The risk is greater than ever. Record prices are awesome, but the financial risk and liability of owning these calves, it's intense and it's stressful. Well, welcome back to That Ranching Podcast. Today, we're lucky to be in Lubbock, Texas at Texas Tech sitting here with Doctor Ryan Rathmann. Doc, introduce yourself to the listeners. Yeah, you bet. Thank you for having me. My name is Ryan Rathmann. So I'm a beef cattle professor here in the animal and food sciences program. And so most of my career I've spent coaching the livestock judging team. But by trade, I'm I'm a reproductive physiologist and a rumenant nutritionist and really, really just passionate about moving the beef industry forward, whether that be in on repro or nutrition or health or meat science and growth and development. Just an enthusiast for the industry and really enjoy research and research that's practical, right? That can truly make a difference for our stakeholders that being cattle producers at every level. Well I really respect what you've just said and I think we have a strong alignment right out of the gate when you said just doing things to move the industry forward. You're doing it in your capacity, we're doing it in ours. Yes sir. But the net result is the people we serve, the beloved beef industry here in America. You know, I first met Doctor Rathmann at Hemphill Beef Conference in Canadian, Texas April this year, April twenty twenty six. Ever since that time, I've wanted to sit down and have a podcast to help glean and have you share with our viewers some of the insights that for me was an 'Aha' moment back in April. So doc, if you could just speak a little bit about in my terms that energy redirection. I think that's cool both for the cow calf folks and for the feedlot space. It applies to both. Absolutely. Yeah. Let me talk on that just a little bit and then you can redirect me if you need me to go a different direction. Okay? So, yeah. I I really enjoy evaluating beef cow efficiency and trying to figure out, you know, a lot of the talks like the talk I gave that day honestly was aimed at trying to decipher the most optimal cow size as defined by mature weight. And then also her milk production level. That's kind of a cow herd level, because we're talking about means. Not every cow is gonna be the same size, the same milk level. Right? And so we're talking about striking that optimum for your cow herd. Then we do a lot of research as well looking at individual cows and differences amongst them that make some more energetically efficient versus others, right? And so I think in the long run we've got to get a better handle on this. So from a genetic selection standpoint, we can start to identify these genetic lines that are more energetically efficient, that do more with less, that are, you know, healthier and just, you know, convert God's grass to more total pounds of beef and maybe specifically pounds of lean at the very end of the system. And so that's where my heart's at. That's where I like investigating. And where I think honestly some of the low hanging fruit is in our beef industry. If we're going to make really true strides in reducing our carbon footprint to produce a pound of beef, I think it lies a lot in what we're about to talk about. And so that day, you know, I think what sparked your interest was talking about the cow. I think first you need to you need to take a step back and say, hey, what is the cow spending most of her energy on? And most of her energy, about seventy percent of it in the in her production year is gonna be spent on maintenance. And so, just to make sure we're all on the same page, maintenance energy is basically if you fed a cow, x number of calories and she neither gained nor lost weight, she you'd be feeding her at maintenance. Right? And so when you'd start to break that maintenance requirement down, what I was actually mostly after that day was discussing how much of it is utilized by her GI tract. So I kind of missed the point, the main point you were making. No its all good, we'll get there. We'll get there. This is like my catch up day. About thirty eight to fifty four percent of a cow's energy consumption that's dedicated towards maintenance is going to be consumed by the liver and the GI tract. And a big part of that is the liver. I generally I just generally round it and say the liver consumes about twenty five percent. You know, the liver is very expensive simply because, so many of our metabolic reactions are occurring there. The storage of nutrients, and then the acquisition of them and the distribution of them to the target tissues across the cow's body. And so it's huge in dairy cows. Cows that give more milk are going to have larger livers. It goes hand in hand. Even progeny out of cows that have more milk, They're say steer and heifer progeny in the feedlot. They're actually going to have larger livers and their maintenance requirement will be a little higher. So consequently, if you look at their feed conversion rates, they're not quite as good. And so there's reasons not just at the cow herd level, but all the way through the receiving and the feedlot phase to try to optimize milk production levels so we can optimize liver size. Right? And then, the GI tract, you know, the four stomachs and the small intestine, large intestine, that'll that'll consume another sixteen to twenty four percent. So anyway, so that's kind of a big part of what we were talking about that day. But I want to let's take a little look into maybe the other components. Right? Physical activity is one. And it gets counted as maintenance requirement. And so if you have cows, cows could have anywhere from say ten to fifty percent of their calories they consume actually be expended on on foraging. Right? Walking around. They walk miles and miles and miles. They may Cows being cows. Yeah. Exactly. They they may walk more miles than an international soccer player. Right? I think they say an international soccer player that plays in the midfield runs about ten miles a game. So that cow probably has that soccer player beat. But, I used to do a lot of confined cow calf system research. And when you put cows in confinement and make them a couch potato like a feedlot steer, you reduce their maintenance energy requirements by about twenty five percent. We don't often think about that. But probably a lot of your customers that y'all serve are in the western half of the United States. And their cows are spread out. They've got to walk a long ways to water and a long ways to grass or long ways to that supplement depending if you're trying to use it for grazing distribution purposes. That eats up a lot of calories. Right? And a lot of times you can't do anything about that. Right? But it is important to understand that that's part of the maintenance requirement. So another one that we talked about that day that's big is the immune system. And so the immune system on a daily basis will consume about fifteen to maybe upwards of forty or even fifty percent. Wow. Of the energy