A3O-Lancaster Farming, Saturday, July 22, 2000
Virginia Cow/Calf Producers
MICHELLE RANCK
Lancaster Farming Staff
Recently a group of about 15
Virginia cow/calf breeders made
an educational trip to Lancaster
to check out feedlots, question
cattle feeders, and investigate
retained ownership options. Or
ganized by Virginia livestock ex
tension agents, the day provided
a forum for two links in the
chain of beef production to ex
change information.
The tour included a visit to
Karl Hess’ operation. Hess has
been custom feeding cattle for
three years. The group also vis
ited Star Rock Farms which has
a 1,700 head capacity,
and Glenn Binkley,
who moves a 250
cattle a year. The Niss
leys have facilities to
handle 1050 head
“Today they came
up to look at retained
ownership and custom
feeding options,” said
Wendall Landis, Beef
Quality Assurance di
rector and head of the
“Blueprint for Suc
cess” program.
“Right now most of
them are sending to
the Plains, but the
bigger feedlots in this
area have possibili
ties.”
“Another reason is
to get information
about bulls to change
their breeding pro
grams, so that if the
cattle don’t marble
and grade well, they
want to get rid of that
bull and get one that
can do the job,” said
Landis. “It’s import
ant to get the informa
tion back to the
cow/calf producer,
otherwise you’re just
shooting blanks.”
“For Lancaster
feeders, retained own
ership takes the risk
out of it,” Landis said.
“They might miss out
of the highs, but they’ll
miss out on the disas
ters too.”
One of the questions
from the group ad
dressed premiums
paid for pre
conditioned cattle.
“If we feed cattle
once or twice and look
at records for gain and
feed conversion, then
we’ll stretch for that,
for the known per
formance, since it
takes the guesswork
out of buying the
cattle,” said Darwin
Nissley. He also
pointed out that they
would be willing to
pay more “If we don’t
have to worry about
frame size, or that they
won’t change colors on
the way here.”
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The group also discussed the
option of buying and selling
cattle over the Inter Net. “To me
that’s great, we can get an idea
what’s going on there. It’s a nice
reference,” said Nissley. Be
cause of time constraints, how
ever, the Nissley brothers rely on
a cattle broker to buy their
cattle.
One of the benefits to retained
ownership is information flow,
as cattle can be identified and
tracked all the way to the
slaughterhouse, then grade and
yield information goes back to
the cow/calf producer. The
cattle at the Nissley operation
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have an ear tag with a letter to
help designate the time the ani
mals were put into the feedlot.
“The tag numbers will tell
where the selects and no rolls
come from,” explained Nissley.
“It helps show which cattle are
the ‘tail-enders’ as we call them,
the cattle that you could feed for
400 days and they still won’t
grade choice,” said Nissley.
The group from Virginia ex
pressed interest in getting feed
back from the feedlots and
slaughterhouses, affirming that
having that information would
help them evaluate their bulls.
Knowing how the cattle grade,
then, is necessary to make
(left to right, back row) Jim Hogue, from Agri-Basics,
Wendall Landis, BQA Director, and cattle feeders Glenn
Binkley, and Bernard Nissley helped to host the group
from Virginia.
J
P.O. Box 187, Myerstown, PA 17067 • (717) 866-2030 J
(Turn to Pago A 32)
EDER
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