Focusing on Cow Herd Efficiency with Ryan Rathmann

With fed cattle size continuing to rise, how can commercial cattlemen balance females optimized for their environment with the terminal traits feeders are looking for?

On this episode, our host Miranda Reimann visited with Ryan Rathmann of Texas Tech University regarding: 

• Cow herd efficiency research
• How cattlemen can identify smaller females who are curve benders
• Tools producers have at their disposal to maximize potential
• And more! 

A huge thank you to Purina for their sponsorship of this episode.

Additional Resources:

• Subscribe to the Angus Beef Bulletin EXTRA

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Transcript

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Intro (00:19):
Angus at Work, a podcast for the profit-minded cattleman. Brought to you by the Angus Beef Bulletin, we have news and information on health, nutrition, marketing, genetics and management. So let’s get to work, shall we?

Host (00:28):
Hello and welcome back to Angus at Work! With fed cattle size continuing to rise, how can commercial cattlemen balance females optimized for their environment with the terminal traits feeders are looking for?

I’m Lynsey McAnally and, on today’s episode, Miranda Reimann visited with Ryan Rathmann of Texas Tech University regarding cow herd efficiency research, how cattlemen can identify smaller females who are curve benders and how producers can use the tools at their disposal to maximize potential.

But before we get started, we want to take a moment to thank Purina Animal Nutrition for their sponsorship of this episode.

Purina ad (01:09):
Raising cattle demands, grit, determination and the right nutrition. That's why cattle producers have turned to Purina Animal Nutrition for over 130 years. From starters that help set calves up for success to protein that fuels cattle growth to minerals to help keep herds performing, Purina has the products and expertise that work as hard as you do. Get rewarded for your work with proven nutrition from Purina. Learn more at purinamills.com/cattlecare. That's purina mills.com/cattlecare.

Miranda Reimann (01:39):
Welcome to the Angus at Work podcast. I'm your host Miranda Reimann, and today I'm coming to you from the National Western Stock Show where it was Commercial Cattleman's Day today, and Dr. Ryan Rathman was a presenter on the educational sessions today. Thanks for joining us!

Ryan Rathmann (01:54):
Yeah, glad to be here.

Miranda Reimann (01:55):
Why don't you just, first off, start by giving us a little introduction about yourself, where you come from, why you've got any authority on this topic? Okay,

Ryan Rathmann (02:04):
Well, I live in Lubbock, Texas. I'm a beef cattle professor at Texas Tech University in the Animal and Food Sciences department. And I grew up in central Texas on a ranch and we ran about 200 cows. My dad was an ag teacher as well. And, anyways, I coached the livestock judging team at Texas A&M while I got my Master's in reproductive physiology. Worked as a nutrition consultant for Cargill for a couple of years, then got my PhD at Tech in ruminant nutrition.

I'm a beef cattle enthusiast. There's nothing I love more than talking about beef cows and efficiency. And so that's a topic that I think deserves a lot of attention. And there's a lot of things that are debatable in terms of how we should strategize or approach what the optimal type of cow is. And so we've recently been doing research in our program focused on that topic. On what type of cow is the most efficient and what are some of the trade-offs in terms as we define optimal mature weight and milk level.

Miranda Reimann (03:10):
Absolutely. It was one that I was interested in you giving today because of course you're talking to probably a pretty diverse group. You've probably got people in there coming from different parts of the country and things like that. So maybe give us that, how do you even start out evaluating?

Ryan Rathmann (03:24):
Yeah, no, that's a good question. I mean, there's not an ideal cow for every environment. Each has its own unique set of circumstances or forage resources that will redefine what that best cow is for them. So I guess my mindset and giving a talk to a very diverse audience is that we are in the western United States. And, for the most part, they are operating in semi-arid to arid climates, which is much like West Texas where I currently live and work. And so I came at it more of that type of approach. What type of female is best suited for a semi-arid to arid environment.

Miranda Reimann (04:01):
And I think you started out talking a little bit just about the ... I guess I would say diversity or spread and how much difference there is. That might be shocking to some people. So how do you quantify that for me?