that a cow consumes on a daily basis. Right? And so when you look at that spread, the cows that may only be consuming fifteen percent, those are the healthy cows. Right? They're not mounting an acute immune response to a disease per se that's in heavy abundance or pathogen that's heavy abundance in her environment at the time. And so, you know, she doesn't have to spend quite as much. What I think your viewership needs to understand though is the like I talked about with the liver being energy demanding. Right. The immune system is highly energy demanding. And more specifically, it demands glucose. Glucose is, you know, tremendously important for things like marbling deposition. And so when you when you shift that that precursor away from something like marbling to having to take care of the priority which is survival. Mounting an immune immune response because that's more important. It takes it takes priority. Then we can burn a lot of calories and divert it from maybe our own production objectives for growth and for marbling deposition. I think maybe I quoted that day one thing you told me, Trevor, that was kind of neat. In some like lighter weight calf studies, There's calves that can burn up to a pound of glucose in just a few to several hours, when they're trying to combat something like BRD. That's huge. Right? I mean, they could literally lose weight and you can understand why. Their intake goes down. That's the problem. It's kind of a a double edged sword. Right? The calf's sick. He eats less. He gets less calories. But then his immune system is also demanding more fuel. And so it kind of goes backwards and that's kind of what sends him a tailspin. That's why it's important to keep him healthy in prevention. You know dependent upon what they're having to deal with in their local environment that immune system can really really consume a lot of fuel. It's very enlightening to me and it's kind of a no brainer when you stop and think about it. This conserving, better optimizing available energy because we're talking the same diet. Whether it's a feedlot calf or a cow out on pasture, it's the same diet but it's what are we doing to better optimize the available energy. That's right. Help us and the viewers maybe unpack that a little bit as to how does the body know to say, Hey, we're good here. Let's use this for weight gain. No, that's a good question. Yeah. I guess maybe the best way I can explain it is survival or Darwinism takes priority, right? You think about our own needs. It's kind of hard to maybe explain how does the body per se prioritizes it other than we just have to understand that mother nature knows best. Yes. And mother nature says, if you can't survive, then everything else like reproduction Comes second. That's out the window. Yeah. Right? And I don't care what we're talking about physiologically. That's the case. And the immune system is going to take priority over everything else. I guess maybe that's the best way I could explain it without getting too scientific. That's cool. I like the way you're talking to me so I can understand. But so mother nature is doing the prioritizing. Yes. We don't totally understand how she does but she knows. Yes. So what comes second after the immune system? Yeah. Would say probably after that the priority is on the GI tract. If if the if that cow can't take what she consumes and and and, you know, and put it to use Yeah. Then the the immune system never gets to use it, right? Guess you could make the argument that perhaps the GI tract is first and the immune system is second. The only reason I may say that's a little bit different is because when you get a cow on a negative energy balance, she'll actually lose, visceral organ weight. And so the GI tract shrinks. It kind of goes hand in hand with intake, but the liver will shrink. Right? So you start looking at a cow that's going backwards from a say a BCS five to four to three to a two. She actually drops five to ten percent, with each of those full body score drops in her daily maintenance energy requirement. So it's actually cheaper to operate a cow that's thin as opposed to optimal or especially fat. But the reason is because her visceral organ weight shrunk. Right. And so, mostly as she goes backwards, it's going to be muscular atrophy. Just like if you or I were sick, you know, we're laid up for a few days with the stomach flu and we're throwing up and, even though there's probably other areas of our body we wish would lose weight on. We probably realized that after a few days, we've probably lost a little bit of muscle mass. That cow as she's going backwards, she'll start to catabolize a lot of that skeletal muscle and these other protein tissues because most of these organs are mainly protein based. She'll catabolize that and redirect it towards energy when there's times in her diet when she didn't have enough energy to fulfill it. So I'd say the the GI tract's a major priority. The immune system a major priority. And then a lot of the other factors are secondary. You know, we didn't I didn't really mention it, Trevor, but you know, obviously it kind of goes without saying. But things like operating the cow's heart, her lungs, her brain, these obviously are a major priority. Right? After that, we can look towards that cow, dedicating calories towards growth or you know, marbling or even milk production, right? She'll sacrifice and compromise milk production way before she's gonna sacrifice being able to operate her organs or her immune system. Would you say reproduction comes before or after milk production? I would actually say reproduction comes after. Yes. Yeah. And we use that expression, a cow milked herself thin. Right? And it's those thin cows that we wind up being more likely to diagnose open in the fall Yes. And have to cull, right? And so I'd say, to go back to maybe the mother nature sentiment, I would say that mother nature says, take care of the progeny you've got before I equip you with another one. Yeah. That's a quote that we'll keep. That's brilliant. So, just to that point, we've seen countless times over the last two decades with cows or heifers are on an incline coming into breeding, they'll have much better success than even if it's a fat cow on a decline. Because at that point, mother nature is prioritizing. Is that correct? Yeah, I think so. I mean, there's probably a little bit of debate to that but I agree with that. There's probably some signaling mechanisms in regards to just caloric intake, energetic feedback back to the brain that then maybe influences the endocrine system that's, know, hormonally getting that cow prepped and in position to reestablish cyclicity so she can hopefully get bred that, in absence of it or in a negative energy balance probably, are a little different. Right? It may be more meaningful maybe say in like sheep than cattle. I would say in cattle it's probably a little more just her status. Her current condition status maybe even more so than like, hey, today she was in a negative energy balance. Right? And