The Links Between Cow-Calf, Stocker, and Feedlot Segments of the Beef Industry
by Paul Beck, Oklahoma State University Extension
The beef industry is often described in segments — calves start on the ranch, many go through a stocker or backgrounding phase, and then enter the feedlot.
But what happens early in a calf’s life doesn’t just stay there. Health, nutrition, and management decisions made before weaning or during grazing ripple forward, shaping feedlot performance, carcass quality, and ultimately consumer demand.
A recent Applied Animal Science special issue highlighted how pre-weaning and stocker management affect cattle performance later in the feeding phase and at harvest. Here are a few key takeaways:
Health Matters Most
Bovine respiratory disease (BRD) is still one of the costliest health challenges. Calves treated for BRD during receiving gained less on pasture, entered the feedlot lighter, and finished with lower carcass weights. They didn’t “catch up” later, showing the value of preventing sickness.
Nutrition Has Mixed Carryover
Research showed limited long-term impacts of cow or stocker nutrition. Winter supplementation of cows did not consistently affect later calf performance. Distillers grains boosted gains on pasture, but advantages disappeared in the feedlot. Beef-on-dairy crosses responded to higher early-life nutrition with better growth and marbling, but compensatory gains were mostly confined to early finishing.
Management Leaves a Mark
Calves weaned with low-stress methods or grown as yearlings tended to produce heavier carcasses with better quality grades than those shipped directly to the feedlot. Weaning strategy, grazing management, stocking rate, and calving season all influenced growth and carcass outcomes, though results were sometimes inconsistent.
What This Means for Producers
The most consistent message is that healthy, well-managed calves perform better all the way through the beef system. Preventing BRD, castrating before marketing, and using low-stress weaning methods are management decisions that continue paying off beyond the ranch gate. Nutrition programs support short-term growth but don’t always carry over into finishing. Early management decisions echo throughout the beef production chain. Keeping calves healthy and reducing stress is the surest way to add value in every segment.
Have You Scheduled Your Bull Breeding Soundness Exam?
University of Missouri Extension
Patrick Davis, University of Missouri Extension livestock field specialist, suggests your bulls have a Breeding Soundness Exam (BSE) prior to each breeding season. “The bull BSE helps make sure bulls are ready to be successful during the breeding season,” says Davis. The BSE evaluates structure and fertility to make sure the bull is adequate for a successful breeding season. Furthermore, during the evaluation, it’s a good time to check for health issues and provide vaccinations to promote adequate health for the bull and the rest of the herd.
Components of the BSE:
• Body condition score: Body condition score (BCS) evaluates fat cover on a scale of 1 (emaciated) to 9 (obese). Davis suggests bulls enter the breeding pasture at a BCS of 6, which is a smooth appearance throughout. This provides the bull adequate energy reserves to successfully breed females.
• Structural soundness: “Since bulls will be covering a lot of pasture and cows during the breeding season, structural soundness is important,” says Davis. One way to evaluate structural soundness is through foot scoring. Foot scoring evaluates the hoof through claw set and the pastern and heel length through foot angle. Both foot scoring parameters are evaluated on a 1 to 9 scale with an ideal range of 3 to 7.
• Bull fertility: During the BSE, the veterinarian will evaluate sperm motility and morphology, and make sure semen quality is adequate for optimum pregnancy rates.
• Bull health: “Since bulls are in the chute during the BSE, it’s a good time to update vaccinations,” says Davis. It’s also a good time to test and make sure newly acquired nonvirgin bulls are negative for trichomoniasis. Davis suggests doing these things to promote optimum health in your cattle operation.
“Contact your veterinarian to schedule your bull’s BSE 30 to 60 days prior to the breeding season,” says Davis. This helps identify bulls with poor fertility and structure so you can cull them and replace them with sound bulls. This further helps your cow herd achieve optimum pregnancy rates, which helps operation productivity and profitability. Furthermore, some veterinary clinics will partner with pharmaceutical companies to provide rebates on vaccinations and dewormer if you schedule your bull’s BSE during their specific BSE day.
Unlock the Added Value of Producing More Calves
Industry Press Release
Successfully breeding cows and maintaining pregnancy is always financially beneficial. In today’s cattle market, the value proposition and profit potential of getting a calf to market are even more significant with record-high prices.
“If you’re in the cow-calf segment of the industry, the main driver of profitability is going to be your ability to produce calves,” says Pedro Fontes, PhD, associate professor in beef cattle reproductive physiology at the University of Georgia. “That’s highly dependent on whether we can generate and maintain those pregnancies.”
For a cow herd with 100 head, increasing pregnancy rates by 5% and having those additional calves make it all the way to market would result in approximately $12,000 more in gross revenue. Keep the following strategies in mind when looking to improve your reproductive program to achieve more pregnancies and calves and optimize your income.