Ryan Rathmann (04:14):
Yeah, like I said, one of the highlights of the talk was really focusing on what's the optimal mature weight. It's an interesting topic because in today's industry we're long feeding cattle, we're closing out cattle that are 1,600, 1,700, 1,800 pounds (lb.). So with that at the forefront of our mind. To produce enough beef that's demanded, we have to do that. And fortunately, grain prices are cheap. So it's doable right now in this environment, in this set of economics that we have right now. At the same time, I don't think we should lose sight of the fact that the same genetics that excel from a terminal standpoint, a growth standpoint, maybe compromises just a little bit at the ranch level and makes that cow bigger and bigger and bigger. In fact, the data would suggest that cow size is increasing by about 7 lb. a year.

And so this cow that used to be 1,100 to 1,150 lb. has now crept up based on auction barn data to suggest that that commercial cow is probably weighing somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,350 to 1400 lb. On the Angus side, when you look at material weight data that's turned in, she's probably in the upper 1,400s. And so these are big mama cows and at some point you got to work the math and figure out if that is the most sensible option relative to your forage resources. And so, yes, there's a lot of variance in terms of cow size out there from a genetic perspective. There will always be variation. That creates an opportunity to maybe identify those replacement female candidates so they're the best suited for your ranch. Or maybe, historically, a ranch that just goes out there and picks the bigger ones.

Maybe they need to sell those and maybe they need to focus on those that project out to be a more conservative weight. Now the other side of that is a lot of times the bigger ones are the older ones. And so there's certainly at a commercial level, really a big advantage to keep the older heifers as opposed to the younger ones. First off their mom ... probably the fact that she calves sooner would suggest she's maybe a little more fertile. So, that's sound logic. And then, secondly, as you advance that female forward, you want that age advantage on your side so that she reaches puberty sooner and she's got a better opportunity then to cycle ahead of the start of a virgin breeding season and then hopefully conceive really early because the data suggests that is really profound in regards to the long-term effects of that cow staying in the herd.

She's ahead of the game and breeding early, and that's the type of female that's going to last. In fact, Miranda the sale over there, it was overwhelming how good of a sale that was. And I think the breds averages $5,700. And the unique thing about that sale that was just featured and sold was that those bred heifers that sold ... Those were females as I interpreted - I don't think I'm wrong - but that all conceived first time to AI [artificial insemination]. And so they were uniform, lots of females. And so when you go back and look at research data on the impact of that and the value of that, they were selling at a good premium. It's defendable because you take a female that conceived on first-time AI versus maybe her counterpart in the pen that failed to conceive and maybe gets cleaned up by the bull the next cycle, but still breeds, right?

Still a bred heifer, but if you project them out to say six years of age, there's an 8 to 10% difference in the probability of that female remaining in the cow herd. And I don't know if that sounds big to you or not, but I promise you if you put a pencil to it, that is tremendously important in terms of the bottom line of these cow calf operations. And so I think the fact that those females sold the way that they did is a good credit to the fact that they're focusing on females that are proven to be fertile, and that is going to make a long-term difference in the investment that those buyers made. So I'll share a little bit about the data that I presented. What I was doing was comparing an 1,100 lb. cow to a 1,200 lb. cow, 1,300 and 1,400 lb. cow. That's mature weight.

And so for the audience, I want to make sure they understand the terms of talking about mature weight, talking about a female that's basically five years or older. They're generally not full grown until then. You could certainly accelerate that process. Like in a show heifer, she may be full grown at two years, but under normal conditions she's a mature physiologically by five, and it's also adjusted to a body condition score (BCS) of five. So it's unfair to just weigh the cows and not adjust it, right? If you're at home going to weigh cows so you can figure out which ones are doing you the best job weighing a big calf, but she herself doesn't weigh that much. You need to body condition score those cows in addition to capturing that weight because then you need to adjust for the thinner females, they need to be adjusted up. The fatter females, they need to be adjusted down.