so to me, I definitely agree. I'd rather have a cow going up and expect more reproductive success than going down. The challenge in a production system is a lot of times, we're going this way and and you look at a dairy cow. Right? That's her and that's why they suffer so much from reproductive standpoints. Right. They prove your point. Know, how how how difficult it is fertility wise to get these dairy cows re bred because there's such a huge demand for milk. The the time of the year when you want a beef cow in the best condition is when she calves. Reason being is because it's the cheapest to recondition her prior to that when she's dry Doesn't have a calf on her side. And, now I basically built in an insurance policy for that cow. If she's say at a six, then I can afford for her to lose weight while she's lactating. If I don't have, you know, the absolute maximum nutrition to support it. And she's still at a five. Right? Where your break your break over in a lot of climates is probably that five to four. If we slip to a four and we're still in the middle of the breeding season, we should probably expect our pregnancy rates are going be suppressed, right? And it's environmentally dependent. That may be more so true up north than it is in the southeast per se. But, but yeah, no doubt about it. I agree with you Trevor that, you know, ideally, we'd love that cow to be on the up tick. It's just really hard because she's Yeah. She's trying to to lactate and she's trying to re breed. And if it's a cow less than five, she may even have growth left still to be accomplished in her life. And so there's a lot of priority there. That that, that sixty to ninety days postpartum is when her milk peaks. Yep. And so there's just a lot of demand. It's pretty hard to provide enough nutrition. And mother nature, obviously, we can get drought pretty pretty quickly too. That that it's tough to contend with. So I I think just having, you know, a good management plan in place where you've got the right supplemental program and you're fully utilizing everything that we understand could be beneficial from a reproductive success standpoint and health standpoint would be to a producer's best interest. Well, I think the take home message for the listeners is really looking at whether that cow is out grazing or whatever the program is, there is an unspoken prioritization of demands and survival comes first and then it flows on from there. But let's now just jump into a different space and talk about starting calves in a feedlot the first sixty days and how that whole energy redirection plays in in that space. Yeah, when we jump into that conversation, my biggest deal would probably be, hey, we don't want to be behind the eight ball per se. We want to, like I said, be good planners and say, let's do we have this calf's health and immune system optimized prior to coming into that stressful period. Right? And and no doubt about it, nutrition at that moment is really important. But like I said, a lot of them are slow to maybe start on feed if they've never been exposed to creep. And so having a cow herd that's got the right mineral program, having those calves, pre weaning exposed, you know, to good mineral vitamin and energy and protein, program, certainly sets them up for success once that once that stress comes. But once that once that does come, I completely agree with you. I mean, I think for me the priority initially is palatability. We're trying to teach that calf how to eat. And so, whatever nutritional company you're dealing with, you you want to go with one that, you feel like is is making that a priority in my opinion. In terms of just, is this a palatable feed stuff or supplement? Do they want to come to the bunk? Does it engage them? Because it's you're intake dependent. We can talk all day about all these energy demands. But if they're not eating it. If they're not eating calories then it's going to be a tough battle. You're going get into health problems. We had an old nutritionist that always used to say, to your point, you want a calf healthy, hungry, and up at the bunk. And so if we don't get it up to the bunk, we have much bigger problems at play. I agree with you. But I love where you're going. You start with the foundation. You got to have foundational immune health and mineral status, whatever company that you're getting that from. But then coming into the feed yard, however you'd you know, whether they've been pre weaned or weaned or shipping or co mingling, sale barns, all of this is a huge stress event. Absolutely. And fourteen to twenty one days post stress event, we do have disease breaks. I mean, it's very typical. So maybe talk a little bit about how the energy redirection and a good health status plays into that. Yeah. Doing the best we can. Absolutely. That first couple of leaks I agree with what you said. It kind of depends on the pathogen, right? Something like mycoplasma may break a little bit later, where you may have other BRD pathogens that break a little sooner. So there's a lot, you know, a lot of pathogens have different time courses, but, no doubt about it. Just making certain that we get adequate energy intake And then, perhaps more so even, or just as importantly like that mineral component, that vitamin component and making and making certain we got a lot of protein. We hadn't really mentioned protein. We've been talking energy. But, make no doubt about it, the immune system, although a big fuel consumer, heavily dependent upon protein. Right? A lot of the products that they're producing to try to defense that calf against those pathogens are going be built with protein. Right? Right. And so we got to make certain that's a priority too. Balancing, you know, their ruminodegradable protein versus that escape protein, to make certain that we've got that in concert. But I think if we have challenges during that time frame, obviously it could compromise their maximum immune efficiency. And so they you may get higher pull rates. But I think and that's kind of obvious, right? But I think in the long run maybe what we don't think as much about is setting that calf up for long term success. You know, not getting to the point where they're, you know, become a chronic. Yes. Making certain that if we do have to treat them that they can rebound and they don't have any, you know, chronic damage. Right? It doesn't go so severe that we get long term liver abscesses or lung abscesses that compromise that calf's growth and efficiency. Those are the calves that are really the killers as far as Right. On the bottom line, besides the mortality. But, and then what I was talking about was maybe more so any days spent of that calf quote unquote unhealthy or where they've got to devote closer to that forty or fifty percent of the calories they're consuming versus the fifteen percent. That's a calf that's not, you know, necessarily set up as well probably from a marbling standpoint in long run. They're not quality grade as well. So yeah, there's a lot of carcass effects are decided