Senior Farm and Ranch Broadcaster, Ron Hays, is talking with the SVP and Chief Risk Officer at Five Rivers Cattle Feeding, LLC, Luke Lind. Lind talks to Hays about increasing the quality of that end product on the tables of consumers.
“Five Rivers Cattle feeding is comprised of about 13 different feed yards,” Lind said. “We market somewhere between a million and a million and quarter head of cattle each year.”
The number one challenge on that road to success, Lind said, is ensuring that each cow has a live calf.
“I really am a believer that the cow-calf guy has to be profitable first,” Lind said.
Secondly, that calf has to be healthy and gain well to create a valued product, Lind said, so the cow-calf producer must make sure the calves they sell are healthy so they can grow.
Lind talked about how new technologies have helped to increase the quality of the carcass in the end and how along with those new technologies, there are other conversations that are not going away, such as the carbon footprint.
“The only way you get more efficient in your carbon footprint is you have got to have those production tools,” Lind said. “When you don’t have those production tools, for the long-term viability of the industry, we are going to have to depend on technology.”
Lind also mentioned high-octane cattle.
“You have to manage them a little differently from the standpoint that, when those cattle go to the feed yard, they need to be at a lighter weight,” Lind said. “Those real high-octane cattle, when they go out on grass, they weight 1000 to 1100 pounds, and coming to the feedlot, they are very difficult to create value with because we just don’t have enough time to get them fat enough, fueled enough, and get them right.”
With those high-octane cattle, Lind said a cattle feeder must think about shortening the days and changing some systems rather than leaving them out on grass the whole summer.
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