And so we need to compare apples to apples if that's what that mature weight comparison was. The math that I went through is, okay, we've got a West Texas ranch. Five thousand acres in our part of the world on average. In a normal year it would generate about 1,800 lb. of forage or dry matter annually on just say native grass. And we'll assume the cows are going to eat 30% of the grass available, 70% is going to either get left behind or trampled. That would be probably an optimal type grazing strategy to make sure that the range land is maintained and we don't damage the plants. And so if you have 5,000 acres, then with the 1,100 lb. cow ... I'm trying to remember the numbers off the top of my head. I think you could stock the ranch with I think it was approximately 323 cows or so. And then if you had a 1,400 lb. cow on a fixed amount of grass, then you may be nearly 50 lb. below that, right? I mean, not 50 lb. ...

Miranda Reimann (10:21):
Fifty ...

Ryan Rathmann (10:21):
Fifty cows. So those are your choices. Do I run 1,100 lb. cow and 50 more of them or do I run this big 1,400 lb. cow like we're currently doing, but get to run 50 less? And so you got to work through the math. It's not an obvious answer of which will result in the greatest level of profitability. On one hand you have got a cow that may raise a little smaller calf, but you get more of them. And on the other hand you get bigger calves, but less of them to merchandise. In making those comparisons, that is what I find and what I do believe. As we work through a lot of that, I'm going through NRC calculations. Estimating based on their weight, how much grass are they going to consume, and then based upon, we maybe hold milk level constant, what's the projected weaning weights?

And of course you have to assume then what's economic conditions. In this example, I actually was very conservative in my value of those calves. I think I figured a steer at say $303 at say a five weight. And so it's actually very conservative, probably $2 back of where the market is. And what I find is that there was about a $68,000 difference on a 5,000 acre ranch between the 1,100 lb. cow being favored in that regard versus the gross revenue that 1,400 lb. cow will return. To me, it's one that's kind of a shocker for most people, even cattlemen that have ranched their whole life. They don't ever work through that math of, hey, I can run one or the other. It's not like one costs you more than the other. If I'm going to go out to this bred heifer sale and I look at those females and say, well, I could buy these big frame females over here that look like they'd project out to 1,400 lb. cow when they're fully grown. Or I could buy this littler female. A lot of times the money is the same, if not, maybe the smaller one is cheaper.

They don't stack it up and really run through all the variables and then make the comparison. It is a substantial difference and it's one we need to start recognizing. And so that way we can do a better job at every level - seedstock level first - of putting mature weight more on the radar from a genetic selection standpoint. Like, hey, this is a trait we need to consider. It's important for our clientele, commercial cattlemen, that maybe it's not the best thing to just let grow genetics continue to run away. And it's a great story. I mean, we wouldn't be in this position without tremendous genetics like Angus genetics that have an exceptional level of direct growth so that we can long feed cattle efficiently to 1,700 lb. But at the same time, we need to keep everything in the total system in perspective to make certain that we can consider how much does it cost to run that cow?

What's the best combination for their environment? We haven't even talked about reproduction. That's the biggest thing. And so most of the time when you compare 1,100 lb. cow versus 1,400 lb. cow, the 1,100 lb. cow tends to keep her body condition score better. And so in the drier year, she's maybe a little more likely to stay with you to breed up and to have a calf. Number one, it doesn't matter what the grow genetics are if we can't get that calf on the ground. And so that's maybe even the greater advantage. But for the number I just gave you, the $68,000 advantage, I do assume that their pregnancy rates were the same.

Miranda Reimann (13:48):
Which isn't maybe always the case in real life.

Ryan Rathmann (13:51):
It isn't the case. I'm being very conservative. And, again, if we put the current calf market prices to the calculations, it would be even greater than what I'm describing. So I'm being as conservative as I possibly can. I don't want to say something and then somebody run with that. Then they come to me a couple of years later like, well, I think what you said was BS. It is like, no, I'm trying to be as conservative as possible. I actually think the difference is much greater than this.

Miranda Reimann (14:15):
And part of the reason for that is also, or one of the things in the calculation is that it's not a linear relationship between weaning weight and mature cow size, right? Those two things don't go up at the same rate.

Ryan Rathmann (14:26):
Yes. So let's talk about that. So yeah, one of the things we visited about on an individual cow basis was let's compare the weight of the calf she weans relative to her own mature weight. I generally say in my cow-calf class, I would like to see a mature cow wean off if she has a steer calf, 50% of her weight. And I think most commercial cattlemen have probably heard that number before or assume that to be the objective. And so can a 1,000 lb. cow wean a 500 lb. calf with the right genetics or the right sire to compliment her? Yeah, it's not too hard. Can a 1,500 lb. cow wean a 750 lb. calf? That's harder. And that's not too debatable.