And you've seen that. Yes. A lot of carcass effects are decided, you know, one hundred and fifty, two hundred days prior to You spoke about the long term. So just to zone in on that first sixty days, what we do in that sixty days getting that calf up to the bunk, getting it on feed, helping the immune system. How much does that actually impact the trajectory throughout that calf's days in the feed yard? Oh, it could be huge, right? And so I think a lot of times when we look at scientific research from a practical or applied standpoint, they'll try to do comparisons where they put them in silos and say, these are calves that never got treated. This is how they performed carcass weight wise, quality, you know, grid distribution. And then, you know, pulled once, you know, and then pulled twice and then pulled more than that. Right? And they'll try to make those applied comparisons. I mean, it's massive. I mean, it's hundreds and hundreds of dollars difference between these calves that haven't been treated and these calves that are that have been treated multiple times. And so when you add up the the medicine costs from antibiotic perspective plus, you know, the reduction or depression in long term growth and performance and feed conversion, their cost of gain is much higher. And again, a lot of times you generally always see a carcass weight difference amongst those comparisons that I stated. Okay. It's probably the biggest thing right now, right? When carcass is worth, whatever the market's at two, two twenty, two twenty five, two thirty today per pound and you can see a eight, ten, twenty, thirty pound difference in a lot of those comparisons, maybe more. We're talking about a significant amount of money. The stakes are high. Excuse the pun. But the stakes are high. And for the feeder, he may not necessarily be making a whole bunch more margin. It's good conditions for the cow calf man and we appreciate that. They've had tough times not that many years ago So we're we appreciate that. But maybe you can speak a little bit with what's at stake and how much these calves cost. They're not making a whole lot more margin. Can you speak to managing that risk? The risk is greater than ever, right? And that's the tough part about the cattle business today. Record prices are awesome, but the financial risk and liability of owning these calves, it's intense and it's stressful. And so to me, there's never been a more logical time to get better at your craft. And when I say that, I'm saying your nutritional craft, your vaccination schedule, your preventative measures. Right? And a lot of that is based on nutrition. And so just make certain you're working with a company or nutritionist that can help guide in your specific environment and management conditions. A good plan so that that that you can protect that investment. Margins have been pretty bloody here in feedlot sector the last couple of years. And, you know, I think, maybe one thing worth mentioning is, you know, in today's climate, you know, those feeders are basically forced to feed them for forever to try to get on the better side of this profit equation. Right. Because that initial investment is so much. They've just got to get so much carcass weight out of them to ever come out in the black. And so that again, that just elevates the importance of making certain that health is on the up and up. Right. To try to protect that. We talked about maybe the overall just well-being of the animal and things that happen in the first few weeks of receiving. I don't know. I'm speculating a little bit. But we're talking about organ integrity and we're talking about things that may have some influence on late deads. And so you know, given the fact that we're taking these cattle such extreme weights, you know, we probably need to consider that the implications of what's going on those first few weeks. Foundational. Yeah. That's a good that's a great way to put it. Foundational. Maybe foundational to being able to support cattle that can go to that heavy of a weight. And just thinking practically speaking, we're sitting in on the second floor of the animal science building here at Texas Tech. But it's supported by a foundation, right? You couldn't build a structure like this. And as far as the floor coverings and this nice office we're in, it's all great but the foundation came first to support that. It all has a huge impact. Just to wrap up here, Doctor. Rathmann, can you speak to the mood of the beef industry right now? There's a lot going on. There's a lot of risk. There's a lot of optimism. Well, I mean, yeah, there's a lot of factors at play right now. I I think we still got to be excited about the beef industry no matter what happens. I mean, the people that are a part of it, they choose to be a part of it because fits their lifestyle, fits their passions. Yeah. And I know some days can be tough. It's fun because, you're balancing the science and physiology that we talked about and somehow doing your very best to understand all that. But at the end of the day, figure out how to translate that to just good practical everyday decisions. Yeah. That can, keep our cattle healthier and, keep them more profitable, consequently. But, it's a great time to be in the beef industry. I'll say this, I felt like when I went to college in the nineties, I'm forty six now. But when I was in college as an animal science student, I almost felt like I was discouraged by my professors to go actually raise cattle. Because in that period of time, the beef system in the United States probably only generated about thirty five, forty dollars of total profit across every segment. Okay? So that shared cow, calf, stocker, feedlot, packer. Even though I know I was studying it, I was still yet discouraged. And so, let's fast forward now to two thousand twenty six. There's nearly nine hundred dollars worth of profit built into every animal that we generate in this industry that's shared across these segments. So no doubt about it. The cow calf guy is getting probably even more than that, last year or this year. And then at the other's expense based on, you know, inventory. Right. Packers and feedlots, taking it in the shorts a little bit. But, let's look at the bigger picture and appreciate the fact that we have built the premium protein in the world and we have tremendous consumer demand that has gifted us the opportunity to build in nine hundred dollars worth of profit. And so I know some days are tough, but that to me should be positive information to push you forward and say there's always opportunity to make money. Yeah. Well, you pushed through in the nineties and I think we can take a cue from that. There is optimism. It's worth being passionate about. People are still voting with their checkbooks. The beef demand is is really strong. Great words of wisdom you shared with us, doctor Rathmann. That wraps up our That Ranching podcast. We'll see you next Thursday.
AUDIO VERSION
