- Author: Dan Macon
Like everything and everyone else in 2020, our local fairs are adapting to the changes necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic. As I write this, the Nevada County Fair Junior Livestock Auction is underway – virtually! Youth exhibitors who've spent months (and in some cases, a full year) raising their livestock projects are excitedly anticipating the rewards for their hard work.
Livestock are judged during the fair on a variety of attributes – their structural correctness, the amount and shape of muscling, the degree of finish (or fat) they possess. This evaluation is designed to predict the quality of the end product – the meat that our junior livestock auction buyers will put in their freezers, and ultimately on their tables. But just as we know we can't judge a book (entirely) by its cover, there's more to predicting meat quality than a judge's subjective opinion. And that's why our local fairs and livestock associations (including the Tahoe Cattlemen's Association) also sponsor contests to evaluate meat quality after the fair.
Meat quality is a combination of the amount of meat an animal produces and the appropriate amount of fat (which we refer to as marbling). This marbling makes for an enjoyable eating experience - a juicy, tender steak! Choice or prime grades in lamb or beef are the target!
So how do our Nevada County youth beef exhibitors measure up against these industry standards? Last year, 91% of the beef from the fair graded USDA Choice or better! Twelve exhibitors received a Carcass of Merit award from the Tahoe Cattlemen's Association; another two received the Gold Seal Award. This doesn't happen on its own! The quality of the product these exhibitors produce is a testament to their hard work, the quality of their care, and the support provided by 4-H leaders, Future Farmers of America advisors, families and friends.
The bottom line: when you're supporting the Junior Livestock Auction, you're supporting a great kid – and you're putting a great steak (or lamb chop, or pork chop, or goat chop) on your plate!
To participate in the Nevada County Fair Junior Livestock Auction, go to https://auction.showorks.cloud/fair/ncfair.
/span>- Author: Dan Macon
Can any of us remember a summer like this?! The work of ranching continues - irrigating pasture, checking livestock, preparing for calving or breeding season. And yet the COVID-19 pandemic casts a pall over everything we're doing. Market disruptions - including increasing demand for direct-to-consumer meat products - add to the uncertainty we're all grappling with. I'm wearing a mask when I go to the feed store and limiting my trips to town. And, as I write, this, my youngest daughter is starting her last year of high school - from home.
Given the continued rise in COVID cases here in Placer County, our UC Cooperative Extension staff continues to work from home. But while we're not in the office, we are still out and about serving our communities. Our 4-H staff is working with our volunteer leaders and 4-H members to start the new 4-H year. Our nutrition staff continues to work with schools throughout the community to provide school gardens and nutrition/healthy lifestyles information for kids and adults. Our Master Gardeners have developed some incredibly innovative online educational opportunities. Check out our website at http://ceplacer.ucanr.edu/ for more details!
Our agricultural programs are also ongoing! I am working with colleagues at Davis and elsewhere to put on a bi-weekly webinar on a variety of grazing and livestock production topics. Our Working Rangelands Wednesdays series has covered topics like drought, targeted grazing, water quality, and fuel load reduction. You can register to participate in these webinars here.
I've also been collaborating with Ryan Mahoney of Emigh Livestock on a weekly podcast called Sheep Stuff Ewe Should Know (available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts). While our focus has largely been on sheep industry topics, I think you'll find that many of our episodes are broadly applicable to all livestock production. If there's a topic you'd like us to take on, please send me an email at dmacon@ucanr.edu.
Research projects aren't standing still, either - we are wrapping up our early weaning project at the Sierra Foothill Research and Extension Center this fall. I'm continuing to collect data on predators and livestock guardian dog behavior on the Tahoe National Forest this summer. Our northern California irrigated pasture research continues, and we're about to start a collaborative forage variety trial with specialists from UC Davis and farm advisors from throughout the state. I find that I especially enjoy the days I get to spend in the field!
We are planning a number of virtual workshops this fall, including our "So You Want to Start a Farm or Ranch" workshop and our Beginning Farming Academy - stay tuned for details. And I'm working with the Tahoe Cattlemen's Association to organize a beef production workshop or webinar in late September. Watch my website for more information!
If you're on Instagram, you might check out my IGTV channels - covering a variety of topics from forage production and management to livestock guardian dogs. You can follow me on Instagram at @flyingmule.
Finally, I am available by phone, email, and in person! If you have a pasture, livestock, or range management question, call me at (530) 889-7385 or email me at dmacon@ucanr.edu. I'm always glad to get out in the field, so don't hesitate to contact me!
These are strange times, to say the least. Stay safe, and stay positive. I hope to hear from you!
