Whats The Economic Value Of A Bred Heifer This Fall?
Harlan Hughes, Extension Livestock Economist NDSU Extension Service A decade of analyzing Integrated Resource Management (IRM) cooperator beef cow herds suggests that heifer retention strategies have a significant effect on long-run profits from the beef cow herd. The timing of herd expansion, and the buying and selling of females, seems to be critical to long-run profitability. I am writing this series of Market Advisors to alert readers that my analyses suggest that now is the time for herd expansions and that this optimum expansion time may quickly disappear. In fact, my analyses suggest that the economic value of bred heifers entering a herd peaks in the fall of 1999. Those bred heifers were born in 1997. The economics of running beef cows is highly influenced by the beef price cycle. The beef price cycle corresponds directly to cattle cycles but moves in the opposite direction. A beef price cycle starts in the middle of a decade with low prices, prices increases through the end of