The risk is greater than ever. Record prices are awesome, but the financial risk and liability of owning these calves, it's intense, and it's stressful. Well, welcome back to That Ranching Podcast. Today, we're lucky to be in Lubbock, Texas at Texas Tech sitting here with Doctor. Ryan Doc, introduce yourself to the listeners. Yeah, you bet. Thank you for having me. My name is Ryan Rathman. So I'm a beef cattle professor here in the animal and food sciences program. And so most of my career I've spent coaching the livestock judging team. But by trade, I'm I'm a reproductive physiologist and a rumenant nutritionist. And really, really just passionate about moving the beef industry forward, whether that be in on repro or nutrition or health or meat science and growth and development. Just an enthusiast for the industry and really enjoy research and research that's practical, right? That can truly make a difference for our stakeholders that being cattle producers at every level. Well I really respect what you've just said and I think we have a strong alignment right out of the gate when you said just doing things to move the industry forward. You're doing it in your capacity, we're doing it in ours. Yes sir. But the net result is the people we serve, the beloved beef industry here in America. You know, I first met Doctor. Rathman at Hemphill Beef Conference in Canadian, Texas April this year, April twenty twenty six. Ever since that time, I've wanted to sit down and have a podcast to help glean and have you share with our viewers some of the insights that for me was an moment back in April. So doc, if you could just speak a little bit about in my terms that energy redirection. I think that's cool both for the cow calf folks and for the feedlot space. It applies to both. Absolutely. Yeah. Let me talk on that just a little bit and then you can redirect me if you need me to go a different direction. Okay? So, yeah. I I really enjoy evaluating beef cow efficiency and trying to figure out, you know, a lot of the talks like the talk I gave that day honestly was aimed at trying to decipher the most optimal cow size as defined by mature weight And then also her milk production level. That's kind of a cow herd level, because we're talking about means. Not every cow is going be the same size, the same milk level, right? And so we're talking about striking that optimum for your cow herd. Then we do a lot of research as well looking at individual cows and differences amongst them that make some more energetically efficient versus others. Right? And so I think in the long run, we've got to get a better handle on this. So from a genetic selection standpoint, we can start to identify these genetic lines that are more energetically efficient, that do more with less, that are, you know, healthier and just, you know, convert God's grass to more total pounds of beef and maybe specifically pounds of lean at the very end of the system. And so that's where my heart's at. That's where I like investigating And where I think honestly some of the low hanging fruit is in our beef industry. If we're going to make really true strides in in reducing our carbon footprint to produce a pound of beef, I think it lies a lot in what we're about to talk about. And so that day, you know, I think what sparked your interest was talking about the cow. I think first you need to you need to take a step back and say, hey, what is the cow spending most of her energy on? And most of her energy, about seventy percent of it in the in her production year is gonna be spent on maintenance. And so, just to make sure we're all on the same page, maintenance energy is basically if you fed a cow, x number of calories and she neither gained nor lost weight, she you would be feeding her at maintenance. Right? And so when you'd start to break that maintenance requirement down, what I was actually mostly after that day was discussing how much of it is utilized by her GI tract. So I kind of missed the point, the main point you're making. We'll get there. We'll get there. This is like my catch up day. About thirty eight to fifty four percent of a cow's energy consumption that's dedicated towards maintenance is going to be consumed by the liver and the GI tract. And a big part of that is the liver. I just generally round it and say the liver consumes about twenty five percent. You know, the liver is very expensive simply because, so many of our metabolic reactions are occurring there. The storage of nutrients, and then the acquisition of them and the distribution of them to the target tissues across the cow's body. And so it's huge in dairy cows. Cows that give more milk are going to have larger livers. It goes hand in hand. Even progeny out of cows that have more milk, they're say steer and heifer progeny in the feedlot. They're actually going to have larger livers and their maintenance requirement will be a little higher. So consequently, you look at their feed conversion rates, they're not quite as good. And so there's reasons not just at the cow herd level, but all the way through the receiving and the feedlot phase to try to optimize milk production levels so we can optimize liver size. Right? And then, the GI tract, know, the the four stomachs and the small intestine, large intestine, that'll that'll consume another sixteen to twenty four percent. So anyway, so that's kind of a big part of what we're talking about that day. But I want to let's take a little look into maybe the other components. Right? Physical activity is one, and it gets counted as maintenance requirement. And so if you have cows, cows could have anywhere from say ten to fifty percent of their calories they consume actually be expended on foraging. Right? Walking around. They walk miles and miles and miles. May Cows being cows. Yeah, exactly. They may walk more miles than an international soccer player. Right? I think they say an international soccer player that plays in the midfield runs about ten miles a game. So that cow probably has that soccer player beat. But, I used to do a lot of confined cow calf system research. And when you put cows in confinement and make them a couch potato like a feedlot steer, you reduce their maintenance energy requirements by about twenty five percent. We don't often think about that, but probably a lot of your customers that y'all serve are in the western half of the United States. And their cows are spread out. They've got to walk a long ways to water and a long ways to grass or long ways to that supplement depending if you're trying to use it for grazing distribution purposes. That eats up a lot of calories. Right? And a lot of times you can't do anything about that. Right? But, but it is important to understand that's part of the maintenance requirement. So another one that we talked about that day that's big is the immune system. And so the immune system on a daily basis will consume about fifteen to maybe upwards of forty or even fifty percent. Wow. Of the energy that a cow consumes on a daily basis. Right? And so when you look at that spread, the cows that may only be consuming fifteen percent, those