Harvesting with NDFB: "Harvesting" feed

In this episode, host Alisha Nord visits with Perry Moser, Baldwin, N.D. to talk about a different kind of “harvesting,” custom feeding calves!

Perry Moser and his wife own Moser Simmental Ranch. Perry visits with Alisha about how he and his wife began their purebred herd of Simmentals from two cows and used custom feeding to grow their operation. 

Perry shares the challenges and his tools for success in custom feeding cattle. 

Join us as we harvest across North Dakota.

To contact the hosts, please email emmery@ndfb.org

Transcript

[Straight Talk theme]

[00:12] Emmery: Welcome to Straight Talk with NDFB. I am your host, Emmery Mehlhoff.

[00:15] Alisha: And I am Alicia Nord.

[00:17] Emmery: We are your Farm Bureau duo bringing you your competitive edge. In this episode, we talk about a different kind of harvesting. Harvesting feed through weight on calves. Alisha travels to Baldwin, North Dakota to feed cattle with Perry Moser of Moser Simmental Ranch.

[00:34] Perry visits with Alicia about how he and his wife began their purebred herd of Simmentals from two cows and have used custom feeding to grow their operation. Perry shares the challenges and his tools for success in custom feeding cattle.

[00:49] Join us as we harvest across North Dakota.

[Straight Talk stinger]

[00:56] Alisha: All right, so today we are with Perry Moser. So, Perry, why don't you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your operation.

[01:03] Perry: As she said, I'm Perry Moser. We run Moser Simmental Ranch, which is a purebred Simmental operation. And then we do some custom feeding. We sell bulls. Private treaty. January, usually after January 1, 35 to 40 bulls do some commercial bred heifers, do corn and oats and hay for crops, some millet and stuff like that. So pretty much all the feed for the cattle in the custom feedlot is home-raised.

[01:36] Alisha: And is this a family operation or is this something that you started yourself?

[01:41] Perry: We started this ourselves. We bought the place in '85 and started out developing heifers for a brother. And then in 2004, we actually built the feedlot and got permitted.

[01:56] Alisha: Okay.

[01:57] Perry: Before we kind of done things the hard way, I used to pail-feed 300 heifers.

[02:03] Alisha: So I would not have wanted to be your hired man.

[02:08] Perry: Well, when we done the feedlot, it's made things a lot simpler. But no, it's a family operation. We've got two daughters that come out and periodically help. Other words, it's my wife Diane and I that pretty much do everything. We hire our hay ground, but everything else, we chop our own corn, we haul our own manure. So it's.... We do all our own AI and pretty much everything, everything that's done here we do ourselves. And it's also helped my wife retired this year from her full-time job. So she says she's working for me.

[02:48] Alisha: And what was her full time job?

[02:49] Perry: She worked at the power plant.

[02:51] Alisha: Okay, so so now she technically gets to be your hired person that you never had all these years. Although she probably considers herself hired all those years.

[03:03] Perry: Well, she was, yeah, she was. She was an employee. Unpaid employee.

[03:07] Alisha: So you started out as a cow-calf operation and later added on your custom feeding?

[03:13] Perry: No, we actually started doing the custom custom feeding. And we basically built our herd from two cows.

[03:20] Alisha: Okay.

[03:21] Perry: In the early or middle '80s, we started out with a few cows and I was feeding cattle or developing heifers. And we just kind of grew up to the 125-head that we've gotten now, kind of the same way with the farming that we do, we rented here and there and kind of grew it.

[03:41] Alisha: And have you always. Has it always been Simmental, Simmental influenced cattle or you add other breeds, come across your place?

[03:48] Perry: As far as what we've raised here, it's always been Simmental.

[03:52] Alisha: Okay.

[03:53] Perry: Pretty much pure Simmental. The cattle I feed are a little bit of everything we've had. We've had Angus, we've had Simmental, we've had... we fed Charolais one year here. We fed Salers one way, one year here,so I've. I guess I can say I fed pretty much all the breeds or a majority of them. And they all have their good and their bad.