You can look at a lot of data sets. One that I shared with them was a data set from my friend Dr. Jason Roundtree, that researchers in Michigan at Michigan State ... He shared some data with me that I presented to the audience where they plotted from 2011 to 2018 the Red Angus cows and just what I just said: calf weaning weight versus cow mature weight. You see basically a linear decline in a pretty strong relationship and the fact of how much tougher it becomes for that cow to wean 50% of her weight. As you get that cow bigger and bigger and bigger, that ratio is a very simple way to look at inputs versus outputs. If we knew what she was actually eating, that'd be a better way to look at it. But we don't know how much each cow individually is consuming out there. So the best we can go off of is a prediction of her intake just based on her weight. That input to output ratio, I call it biological efficiency. It's about the best way we can navigate within reason for each individual cow and compare cows within a herd so that more conservatively-sized cow, we have an easier time attaining that advantage. And that speaks to why we see that dollar difference that I claimed of about $68,000 for a 5,000 acre ranch, just as an example.

Miranda Reimann (16:40):
As a lot of our listeners are going out at bull sales right now, we're in the heavy season of buying up a lot of bulls at these spring bull sales. What should they be looking at? Size or milk?

Ryan Rathmann (16:52):
Well, we talked a lot about size milk matters too. And so we made a comparison of 11 lb. of peak milk production per day. So a little over a gallon a day basically versus a cow that's closer to two gallons, 18 lb., and then another cow that's maybe a little closer to three gallons. Just rounded that is 25 lb. in peak milk production. So again, I kind of classified what is mature weight so we can compare apples to apples. When you're talking about milk and you hear somebody say pounds of milk, it doesn't make any sense for a beef cow, right? We're not dairymen, so we don't think in those terms. And so what I'm saying is is that her milk production will peak about 60 to 90 days postpartum. So after she calves, right? It is not the greatest when she calves because that's a little calf.

He doesn't need that much milk. And so the timing of it is mother nature made it, so that's when the calf needs the most milk, and he's very dependent on his mother. In fact, 86% of his calorie needs are satisfied through milk at about 60 to 90 days. Now you go all the way out to weaning, it's only about 19%, right? Less and less. He starts transitioning from dependency on mother to his own foraging if it's available or creep feed or whatever. And so that's what we're talking about. We're talking about the maximum amount of milk that cow will ever have during her lactation curve, 11 lb. I said in there jokingly, that's kind like milking like a gerbil. That's very light. You're going to wean a pretty small calf. Eighteen pounds is kind of intermediate, and then 25 lb. would be a heavy milker in most circumstances.

And I do believe that we have genetically advanced ourselves where you'd be shocked that the majority of these cows genetically speaking, based on their background, are probably a little closer to that 25 lb. of milk. We put a lot of milk in these cows. And so I think we have done a very good job. And you see the Angus trends like milk EPD is kind of plateaued if you look at the last several years. And I think that's a good thing personally. Now, every environment's different. If you're in the Midwest, you may want a real heavy milking cow. If I'm in the desert, I don't want her to give any milk. So you have got to fit the cow to the environment. But anyways, I think we have done a good job curbing maybe a little bit of attention on milk production because when you go and start making those comparisons, just like we did for mature weight, for at least West Texas, as you work through the math, there's the optimal cow milk level is about 18 lb..

So just kind of that mid-range kind intermediate milk level. Like I said, maybe even a little below average to be truthful with you. And the difference between that and say a cow that gives 11 lb. is only, I think at 1,100 lb. cow is about $8,000 on this 5,000 acre ranch scenario. And then as you work into 1,400 lb. cow, that actually shrinks, there's actually only maybe a few thousand dollars difference between the intermediate and the light level. When you go and compare that to the heavy milkers, there's anywhere from about a 3000 to about a $6,000 difference. So across these milk types, there's actually not as big of a profit difference as you might think across a cow herd. Really what I think, and I say that relative to what I described from mature weight, mature weight in these decisions on what size cow I'm running, more monumental than the decision of exactly where the milk should be from a true profit standpoint.