are the healthy cows. Right? They're they don't they're not mounting an acute immune response to a disease per se that's in heavy abundance or pathogen that's heavy abundance in her environment at the time. And so, you know, she doesn't have to spend quite as much. What what I think your your viewership needs to understand though is the like I talked about with the liver being energy demanding. Right. The immune system is highly energy demanding. And more specifically, it demands glucose. Glucose is, you know, tremendously important for things like marbling deposition. And so when you when you shift that that precursor away from something like marbling to having to take care of the priority which is survival, mounting an immune immune response because that's more important. It takes it takes priority. Then we can burn a lot of calories and divert it from maybe our own production objectives for growth and for marbling deposition. I think maybe I quoted that day one thing you told me, Trevor, that was kind of neat. In some, like lighter weight calf studies, there's calves that can burn up to a pound of glucose in just a few to several hours. When they're trying to combat something like BRD. That's huge, right? I mean, they could literally lose weight and you can understand why. Their intake goes down. That's the problem. It's kind of a a double edged sword, right? The calf's sick, he eats less, he gets less calories. But then his immune system is also demanding more fuel and so he kind of goes backwards and that's kind of what sends him a tailspin. That's why it's important to keep him healthy in prevention. You know, dependent upon, you know, what they're having to deal with in their local environment That immune system can really, really consume a lot of fuel. It's very enlightening to me and it's kind of a no brainer when you stop and think about it. This conserving better optimizing available energy because we're talking the same diet. Whether it's a feedlot calf or cow out on pasture, it's the same diet but it's what are we doing to better optimize the available energy. Help us and the viewers maybe unpack that a little bit as to how does the body know to say, Hey, we're good here. Let's use this for weight gain. Now, that's a good question. Yeah. I guess maybe the best way I can explain it is survival or Darwinism takes priority, right? You think about our own needs. It's kind of hard to maybe explain how the body per se prioritizes it other than we just have to understand that mother nature knows best. Yes. And mother nature says, if you can't survive, then everything else like reproduction Comes second. That's out the window. Yeah. Right? And I don't care what we're talking about physiologically. That's the case. The immune system is going to take priority over everything else. I guess maybe that's the best way I could explain it without getting too scientific. That's cool. I like the way you're talking to so I can understand. Mother nature is doing the prioritizing. We don't totally understand how she does but she So what comes second after the immune system? Yeah, I would say probably after that the priority is on the GI tract. If that cow can't take what she consumes and and and you know, and put it to use. Yeah. Then the immune system never gets to use it. Right? I guess you could make the argument that perhaps the GI tract is first and the immune system is second. The only reason I may say that's a little bit different is because when you get a cow on a negative energy balance, she'll actually lose visceral organ weight. So the GI tract shrinks. It kind of goes hand in hand with intake. But the liver will shrink. Right? So you start looking at a cow that's going backwards from a say a BCS five to four to three to a two. She actually drops five to ten percent, with each of those full body score drops, in her daily maintenance energy requirement. So it's actually cheaper to operate a cow that's thin as opposed to optimal or especially fat. But the reason is because their visceral organ weight shrunk. Right. And so a lot mostly as she goes backwards, it's going to be muscular atrophy. Just like if you or I were sick, you know, we're laid up for a few days with the stomach flu and we're throwing up and even though there's probably other areas of our body we wish would lose weight on, we probably realized that after a few days we've probably lost a little bit of muscle mass. That cow as she's going backwards, she'll start to catabolize a lot of that skeletal muscle and these other protein tissues because most of these organs are mainly protein based. She'll catabolize that and redirect it towards energy when there's times in her diet when she didn't have had enough energy to fulfill it. So I'd say the the GI tract's a major priority, the immune system a major priority, and then a lot of the other factors are secondary. You know, we didn't I didn't really mention it, Trevor, but you know, obviously it kind of goes without saying. But things like operating the cow's heart, her lungs, her brain, these obviously are a major priority. Right? After that, we can look towards that cow, dedicating calories towards growth or you know, marbling or even milk production, right? She'll sacrifice and compromise milk production way before she's gonna sacrifice being able to operate her organs or her immune system. Would you say reproduction comes before or after milk production? I would actually say reproduction comes after. Yes. Yeah. And we use that expression, a cow milked herself thin. Right? And it's those thin cows that we wind up being more likely to diagnose open in the fall Yes. And have to cull, right? And so I'd say, to go back to maybe the mother nature sentiment, I would say that mother nature says, take care of the progeny you've got before I equip you with another one. Yeah. That's a quote that we'll That's brilliant. Just to that point, we've seen countless times over the last two decades with cows or heifers are on an incline coming into breeding, they'll have much better success than even if it's a fat cow on a decline. Because at that point, mother nature is prioritizing. Is that Yeah, think so. And there's yeah, I mean, there's probably a little bit of debate to that but I agree with that. There's probably some signaling mechanisms in regards to just caloric intake, energetic feedback back to the brain that then maybe influences the endocrine system that's, know, hormonally getting that cow prepped and in position to reestablish cyclicity so she can hopefully get bred. That, in absence of it or in a negative energy balance probably, are a little different. Right? It may be more meaningful maybe saying like sheep than cattle. I would say in cattle it's probably a little more just her status. Her current condition status maybe even more so than like, hey, today she was in a negative energy balance. Right? And so to me, I definitely agree. I'd rather have a cow going up and expect more reproductive success than going down. The challenge in a production system is