- Author: Dan Macon
For many ranchers in the Sierra foothills and Sacramento Valley, irrigated pasture is a critical component of our annual forage calendar. In many ways, irrigated pasture has replaced the historic practice of "following the green" - of taking sheep and cattle to mountain pastures during the summer months. Green summertime forage in the foothills and valley requires irrigation in our Mediterranean climate - and so many of us spend at least part of every day from April through October spreading water across our pastures.
Here in the foothills, these pastures do more than feed livestock. Large blocks of green vegetation provide landscape-scale firebreaks that protect rural residential communities. These pastures support a great deal of wildlife, as well - I consistently see wild turkeys, blacktail deer, song birds, and hawks (just to name a few species) on our pastures near Auburn. At least to me, a well managed irrigated pasture is a cool, green jewel amidst the summer-time brown of our foothill landscapes.
Truly productive irrigated pastures don't simply appear once we start applying water, though. No matter how much I water the annual grasses that grow on our rangelands, these plants have to die each year - that's what makes them annuals! Establishing irrigated pasture is similar to planting an other permanent crop - it requires soil preparation, infrastructure development, fertilizer application, and seeding of perennial forage species (like orchard grass, fescue, and clover).
Once planted, irrigated pasture requires careful management, as well. Our irrigation system is designed to put enough water in 24 hours onto the pasture to meet plant needs for ten days (in other words, our irrigation "sets" are for 24 hours, and our "rotation" brings us back to the same location in the pasture every ten days). We also manage our grazing carefully - matching our rest periods with the growth rate of our forage. When the grass is growing rapidly in the springtime, we can graze the same paddock every 25 days; in the heat of the summer when grass growth slows, our rest periods are longer to allow the plants to re-grow before we graze them again. And to protect water quality, we try not to irrigated underneath the livestock.
Obviously, the decision to establish irrigated pasture - or to incorporate it into our production systems - must include economics! Establishing pasture - even one that will last for 20-plus years - requires significant investment. Once established, we have to pay for water, depreciate our equipment, pay for labor, PAY OURSELVES!
This spring, I collaborated with Don Stewart at the Ag Issues Center at UC Davis to update two cost studies specifically analyzing foothill irrigated pasture. Click on the links below to access them:
Sample Costs to Establish or Re-establish and Produce Irrigated Pasture - Sierra Foothills
Sample Costs to Produce Irrigated Pasture - Sierra Foothills
On a related note, I'm also collaborating with Dr. Leslie Roche, Cooperative Extension Specialist in Rangeland Management at UC Davis, along with a number of other farm advisors throughout Northern California, on a research project examining a variety of irrigated pasture management strategies. We're looking at grazing management, water management, forage production, soil health, and a variety of other parameters - stay tuned for more information on this project as well!
Now I need to go out and move water....
- Author: Dan Macon
Note: A version of this article originally appeared in the July 2020 edition of my New Foothill Rancher newsletter.
When my family started raising sheep commercially, we assumed that selling meat directly to consumers would be more profitable (especially at our small scale) than selling live animals. As we went through the logistics of getting animals to our processor, deciding what cuts we thought we could sell, determining our product pricing structure, picking up meat, getting it stored, and then getting it sold, we realized that meat marketing was far more complicated that hauling a load of lambs to the auction. We also got a crash course in the difference between gross profit and net profit.
Value-added marketing is a buzzword in local food system conversations – after all, who wouldn't want to add value to the crops or livestock they produce. Since the disruptions to our food system from COVID-19 have become obvious, producers and consumers alike have a renewed interest in selling (and buying) locally-produced meat. But as a producer, how do we know if we're actually adding value if we're selling meat rather than live animals? From an economic analysis perspective, we have to look at the meat business separately from the livestock production business. In other words, the meat business has to “buy” the live animal from the livestock business. How do we go about this kind of analysis?
In our own business, I started by using the market price for finished lambs (as published in weekly market reports from the closest livestock auctions) as the “purchase” price of lambs for the meat business. If a 100-pound lamb was worth $1.80 per pound at Escalon, my meat business would need to pay my livestock business $180 to buy that lamb, less what I would have paid in commission, yardage, and transportation. Let's value that 100-pound lamb at $160.
In economic analysis terms, the purchase of the lamb was a variable (or direct) expense for the meat business. Other direct expenses included harvest and cut-and-wrap fees (which are typically charged by the head or by the pound). Overhead costs – those expenses that are incurred regardless of the number of animals being processed, included transportation to and from the processor, storage, marketing expenses, and labor.