Now, milk though really just comes down to your environment and what level of milk will start to compromise reproductive performance. And so really in most scenarios, I would suggest that a ranch select for replacements at milk as good as they possibly can, up to the point that during a dry year, it would put them at risk of breeding back in a timely fashion. And it's dependent on the dry year. So if you don't have too many dry years, I don't know where that's at, I'd like to go buy land there, then you can get away with a little more. But in the western half of the United States, they're coming around more frequently. They used to. So you have got to be careful.

Miranda Reimann (21:01):
So is that your telltale when you've gone too far or how do you know what the sweet spot is? It's a decision you make now when you don't know for a few years?

Ryan Rathmann (21:12):
Yeah, it's a tough one because you can't look at a young heifer and forecast how much milk she's going to give, right? That's dependent upon her mother, independent upon what you know about the genetics of the sire or dependent upon the information that a genomic test can glean like GeneMax Advantage or something. One of these Angus developed tests for commercial females. What can it glean on the genetic background of that female for her milk production in the long run? So we have to rely on this technologies and trust them. And to your question, yeah, it's hard to know because the problem is I need to figure these things out when she's a yearling. I don't need to figure it out when she's a three-year old and all of a sudden she comes up open or she's one of the last females to calve, right?

By then it's too late. Then it costs me money. She didn't last til she was at least six to pay for her investment of developing her. The first two years she didn't give me a calf. So every rancher has to be very astute to observation of their cows and the size of the calf they're raising, and really pay attention to where is this line for my ranch and my given resources? It's just not the same for every ranch. It's different for every single one of them. It could be different for two operations that are five miles apart because they're soil profiles different. The nutrient density of the grass is different, their management ...

Miranda Reimann (22:41):
Is different.

Ryan Rathmann (22:41):
Management is different. It's an individual ranch decision. And so yeah, it's not very straightforward. And nobody goes out milking cows to decipher what I said about, oh yeah, she gives 18 lb. and this one gives 22 lb. Nobody does that. Right? So you could do away suckle-weigh, I guess, if you wanted to do that.

Miranda Reimann (22:58):
Nobody wants to do that. It's in the commercial business.

Ryan Rathmann (23:00):
That's tough too.

Miranda Reimann (23:01):
They'd be a breeder if they did.

Ryan Rathmann (23:02):
Yeah. Well, in research circumstances, if we want to figure out how much milk a beef cow gives, we'd weigh a calf and then deprive him from his mother for say, 12 hours or 24 hours and then reweigh the calf. Then we would calculate the difference, right? Obviously that's not perfect, but that's what I mean by weight or suckle-weigh. But anyways, yeah. So it is just tricky trying to figure out that optimal milk level for each individual cow and exactly what they're doing. But from a practical standpoint, if you're to try to guess, there's two pieces of information that would provide insight to actually what the milk level of the cow is: calf weaning weight. Obviously the bigger calf, her mom gave more milk and mature weight to the calf. If you look at the NRC, if you have those two factors, then it provides a table and you can estimate what the milk production level of that female is. And so that was what I was going off of in terms of making my assumptions. But for a beef cow operation, that's how they would provide insight.

Miranda Reimann (24:12):
Sure, absolutely. And could maybe track that over time.

Ryan Rathmann (24:14):
Correct.

Miranda Reimann (24:14):
To see what?

Ryan Rathmann (24:15):
I think probably more than anything, as you're keeping those heifers for commercial operation, it's, Hey, we better individually weigh calves. We certainly need to have them paired up with their mother and keep records on, like I said, cow mature weight, calving date, calf weaning weight. If you can collect that data, and that's tough for commercial operations, right? Obviously a requirement for seedstock operations for registered cattle, but for commercial operation? There aren't many that have those three things. But if they can measure those three things? I think it's up to seedstock producers to help clients understand that. What they can do and how much that empowers them. And what I'm saying is then they can start to evaluate in a cow herd of 300 cows. Hey, these are the top 50 cows I got. They're doing the best job of input to output the ratio I was talking about, and it looks like they're milk levels are in the sweet spot of my environment. Well, those are the females that need to keep daughters out of. There's too many commercial operations that are blindly identifying which replacement females need to be kept.