a lot of times, we're going this way and and you look at a dairy cow. Right? That's her and that's why they suffer so much from reproductive standpoints. Right. They prove your point. Know, that how how how difficult it is fertility wise to get these dairy cows re bred because there's such a huge demand for milk. The the time of the year when you want a beef cow in the best condition is when she calves. Reason being is because it's the cheapest to recondition her prior to that when she's dry Doesn't have a calf on her side. And, now I basically built in an insurance policy for that cow. If she's saying a six, then I can afford for her to lose weight while she's lactating. If I don't have, you know, the absolute maximum nutrition to support it. And she's still at a five. Right? Where your break your break over in a lot of climates is probably that five to four. If we slip to a four we're still in the middle of the breeding season, we should probably expect our pregnancy rates are going to be suppressed. And it's environmentally dependent. That may be more so true up north than it is in the southeast per se. But, but yeah. No doubt about it. I agree with you Trevor. You know, we ideally, we'd love that cow to be on the uptake. It's just really hard because she's trying to lactate and she's trying to re breed. And if it's a cow less than five, she may even have growth left still to be accomplished in her life. And so there's a lot of priority there. That that, that sixty to ninety days postpartum is when her milk peaks. Yep. And so there's just a lot of demands. It's pretty hard to provide enough nutrition. And mother nature, obviously we can get drought pretty pretty quickly too. That that it's it's tough to contend with. So I I think just having, you know, a good management plan in place where you've got the right supplemental program and you're fully utilizing everything that we understand can be beneficial from a reproductive success standpoint and health standpoint would be to a producer's best interest. Well, think the take home message for the listeners is really looking at whether that cow is out grazing or whatever the program is, there is an unspoken prioritization of demands and survival comes first. And then it flows on from there. But let's now just jump into a different space and talk about starting calves in a feedlot the first sixty days and how that whole energy redirection plays in that space. Yeah, when we jump into that conversation, my biggest deal would probably be, hey, we don't want to be behind the eight ball per se. We want to, like I said, be good planners and say, let's do we have this calves, health, and immune system optimized prior to coming into that stressful period. Right? And and no doubt about it. Nutrition at that moment is really important. But like I said, a lot of them are slow to maybe start on feed if they've never been exposed to creep. And so having a cow herd that's got the right mineral program, having those calves, pre weaning exposed, you know, to good mineral vitamin and energy and protein, program, certainly sets them up for success once that once that stress comes. But once that once that does come, I completely agree with you. I mean, think for me the priority initially is palatability. We're trying to teach that calf how to eat. And so, whatever nutritional company you're dealing with, you you want to go with one that you feel like is is making that a priority in my opinion. In terms of just, is this a palatable feed stuff or supplement? Do they want to come to the bunk? Does it engage them? Because it's you're intake dependent. We can talk all day about all these energy demands. But if they're not eating it. If they're not eating calories then it's going to be a tough battle. You're going get into health problems. We had an old nutritionist that always used to say, to your point, you want a calf healthy, hungry, and up at the bunk. And so if we don't get it up to the bunk, we have much bigger problems at play. I agree with you. Love where you're going. You start with the foundation. You got to have foundational immune health and mineral status, whatever company that you're getting that from. But then coming into the feed yard, however you whether they've been pre weaned or weaned or shipping or co mingling, sale barns, all of this is a huge stress event. Absolutely. And fourteen to twenty one days post stress event, we do have disease breaks. I mean, it's very typical. So maybe talk a little bit about how the energy redirection and a good health status plays into that. Yeah. Doing the best we can. Absolutely. That first couple of leaks, agree with what you said. It kind of depends on the pathogen, right? Something like mycoplasma may break a little bit later where you may have other BRD pathogens that break a little sooner. So there's a lot in a lot of pathogens have different time courses. But, no doubt about it. Just making certain that we get adequate energy intake And then, perhaps more so even, or just as importantly like that mineral component, that vitamin component and making certain we got a lot of protein. We hadn't really mentioned protein. We've been talking energy. But, make no doubt about it, the immune system, although a big fuel consumer, heavily dependent upon protein. Right? A lot of the products that they're producing to try to defense that calf against those pathogens are going to be built with protein. Right? Right. And so we got to make certain that's a priority too. Balancing, you know, their ruminodegradable protein versus that Esqort protein, to make certain that we've got that in concert. But I think if we have challenges during that time frame, obviously it could compromise their maximum immune efficiency. And so they you may get higher pull rates. But I think that's kind of obvious, right? But I think in the long run maybe what we don't think as much about is setting that calf up for long term success. You know, not getting to the point where they're, you know, becoming chronic. Yes. Making certain that if we do have to treat them that they can rebound and they don't have any, you know, chronic damage, right? That it doesn't go so severe that we get long term abscesses or lung abscesses that compromise that calf's growth and efficiency. Those are the calves that are really the killers as far as Right. On the on the bottom line besides the mortality. But and then what I was talking about was maybe more so any days spent of that calf quote unquote unhealthy or where they've got to devote closer to that forty or fifty percent of the calories they're consuming versus the fifteen percent. That's a calf that's not, you know, necessarily set up as well probably from a marbling standpoint in the long run. They're not going to quality grade as well. So yeah, there's a lot of carcass effects are decided And you've seen that. Yes. A lot of carcass effects are decided, you know, one hundred and fifty, two hundred days prior to You spoke about the long term. So just to zone in on that first sixty days, what