[04:15] Alisha: Right. Yeah. Well, I'm happy to see black cattle. So what types of feed do you primarily use for your custom feeding?

[04:25] Perry: On the custom feeding, we do modified distillers, which is purchased. That's the only feed besides our supplement that's purchased. And then it's grass, hay, silage, alfalfa hay, millet hay, oats hay, and then corn.

[04:40] Alisha: Okay.

[04:40] Perry: Usually dry corn is what the ration is.

[04:45] Alisha: And do you decide on rations or does that come from what your customer base decides?

[04:51] Perry: No, we have a nutritionist come in every year, sample feed, and he sets up the rations. The steers that we custom feed, the guy's looking for two-and-a-half-pound gain. So I have set him that ration up.

[05:05] He also sets a ration up for our bulls for a three-pound gain and for our heifers for a pound-and-a-half gain. I let the experts do that.

[05:13] Alisha: That's great. That was kind of. My next question was, do you have a nutritionist?

[05:17] Perry: Yep. We've got a guy that comes and like I said, when we sample our hay every year, because it does vary in the same way with silage and everything. And he sets it up and if we have any issues, I talk to him, which we normally don't. And it's just a matter of getting it set and feeding it. So.

[05:39] Alisha: Okay, so where do. Where are your customers? Where do the cattle come from? What weight do the cattle come in and what weight do they typically leave at?

[05:49] Perry: Okay. Right now we're only feeding for one guy. We fed for him for 15 years. He's out of Minnesota. The cattle we've had cattle from him from Idaho, Montana, South Dakota, North Dakota. So we've had cattle from all over. The ones we've got in this year, all from Montana. They come in in middle to end of October. It's around that 6 weight. They're normally here 'til middle of February, the end of February. And they're generally been leaving around that 9 weight. And then they go to a confinement barn and he wants them healthy and gaining is what he's looking for.

[06:30] Alisha: Okay, so. So you've had kind of a long time customer.

[06:34] Perry: Yep.

[06:35] Alisha: So the relationship must be really good. What are some things that you look for in a customer that's, that's kept that relationship going for that many years?

[06:46] Perry: Well, kind of the type of cattle he buys and how he manages them. I, I don't want to feed any cattle that haven't had some type of pre-weaning program.

[06:55] Alisha: Okay.

[06:56] Perry: And we also, when they come here, I'm looking for somebody that's going to do a booster program. We do feed a crumble type deal. He's kind of given me a free reign on how I manage his cattle. He's been in the yard three times in 15 years.

[07:17] Alisha: So that's trust.

[07:18] Perry: Yeah.

[07:19] Alisha: So what health protocols do you have in place for yourself that you, you think is important for.

[07:27] Perry: Well, the pre-weaning and the booster program. And then we monitor the cattle on a daily basis and basically if, if we have some health issues, we do a treat program is as far as different, different antibiotics. Like I said, we, we do a crumble, a five day crumble program to clear up health. These cattle spend anywhere from 15 to 24 hours on the truck. So the first two weeks is pretty crucial on these cattle to make sure they're comfortable.

[08:02] And I've got kind of a system that when they come here, they spend a day in one pen that's kind of crowded so that I don't have them running. And this year there's going to be some dust issues with the drought. So we're going to monitor that and mainly the health deal. Since he does such a good job on the pre-vaxing and the boosting is just monitoring and keeping on top of the sick ones and treating them.

[08:29] Alisha: So how do you monitor, try to decrease stress when they're coming in and getting shipped from miles away. Are there any specific protocols that you do when the cattle arrive at your place?

[08:41] Perry: A lot of it's handling. If we do have to handle them, we try to do it at a slow pace so that we're not stirring them up. You know, if, if we've got. We've had situations where we have snow or rain and then it's extra bedding to be put down, you know, and keep them on dry ground and keep them. Basically keep them comfortable.

[09:04] You know, we, we have two to three days of bawling calves because they're. They're weaned or they're not pre-weaned calves. They're coming off the cow onto the semi in here.

[09:18] Alisha: Yep. So lots of stress.