Know Your Pregnancy Rate
When evaluating your reproductive program, start with your pregnancy rate. Fontes recommends striving for a 90% pregnancy rate at the end of a controlled breeding season of approximately 65 days. “Some of this will depend on your production system, what area of the country you are located in, and the type of cattle you run,” says Fontes. “You might be in a lower-input environment, and it could be financially viable to achieve pregnancy rates in the high eighties (percentage) and still be able to profit from your cow herd.”
Management is key to establishing and maintaining pregnancy. Start by meeting the nutritional requirements of your herd via maintaining an average body condition score of 5 or greater. Then, have a quality health program established with your veterinarian that works around your reproductive calendar.
Another important metric is having cows that breed early and thus calve earlier. “One thing I always try to get folks to think about is getting more pregnancies in those first 21 days of the breeding season,” says Fontes. “The main reason is we know that when cows conceive early, they calve early, and they’re going to be more likely to breed back next year. Not only that, but those calves are weaned heavier because they are older at the time of weaning.”
Fontes believes a good benchmark is to have at least 60% of the cow herd calving within the first 21 days of the calving season.
Breed at Peak Estrus
Tightening up the breeding season and having more calves born early can be facilitated with estrus synchronization and artificial insemination (AI). Important to the success of AI breeding is identifying when cows and heifers are in estrus.
“If you synchronize a group of females and expose them to a round of AI, those females expressing estrus will get between 20–30% greater pregnancy rates than the ones that fail to express estrus,” says Fontes.
Estrus expression not only influences the ability of those cows and heifers to conceive, but it also impacts whether they can maintain their pregnancy until calving. “If you know the estrus status, you can manage those cows appropriately or breed those cows differently,” says Fontes. “One of the things we see producers doing is breeding cows based on estrus expression, even though they might be breeding in a fixed-time AI approach.”
How this looks in practice is that a producer can apply a visual estrus detection aid, like an ESTROTECT Breeding Indicator patch, to monitor estrus intensity. As the patch surface ink rubs off, it indicates the cow is starting to exhibit estrus. If 50% or more of the surface ink has rubbed off, that’s a sign the cow is going into high estrus intensity.
Create More Value Per Pregnancy
There is an opportunity with estrus detection to determine which females are the best candidates to breed with higher-value genetics or sexed semen to create more value from each pregnancy. “For those females showing high estrus intensity, more expensive semen or sexed semen can be utilized with higher success,” says Fontes. “Then, the females in lower estrus intensity or showing no estrus can be bred with lower-priced semen. This is another strategy that can help us control the cost of pregnancy.”
Semen from sires that are higher value typically have more performance such as higher weaning weight, yearling weight and marbling which generates additional revenue down the road.
The use of sexed semen is a way to increase the profit potential of pregnancy, too. Steers are worth more than heifers, so breeding for more males is a way to capture additional revenue during strong cattle markets. Also, if you are looking to rebuild your cow herd or develop replacement heifers to sell, sexed semen can be utilized to breed for additional females.
“There are a lot of things that can go south when it comes to reproductive management, but if you do the basics right, you’ll be able to make a big impact on pregnancy rates,” says Fontes. “Beef cows are pretty resilient animals, and if you give them the conditions to perform, they usually do.”
Benefits of Early Culling Open Breeding Heifers
by Mark Z. Johnson, Oklahoma State University Extension
Early culling of open breeding heifers has several benefits to your cow-calf operation’s bottom line. Pregnancy can be diagnosed by palpation at 60 days and by ultrasound as early as 30 days, so now is the time to take action and cull the open heifers. In addition to reducing grazing pressure on pastures there are several other long-term benefits. Typically, we should expect well-developed yearling heifers, at 65% of their mature weight, going into their first breeding season to conceive in a fairly short (45–60 days) breeding season. The easiest time in a beef breeding females’ life to get bred should be as a well-developed yearling heifer. Because of this, culling open heifers as soon as possible leads to the following:
Improved long-term reproductive performance of your cow herd. Reproductive traits are low in heritability; nevertheless, culling open heifers will improve the genetic potential for reproductive performance in your cow herd by eliminating the sub-fertile heifers. From a business standpoint, reproductive success (percent calf crop weaned) is of critical economic importance in the cow-calf sector.
Culling open yearling heifers right now still gives them the potential to be marketed as yearlings. At this age they still have the potential to finish out while in the A maturity group and harvest as fed cattle reaching the most valuable quality grades (Choice and Prime).
It is good management practice to breed heifers to calve a little ahead of our mature cow herd. It permits us to concentrate our management efforts during the heifer’s calving season and, as importantly, to give them a little extra time to breed back and calve on schedule the following year. With this in mind, hold your replacement heifers accountable. Cull opens as soon as practical to save on feed bills, capture their maximum value, and improve the fertility of your cow herd. .
