving? If so, this is important to know. If we combine this data with the fact that cost/pound of calf weaned is also decreasing, this is knowledge

Other goals of the beef herd include; producing a quality, healthful product for the consumer, satisfaction with their job, being a positive member of the community, adding value to their product. Every herd has unique and specific goals. If you give me your top 2-3 short term and long term goals for your beef business, I can assist you in achieving these goals. Goal #1 is generally to make a profit for the business but we need to find out those secondary goals so that goal #1 can be realized.

II. Production Records: What is needed?

On the cow, all we need is a unique identification number and an age. It doesn't even have to be an exact age. You can mouth these cows if the age is unknown. Give your best estimate on age and that's what goes on the records. On the calves, we need identification, exact birth date, sex, weaning date, and weaning weight. There is optional information that we can use if desired. Optional information would be breed, EPDs (Expected Progeny Differences), maternal ability, sire, hip height, horned, polled, calving ease, etc. Again, we can have more records than we know what to do with.

So, after we process the records, what kind of information is generated? For the cow, one of the most important numbers is the most probable producing ability (MPPA). This is a ratio of the cow vs. the other cows in the herd. A cow of 100 would be average in the herd. A cow of 95 would be 5% below average where an MPPA of 105 would be 5% above average. MPPA measures two things in the cow:

1. her ability to produce milk for that calf
2. her contribution of genetics to the calf.

We use this figure extensively on which cows are our best cows, but most importantly, which cows are the poorest. The poorest cows are closely scrutinized on whether they will stay in the herd or be sold.

The lifetime calving history is another report that we inspect carefully. Is this cow starting to decline in production because of age, decreasing milk production or some other factor, or is she holding steady as an old cow and we need to retain her in the herd for at least another year? This becomes a valuable history for the cow. Many cows are kept for one calf too long. Records will help to keep this from occurring.

On the calf records, the first thing we likely inspect is the adjusted weaning weight. We want to see how this calf compared to his contemporaries. The reason it's an adjusted weaning weight is to compare all calves so we are really looking at genetics only. What the computer does, and every computer program works very similarly on this, is every calf is adjusted to being born from a 5-10 year old cow and being weaned at exactly 205 days of age and being all the same sex. So, that way we can take a calf that's out of a first calf heifer that is 200 days of age at weaning and compare that calf genetically to a calf out of an 8 year old cow where the calf is 185 days of age. We would guess that the older calf is going to actually weigh less because a first calf heifer is going to produce less milk than an 8 year-old cow. But, if we are keeping daughters back and trying to make genetic improvement in a herd, we're very interested in the genetic component. We also look at the adjusted weaning weight ratio of the calves and, similar to the MPPA, 100 is average and 105 would be 5% above average. We can also look at the percent of the calf's weight in comparison to the dam's weight. I really don't use this much on an individual calf basis because a first calf heifer is always going to be lighter and she should generally wean a higher percentage of her weight. But, I do look at this on a whole herd basis and I would like to have the calves' adjusted weaning weight be between 45-50% of what the cows weigh.

One of the major goals of production records in the herd is to identify the cows that need to leave the herd. While it is wonderful to know that cow #218 has an MPPA of 109, and is the #1 cow in the herd, I'm much more interested in finding out that cow #737 has an MPPA of 89 and is the bottom cow in the herd. We're not going to treat cow #218 better because she's #1. We're not going to put a hat on her that says "I'm #1" like they did on the old Saturday Night Live skit. What we're going to do is look critically at the bottom cows in the herd and ask, "Are some of these cows asking to leave the herd?" I use the following analogy with owners that are having a tough time culling some cows. "Let's say you have 10 employees in your farm business and 9 of them got to work on time every day, did all their work, and left at 5:00 quitting time. However, one worker never shows up to work, but does come by to eat all his meals that your company provides. Would you pay this employee?" Of course everyone says they would not, but many herd owners do just this. The cow eats every day, but fails to produce a calf for the year. Some of these cows just aren't showing up for work, so we're letting some of them leave the herd. In fact, they are asking to leave the herd.