On the revenue side, I needed to know how much retail product I'd get from that 100-pound lamb. This is different than hot carcass (or hanging) weight – this is how much product actually goes into a package. We found that we typically got a 30-33 percent retail yield – in other words, the 100-pound lamb gave us 30-33 pounds of meat we could sell to our customers. We also needed to know the relative yield by cut – after all, folks will pay more for a rack of lamb than they will for stew meat. From this, we could calculate an average retail price per pound – for us, this came out to about $11 per pound of retail product. At 33 pounds of salable product, that lamb was now worth $363.
Let's look a bit closer at that $160 lamb:
Gross Revenue |
Amount |
Meat Sales (33 lbs at $12/lb) |
$363 |
Total Gross Revenue |
$363 |
|
|
Direct Expenses |
|
Lamb purchase |
$160 |
Slaughter/Cut-and-Wrap (per head) |
$145 |
Total Direct Expenses |
$305 |
Gross Margin |
$58 |
|
|
Overhead Expenses |
|
Transportation (live animal – 130 miles @ $0.57/mile) |
$74 |
Transportation (product – 130 miles @ $0.57/mile) |
$74 |
Storage (monthly locker fee) |
$125 |
Marketing (farmers market fee) |
$50 |
Labor (10 hours @ $15/hour) |
$150 |
Total Overhead Expenses |
$473 |
Net Profit (Loss) |
($415) |
Yikes – “adding” value to a single lamb would create a loss of $415! Maybe we should look at scaling up (so we can spread our overhead expenses over more units). I can take 20 finished lambs in my trailer – let's look at the numbers for 20!
Gross Revenue |
Amount |
Meat Sales (33 lbs at $12/lb) – 20 lambs |
$7,260 |
Total Gross Revenue |
$7,260 |
|
|
Direct Expenses |
|
Lamb purchase |
$3,200 |
Slaughter/Cut-and-Wrap (per head) |
$2,900 |
Total Direct Expenses |
$6,100 |
Gross Margin |
$1,160 |
|
|
Overhead Expenses |
|
Transportation (live animal – 130 miles @ $0.57/mile) |
$74 |
Transportation (product – 130 miles @ $0.57/mile) |
$74 |
Storage (monthly locker fee) |
$125 |
Marketing (farmers market fee – 5 weeks to sell 20 head) |
$200 |
Labor (10 hours @ $15/hour) |
$150 |
Total Overhead |
$623 |
|
|
Net Profit (Loss) |
$537 ($26.85/head) |
This time, we made a profit! All of that extra work added a whopping $26.85 per head to the value of our lambs! And this doesn't account for the time value of money – when I sell at the auction, I have a check within a week. When I sell meat, the cash flows in as I'm able to sell product – it may take a month or more.
Obviously, these numbers are sensitive to the current market price, the distance to your processor, and processing fees. In a depressed live market (like we're currently facing), marketing meat may add more value. And it's a complicated question - I found selling meat to my community to be rewarding in non-monetary ways. But non-monetary income didn't pay the bills, unfortunately. The key takeaway here is that it's important to do the analysis.
If you'd like to walk through a more thorough analysis of your own business, contact me at (530) 889-7385 or dmacon@ucanr.edu.
- Author: Dan Macon
I've been fortunate to have the opportunity to get a fair bit of formal education - from my undergraduate days at UC Davis studying agricultural economics to the online coursework I took while obtaining my master's degree at Colorado State University. The certificates that hang on the wall in my office attest to this formal education; my membership in professional societies (like the Society for Range Management and Western Association of Agricultural Economics) gives me access to continued learning. My formal (and continuing) education has driven my intellectual curiosity.
Thankfully, I've also had the opportunity to learn from experience - my own and that of others. Much of what I've learned through my own experiences has been from mistakes that I've made! In many cases, I've learned what NOT to do next time. I've also had the good fortune to learn from others - from mentors (ranchers and colleagues). This informal learning is interesting - while there are times when it confirms what I've learned from books or in classrooms, it often makes me question my formal instruction. And it certainly drives my intellectual curiosity, as well.
Early on during our shelter-at-home experience this spring, my friend Ryan Mahoney, a sheep producer from Rio Vista, approached me with the idea of starting a podcast about sheep production. While Ryan operates at a very large scale (and we have a much smaller operation), we felt like we could both learn from one another. We also felt like taping a podcast would give us something to do every Wednesday afternoon! And so Sheep Stuff Ewe Should Know was born! We've now produced 12 episodes in our first season, covering topics like risk management, the effects of COVID-19 on the sheep industry, and livestock guardian dogs.
"The best sheepherder gets the most out of the land by getting the most into the sheep."
As we continue producing Sheep Stuff Ewe Should Know, Ryan and I hope to interview other producers to learn from their experiences. We'll also be talking with experts in animal health, livestock nutrition, marketing, and business management - learning from their experiences, and having fun along the way!
You can check out our podcast HERE! And let us know what topics you'd like to learn more about!
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