Miranda Reimann (25:27):
And that's the way you identify maybe some curve benders that are small cows producing big calves.

Ryan Rathmann (25:33):
A hundred percent. And I think we could do a better job of that on the seedstock level. We need to start looking deeper. Trying to figure out the, you said it best, curve benders, right? Finding the curve benders that are tiny, but raise this huge calf. Maybe do it within a milk that's reasonable. There's plenty of opportunities to identify those genetics because we haven't tackled that in the past to be truthful with you, not aggressively. And so I think as we look at the next five to 10 years of genetic progression and where we're headed. One of the things I tried to highlight in that talk is there's some curve bending combinations I think we need to start paying greater attention to. So a combination of ... is it possible to put pressure on mature weight while you simultaneously put up pressure on carcass weight?

Because they're pretty highly correlated, but it's not like it's a 100% correlation. If it's a 100% correlation, it would be impossible. But it may be somewhere around 56%. So then what does that say? Well, that says there's 44% of the genes which are from one another. So now I have an opportunity to select for that curve bending combination and start to do what I would call bend the growth curve. Bend The growth curve is select for cattle that have rapid early life growth and then start to plateau sooner than later such that their mature weight actually ends up being modest. That's what we're looking for. We're looking for curve benders. Ironically, not that bends the curve of the growth pattern, if you will. And then also on intake these curve benders, we need to start paying more attention on. One of them that I'm really passionate about is the dry matter intake relative to carcass weight or dry matter intake relative to IMF. Okay? And so make no mistake, when you start looking through the high marbling cattle in the breed, more times than not, it's also associated with a bigger appetite. Now, are we really accomplishing anything if they've got to consume more calories to support that level of marbling? That's biology. It stands to reason. That's common sense. It does require more calories. We understand that. But is there a way to select in a curve bending fashion to identify cattle who are hard to explain physiologically, but somehow they managed to have an intermediate appetite. But an outlying marbling value?

Miranda Reimann (28:11):
Absolutely.

Ryan Rathmann (28:11):
Those are the curve benders that we need to start identifying.

Miranda Reimann (28:14):
So if I am in kind of summary here, your whole presentation would be in letting producers know that cow efficiency is important to your bottom line. Mature weight and milk are kind of the ways to get there.

Ryan Rathmann (28:27):
Yes.

Miranda Reimann (28:28):
And you should be paying attention to it. I got it all covered?

Ryan Rathmann (28:30):
Yeah. I think for the most part. I think it's a sensitive subject because any time I present this data ... I've given this talk many times over the last two years, there's always the folks that seem uneasy in their chairs because they're like 1,100 lb. cows? Seriously? They're running 1,400 to 1,500 lb. cows. And they're like, this seems a little extreme. I get that. And the thought in their head is, and it was my closing argument if you will, was, well, how do I run an 1,100 lb. cow in an industry that's harvesting 1,600 and 1,700 lb. steers? I don't understand how to accomplish this. How do I still produce what feedlot operators want to buy and packers desire? Well, you have to use the full arsenal of what we know about genetics and the full arsenal of growth technologies. So if we have time, I'll lay that out real quick.

I think it is very important. So the example I gave was, okay, let's run 1,100 lb. cow, and if our intention is to produce that 1,500 to 1600 lb. steer. In this example I just said 1,500 lb.. First off, we need to make a conscious decision that we are making a terminal mating. That's key. That's what dairymen do. They make maternal matings to make their replacement Holstein females and everything else, and they use sexed semen to do it. They breed for a terminal calf with maximum terminal feedlot value, right? Okay, so let's pay attention to what they're doing. Well, can we do that in our beef system? We would have to consciously say, these are my 1,100 lb. cows. I'm orchestrating a terminal cross. I'm going to compliment them with a bull that calves easy enough, but has tremendous carcass weight potential.