The first criteria I examine when looking at potential culls is an MPPA below 90. If a cow is below 90, she is leaving the herd now or likely will be very soon. She is 10% below average in the herd. When you're starting on herd records, you will likely have a number of cows that have an MPPA below 90. After a few years of records you'll probably have none because you've culled them all. Another record that I examine critically is the cow that has a calf that ranks in the bottom 10% of the herd that particular year. You'll find sometimes that an older cow (10-15 years of age) has an MPPA of 95 but this year's calf had a weaning ratio of 75 or 25% below herd average. You think to yourself "Wow! What's happening with that cow?" So you pull out her lifetime cow summary and you look. In the first years of her life she was a very productive cow. She had weaning ratios of calves between 105 and 118 so her MPPA was up around 105-106. But, the records show as she got older the weaning ratios of her calves started dropping off considerably. As you think about a cow like this a differential list comes to mind that includes:

• Decreasing milk production due to age
• Mastitis causing a reduction of milk
• Structural problems limiting her foraging ability
• Loss of teeth limiting foraging ability
• Your genetic improvement has been so dramatic that she is now below average

The bottom line here is that none of these problems can we "fix", so this cow will need to be culled. If you just look at MPPA, she will never get below 90 and get on the cull list. You must also look at recent history. It is very important to find these cows with an acceptable MPPA that are now failing. There is little chance you would cull these cows soon enough without production records.

My bottom line, big picture summary statement of records is that our goal is to find cows to cull that are not profitable to the herd anymore.

Production Records of Heifers

Through years of record analysis we have found that if a heifer ranks in the bottom 15% of the herd her very first calf, she then only has a 15% chance of EVER getting into the top 50% of the herd. After looking at these records for so many years our recommendation is to cull these heifers after their very first calf is weaned. Let's say we have a heifer that was born in 2004, she calves for the first time in the spring of 2006, and she weans her calf that fall. The owner has 100 cows in the herd and this heifer's 2006 born calf ranks in the bottom 15 of the entire herd. We know after only one calf that this heifer has only a 15% chance of ever making it into the top half of the herd so we sell this cow now. If she is open, this is an easy decision to sell her. If she is bred we can confidently say to sell her to market or sell her as a bred cow at the salebarn (to someone that thinks buying cull cows at the salebarn for herd additions is a good strategy). This is another great selling point of the records because most people would say, "Give the heifer another chance.", and make excuses for her. However, our years of looking at data prove that giving her another chance is a poor decision 85% of the time.

I have had owners on the records program the very first year and have a number of cows below 90 for MPPA. They want to keep those cows and give them another chance. One of the reasons that records are so effective is that they are so consistent. We are very confident in culling an animal after seeing an MPPA below 90 after one calf unless that calf had a broken leg, sickness, or some other extenuating circumstance. When a cow is at a certain level, she generally stays there until she gets to be an old cow and then starts to decline. However, even the high MPPA cows eventually become culled from the herd. They do so because of:

• old age
• infertility
• rapidly declining production
• a disease condition (rarely)

But obviously, every cow ends up leaving the herd eventually.

Financial Records

The Standardized Performance Analysis (SPA) records have become the standard for beef financial records in the United States. There are numerous variations of the SPA records and I am confident that all of them give the owner valuable information. The traditional SPA records developed at Texas A&M and used by states like South Dakota and Colorado are excellent but so time consuming that almost no one is going to participate unless their business is 100% cow calf. The Illinois/Iowa State modification is a simplified version of SPA that has been more user-friendly and very positive for my clients. It's important to find areas where large differences can be made:

1. cost savings
2. improvement of production efficiency
3. revenue enhancement

Usual places that we start are :

1. Reducing winter feed cost -- Absolutely the most important factor in herd profitability
2. Improving percent calf crop
3. Adding value to calves and cull animals

These are 3 areas that we commonly find that we can improve the financial status of the herd.