[09:19] Perry: Lots of stress. And, and like I said, it's keeping them comfortable. We start them on out on a starter ration for 14 days, which is more hay and, and not quite a hot ration. Just, you know, they're accustomed to eating grass.

[09:34] Alisha: Yep.

[09:35] Perry: So we kind of work them up. And after 14 days, my nutritionist has a kind of a three different step program that we go up on and work them up and to where we need them.

[09:49] Alisha: Okay. Is there a specific way you guys track the performance of the cattle or know when they're getting to that specific weight? Are you weighing them or do you just kind of eyeball what, what do you do?

[10:02] Perry: On my own cattle, we do weigh them.

[10:05] Alisha: Okay.

[10:05] Perry: On the custom cattle, I don't. It gets back to handling them again. He does. When he gets them there, he does track them because he'll have exact, or I shouldn't say exact. He'll have a daily gain average on the whole works and a cost to gain average. What it costs. Last year we fed, I think it was 290 steers and it was a 2.67 gain at a dollar a pound is what he told me his costs were.

[10:38] Alisha: Wow. So how do you price out cattle when you're selling them, or do you already have a set price with your customer before any of this takes place?

[10:47] Perry: Well, we don't own these cattle. He owns them. So basically... Basically I'm working for him.

[10:55] Alisha: So you're contracted under him and he's paying you a specific rate?

[10:58] Perry: Yep. Well, he's paying me. Basically what I do is I charge him a yardage fee and then any bedding I put out. I don't charge him to put it out because that's included in my yardage fee. But then whatever I put in the bunk, we keep track of how much hay I feed, how much distillers I feed, how much corn I feed, and I bill him according to what I put in the bunk.

[11:24] So if he gets a good set of calves in. Well, like last year we had mild weather. They didn't. Didn't eat as much and they gained well. So it was pretty economical for him to feed them or for me to feed him for him when we get a bad winter and I got to feed a little heavier, gets a little more expensive for him but...

[11:45] Alisha: And when does he usually. When do those cattle get shipped out of here and down to Minnesota?

[11:50] Perry: They leave middle end of February.

[11:52] Alisha: Okay. So right in the heat of winter.

[11:55] Perry: And it's usually the coldest day of the year it seems like.

[11:58] Alisha: Right. You just can't catch a break I suppose.

[12:00] Perry: When he shows up. So they'll show up with, well, this year they come in three trucks and they'll usually leave in five. So that's usually a good sign if it takes more trucks to get them out than it did to bring them in.

[12:13] Alisha: What would you say are some of the challenges that you found with custom feeding?

[12:19] Perry: Well, you're dealing with cattle you don't know. The extra stress on them. We feed our own calves here, our bull calves and our heifers and steers and we have very few health issues and we don't... We do the pre-vaccine weaning and we do some boostering, but we don't do near the protocol that he goes through on these custom calves just because of the stress on them in the traveling.

[12:45] And it's a little different. We've gotten some. Generally the disposition on the calves is okay, but we've gotten some calves that I don't know if they've never seen a human being in their life. So it's handling them a little bit different when we do have to work them.

[13:05] Alisha: Right. I'm sure that's a challenge. Well for anybody. You know, when you have cattle coming in that you've never seen or you don't know their operation or how they even work or what the facilities are, to just have them come show up and then you kind of have to figure them out. I'm sure can be a challenge.

[13:22] Perry: It's a little different. I mean we got a load on Sunday and I talked to the trucker. They'd loaded like 10 o'clock and he showed up here at 2 o'clock in the morning with the first load and the second load showed up at 4 o'clock in the morning and they come off the truck. So them little guys were tired when they come off.

[13:41] Alisha: Do the semis just honk their horn to wake you up when they come in?

[13:44] Perry: No, they've got them pretty fancy trucks with a loud exhaust.

[13:50] Alisha: Oh, so you hear them.

[13:51] Perry: So normally I can hear them when they, when they come off the highway, especially if it's kind of cool off. But they usually. I get a call from or a text from the owner with the weights, the numbers and approximate time of arrival. And then usually the truckers will send me a text when they within 10 minutes or so.

[14:16] Alisha: They're pretty. You have a pretty close timeframe of when they're arriving.