So, in that example I just said, Hey, this is not even that extreme. Let's compliment the 1,100 lb. cow with genetics that have the potential to finish at 1,400 lb. The average progeny that results in that mating is 1,250. 1,100 lb. plus 1,400 lb. divided by two. Okay, well, if we cross breed, well then we get a 6% hybrid vigor advantage. So now we get another 75 lb. Now we're at 1,325 lb. Okay, now what about growth implants? Well, if you give a growth implant to the calf at the stocker phase and at the feedlot aggressively, mind you, we might be able to advance that by 132 lb. And when I say 132 lb., I'm talking about adjusted final body weight to a common fat endpoint. Growth implants make cattle later maturing. They delay fat deposition and favor muscle building on top of that.

So you can add 1,325 lb. to 132 more pounds, whatever that maths to. We're in the mid 1,400s. And we feed the majority of cattle in this country a beta agonist. So that's superior. It's act, again, gain. And so these compounds have a different mode of action, but the same net effect as growth implants. They work well with them and they make the animal later maturing. So those beta agonists, depending on how many days you feed them at exactly the level, they may add about 45 lb. in advancing that final finished weight at a common fat endpoint. And so, ultimately, you can end up at the 1,500 lb. steer, but it started with 1,100 lb. cow. It took adoption of a terminal sire, F1 heterosis, growth implants and beta agonists. We can get there. To me, that's the story that we need to be talking about. We need to talk about embracing the technologies we've already have, embracing cross breeding and embracing strategic maternal and terminal matings. We can still operate the cow that's going to make our commercial rancher the most money because the most sensible to run 1,100 lb. cow. And again, I'm throwing out 1,100 lb. There may be a ranch, well, it's more 1,200 lb., maybe another rancher may be 1,000 lb. But don't let that spook you. There's ways to get to the finished product that still meets our industry demand.

Miranda Reimann (33:04):
I guess I would say too, you don't have to go that extreme. You could still have a difference. It'll be an incremental difference if you want to just bring your cow herd size from a 1,450 lb. to a 1,300 lb. cow or if you want to maybe use some of those technologies that you mentioned. But not all of them.

Ryan Rathmann (33:19):
Correct.

Miranda Reimann (33:19):
Absolutely. It's just additive.

Ryan Rathmann (33:20):
Absolutely. Yeah.

Miranda Reimann (33:22):
Very good. Well, is there anything else that we haven't asked you related to this topic that you want to talk about? Otherwise we always end on a casual question.

Ryan Rathmann (33:31):
Yeah, no, I think we covered most of it unless there's some other burning question in your mind.

Miranda Reimann (33:36):
Nope, I don't think so.

Ryan Rathmann (33:37):
So. It's a complex subject. It's difficult maybe to talk about verbally as opposed to maybe ...

Miranda Reimann (33:43):
We will the put up some of the charts when we put this podcast online. We'll be sure and maybe get some charts from you to help explain some of it.

Ryan Rathmann (33:51):
I guess I may share one more thing.

So a lot of what I talked about too was our own in-house research and in our own in-house research at Texas Tech there. We did a couple studies for a few summers in a row where we took auction barn cull cows, and we did a three by three factorial arrangement. So we divided them, we sorted through about 400 cows. We got down to 81 per trial, so 162 total. We were dividing them into small frame score. So in this case it was anything below five. So mainly fours, but some threes. And then we cut out. We did not use cows that were from five to 5.5. So then our medium frame scores were 5.5 to 6.5, and then we cut out the 6.5 to seven I believe. And then the big frame cows were seven and up.

We had some that were high eights, low nine looked like they came out of time machine from the 1980s. And so the other factor we had was we measured their heart girth. And so we measured their heart girth, minimum girth right behind their shoulder if you were to tape all the way around their rib cage right there in their full ribbon heart. And so we had what I call shallow cows, medium body depth cows and deep cows. I jokingly call them belly draggers. And so we put them on a relatively calorically rich diet and fed them all they wanted. And we had feed intake notes where you can measure individual feed intake. There's not really a lot of research out there that has ever done that. We get all that. We're all about the data when these calves are yearlings or these bulls or whatever progeny tests. This is in the early portions of their life. Well, how much are these cows consuming if we gave them all they wanted, right? That's the unknown.