we do in that sixty days getting that calf up to the bunk, getting it on feed, helping the immune system, how much does that actually impact the trajectory throughout that calf's days in the feed yard? Oh, could be huge, right? And so I think a lot of times when we look at scientific research or a practical or applied standpoint, they'll try to do comparisons where they put them in silos and say, these are calves that never got treated. This is how they performed carcass weight wise, quality, you know, grid distribution. And then, you know, pulled once, you know, and then pulled twice and then pulled more than that. Right? And they'll try to make those applied comparisons. I mean, it's massive. I mean, it's hundreds and hundreds of dollars difference between these calves that haven't been treated and these calves that are that have been treated multiple times. And so when you add up the the medicine costs, from antibiotic perspective plus, you know, plus the reduction or depression in long term growth and performance and feed conversion. Their cost of gains much higher. And again, lot of times you generally always see a carcass weight difference amongst those comparisons that I stated. Okay. So it's probably the biggest thing right now, right? When carcass is worth whatever the market's at, two twenty, two twenty five, two thirty today per pound and you can see a, you know, eight, ten, twenty, thirty pound difference in a lot of those comparisons, maybe more. Yeah. We're talking about a significant amount of money. The stakes are high. Excuse the pun. But the stakes are high and for the feeder, he may not necessarily be making a whole bunch more margin. It's good conditions for the cow calf man and we appreciate that they've had tough times not that many years ago so we appreciate that but maybe you can speak a little bit with what's at stake and how much these calves cost. They're not making a whole lot more margin. Can you speak to managing that risk? The risk is greater than ever, right? And that's the tough part about the cattle business today. Record prices are awesome, but the financial risk and liability of owning these calves, it's intense and it's stressful. And so to me, there's never been a more logical time to get better at your craft. And when I say that, I'm saying your nutritional craft, your vaccination schedule, your your preventative measures. Right? And a lot of that is based on nutrition. And so just make certain you're working with a company or nutritionist that can help guide in your specific environment and management conditions. A good plan so that that that you can protect that investment. Margins have been pretty bloody here in the feedlot sector the last couple of years. And, you know, I think, maybe one thing worth mentioning is, you know, in today's climate, you know, those feeders are basically forced to feed them for forever to try to get on the better side of this profit equation. Right. Because that initial investment is so much. They've just got to get so much carcass weight out of them to ever come out, in the black. And, so that again, that just elevates the importance of making certain that health is on the up and up. Right. To try to protect that. We talked about maybe the overall just well-being of the animal and things that happen in the first few weeks of receiving. I don't know, I'm speculating a little bit. But we're talking about organ integrity and we're talking about things that may have some influence on late deads. And so, know, given the fact that we're taking these cattle to such extreme weights, you know, we probably need to consider that the implications of what's going on those first few weeks. Foundational. Yeah. That's a good that's a great way to put it, foundational. Maybe foundational to being able to support cattle that can go to that heavy of a weight. And just thinking practically speaking, we're sitting on the second floor of the animal science building here at Texas Tech but it's supported by a foundation, right? You couldn't build a structure like this and as far as the floor coverings and this nice office we're in, it's all great but the foundation came first to support that. It all has a huge impact. Just to wrap up here, Doctor. Rathman, can you speak to the mood of the beef industry right now? There's a lot going on. There's a lot of risk. There's a lot of optimism. I mean, yeah. There's a lot of factors at play right now. I I think we still got to be excited about the beef industry no matter what happens. I mean, the people that are a part of it, they choose to be a part of it because they it fits their lifestyle, fits their passions. Yeah. And I know some days can be tough. It's fun because, you're balancing the science and physiology that we talked about and somehow doing your very best to understand all that. But at the end of the day, figure out how to translate that to just good practical everyday decisions. Yeah. That can, keep our cattle healthier and, keep them more profitable consequently. But it's a great time to be in the beef industry. I'll say this. I felt like when I went to college in the nineties, I'm forty six now. But when I was in college as an animal science student, I almost felt like I was discouraged by my professors to go actually raise cattle. Because in that period of time, the beef system in the United States probably only generated about thirty five, forty dollars of total profit across every segment. Okay? So that's shared cow, calf, stocker, feedlot, packer. Even though I know I was studying it, I'm still yet discouraged. And so, let's fast forward now to two thousand twenty six. There's nearly nine hundred dollars worth of profit built into every animal that we generate in this industry that's shared across these segments. So no doubt about it. The cow calf guy is getting probably even more than that, last year or this year. And then at the other's expense based on, you know, inventory. Right. Packers and feedlots taking it in the shorts a little bit. But let's look at the bigger picture and appreciate the fact that we have built the premium protein in the world and we have tremendous consumer demand that has gifted us the opportunity to build in nine hundred dollars worth of profit. And so I know some days are tough, but that to me should be positive information to push you forward and say there's always opportunity to make money. Yeah. Well, pushed through in the nineties and I think we can take a cue from that. There is optimism. It's worth being passionate about. People are still voting with their checkbooks. The beef demand is is really strong. Great words of wisdom you've shared with us, doctor Rathman. That wraps up our That Ranching podcast. We'll see you next Thursday.
Today we're joined by Dr. Ryan Rathmann, beef cattle professor and reproductive physiologist at Texas Tech, to discuss how a cow's body decides where her energy goes, and what that means for cow condition, calf health, and the risk of running calves through the feedlot in today's cattle market.