At Cross Cattle Company in Claresholm, Alberta, pay day for the ranch is not a fixed date. The family decides when to sell according to how much grass and feed they have and where the market stands, DTN's senior livestock editor Jennifer Carrico reports in the latest part of the agency's View From the Range series, which follows the ranch for a year.
"We don't sell weaned calves right off the cow. We don't even sell them a month later," said Austin Cross, who runs the operation with his brother, Malcolm. "As long as we have grass available, we will keep them on grass and feed them until the market looks right."
All male calves are castrated, and the steers are sold when the numbers work. For Canadian producers that means watching the export market too, since some calves cross the border to be fed out in the United States. The family checks the futures to judge whether a spring price will be high enough to justify holding cattle longer, weighs the stocking rate on its grass, and works with the local sale barn. The steers are usually sold through a video auction, which lets them go straight to the buyer with less stress, one reason the ranch has repeat customers.
Heifers used to be sorted early, with the ones not kept sent to the feedyard. After a customer pointed out their quality, the ranch now breeds every heifer, keeps what the herd needs and sells the rest bred, anywhere from 50 to 150 head in a year. Cows are culled after the fall pregnancy check. "This year, I culled a little harder because that market is better," Cross said, so the ranch is keeping more bred heifers and selling only 50 to 60.
Cross said there are few feedlots and few truly independent cattle feeders in Canada, so the ranch has to raise what buyers want while also breeding replacement heifers for its own herd, selecting for carcass performance as well as looks. With enough grass in Alberta's mountain valleys, he said, the marketing challenge becomes much easier.
Photo: WBRA Jen / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Source: DTN / Progressive Farmer
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