That's what we're trying to figure out in the years to come. These differences between cows that may weigh the same, may look the same, but Cow A maybe eats 300 lb. less forage versus Cow B. Even though they look the same and everything. That makes a meaningful difference in terms of the stocking rate of your ranch and the return that we were talking about based on picking the right cow size. And so anyways, that's what we did. And the results are interesting. I find them very interesting because I'm a livestock judge primarily in terms of what I've spent my career doing. And so we're really trying to put science behind, hey, what is the optimal cow look like? And so one of the things I feel like personally we overemphasize is belly depth. And you got to understand that those cows and our data provided insight to that.

Well, the deep cows ate like 29 lb. of dry matter over a seven week period. They were thin to begin with. They're like a BCS 3. And we moved them to a 5 and intermediate cows I think ate about 28.5 lb. And then the shallow cows ate like 25.2 lb. or something. And so there's a few pounds or 1.5 lb. difference between these three confirmational comparisons. And that's substantial when you start, again, forecasting that out over 365 days a year and trying to say, well, if that does translate to the pasture. I understand we're doing that in a confined scenario. It's hard to replicate that in a grazing scenario. The technology there to collect that data, that's what we're struggling with. That's what I'm talking about. That's the data we're going to need to figure out how to collect in the future.

So there's a substantial difference. A lot of the data we're looking at there is, well, the shallow cows. Their feed conversions are actually the most efficient if we just look at it as a feedlot animal. Well, the small shallow cow, she converted actually under 5 lb. She was like one to 4.8 lb. of feed to put on 1 lb. of gain. Well, lo and behold, the most inefficient cow from a feed efficiency standpoint was that big frame cow that was deep bellied and she's converting in the mid 6's. This is a substantial difference. And so that's feed conversion, okay? It's not the whole story for a cow. It's not just about feed conversion. So when we talk about feed efficiency on her progeny and like, oh man, look at the impressive feed efficiency of her progeny or the son she produced. Well, that's wonderful in a terminal scenario, but in a cow setting, it is maybe more so about what she does with the grass.

She consumes to store it away in her body condition because that's what's going to drive reproductive performance. And, ultimately, that's number one. And so it's a compromise. And so the reverse of what I said for feed efficiency, everything flipped. And so now the deeper bellied cows with a little bit more appetite, of course, they put on more flesh and more condition, and we proved that through ultrasound and whatnot. And so anyways, long story short, we hope to publish some of this information in the future, but getting a handle on what does this ideal cow look like? We're using some other technology that I won't get into too much, but to try to more holistically describe other aspects well beyond just frame score and heart growth and what matters and what doesn't in terms of our livestock judging assessment of the phenotype of this cow. And so yeah, I look forward to trying to get more data and to developing those models and trying to tell the story on what does and what doesn't matter.

Miranda Reimann (39:23):
Well, we will look forward to visiting with you again when you've got results from that.

Ryan Rathmann (39:27):
Yes, ma'am.

Miranda Reimann (39:28):
So our final wrap up question, as always, we want to end on some good news. So - whether it's personal or professional - just share a bit of good news.

Ryan Rathmann (39:37):
Good news. Well, God's the good news. No matter what else happens, that's the best news of all. But, no, good news? I don't know. I'm just blessed. I've got two daughters, Kinley and Carly. Kinley just turned 17 and Carly's 14. But the good news is, I guess I'm just in a season of life. My wife and I, we're very blessed to have two wonderful girls. We enjoy showing, but they're in all kinds of other activities. And so, like many families, you go through different seasons when they're a little ...

Miranda Reimann (40:14):
Sometimes you're in all of them at once.

Ryan Rathmann (40:15):
Yeah, yeah, that's true. No, it's just a good season of life to see your kids grow up and mature and advance towards adulthood. Hopefully they do it in a manner that reflects the love they have for their father above.

Miranda Reimann (40:32):
I love that. I'm shaking my head because I am totally identifying with that. So thank you so much for taking the time to share with us today and for coming in and talking out here in Denver to the producers.

Ryan Rathmann (40:44):
Thank you for having me.

Outro (40:52):
Listeners, for more information on making Angus work for you, check out the Angus Beef Bulletin and the Angus Beef Bulletin EXTRA. You can subscribe to both publications in the show notes. If you have questions or comments, let us know at abbeditorial@angus.org and we would appreciate it if you would leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and share this episode with any other profit-minded cattlemen. Thanks for listening. This has been Angus at Work!