[14:20] Perry: I have a general. The owner sent me a text that we had this many head coming out of out of southwest Montana and approximate time arrival should be about 2 a.m.

[14:32] Alisha: Okay. So 2 p.m. sounds a little bit better than 2 a.m. but I guess you kind of have to do what they want.

[14:38] Perry: Yeah, well, it's kind of works with how they get them loaded there because a lot of these. What we've seen is these guys sort them and load them. They take them off the cows. T0hey sort, because I only feed steers for him.

[14:52] Alisha: Okay.

[14:52] Perry: They sort the steers off and they load them. And when they get them loaded, the truck heads this direction. So it's kind of a hit and miss deal as now we got to load that Friday before they come out of Big Timber, Montana, and they were here at 9:30 at night, which was kind of nice.

[15:11] Alisha: Yeah, I bet. So going to the opposite end of the spectrum, what's been your favorite thing about custom feeding cattle?

[15:20] Perry: Well, I enjoy feeding cattle. I guess seeing the cattle progress as we feed. It's kind of like having in the springtime when you see the new ones, kind of an interesting deal.

[15:33] Alisha: And yeah, it's fun to see them when they come in and by the time they leave they look completely different and you have a happy customer. That's probably another enjoyable thing is to get a phone call saying, "Hey, they look real nice."

[15:47] Perry: They look good or you've done a good job. So yeah, it's nice to see.

[15:51] Alisha: So how many years have you technically been custom feeding?

[15:56] Perry: We had to start about what, 1985. We've pretty much done it since we started here. I mean when we started it was. It was small numbers. We started out with, I think it was 40 head.

[16:10] Alisha: Okay.

[16:11] Perry: And then built up to where we. We done up to 300 head of heifers. And. And then we put the feedlot in and that program kind of changed and there was... Didn't work to develop the heifers. We got the. The heifers were more time consuming in the spring because we developed and also bred them. And it got to be a lot of work in the spring, so we getting larger in our cow operation, and it got to be too much for us, so he took his heifers to another guy, and then we just started feeding these steers.

[16:48] And it kind of works good because these steers leave in February when we start calving, so we can spend more time on our calving and less time feeding and dealing with feedlot cattle.

[17:03] Alisha: Right. That's kind of nice. It gives you a little bit of a breather that you have a little bit more time...

[17:09] Perry: Right, to go from custom feeding to calving and, and then AI and our own cows and. And then the grass and putting up hay. We had a friend here the other day that we were talking, and he said, you know, just, wouldn't it be nice once to get up and go, boy, I ain't got nothing to do today?

[17:26] Alisha: Right. I think a lot of people think that, but then probably within a few minutes, they'll complain that they're bored.

[17:32] Perry: Yeah, well, I'd like. Sure. Like to try it someday, though.

[17:36] Alisha: Yeah, well, maybe one day you can. So you said you usually sell or bring them down in February. Now, say you have a really hard winter, and you're like, I know they're not even close to the weight I want them at. Is there some leeway you have with your customer to say, hey, they're not where you're gonna want them. Can I have them for three more weeks, two more weeks? Or what's kind of your contract as far as that goes?

[18:04] Perry: Well, you know, we've never had a contract with this gentleman.The reason he comes and gets them is he has a pen open up in his finish barn. So basically, you know, we've never had a situation where we've had a tough winter. And I go, oh, man, these calves, yeah, they're probably a touch lighter. But that's the advantage of having a nutritionist, is because if we have a tougher winter, we gotta feed a little more, you know, so he's helping adjust.

[18:36] Alisha: So he's helping adjust, all of that for you.

[18:36] Perry: So we make them adjustments.

[18:39] Last year, I didn't.. When the cattle left here, I didn't feel they'd done very well because we actually went back and looked at prior year's feed bill, and I'm going, we ain't feeding them enough. We ain't feeding them enough. They just can't be doing that well. Well, they just didn't need that much because of the mild winter.

[18:56] Every year is different, but you kind of adjust and watch the cattle. And I mean, I've got an idea of where I need to be on them, and especially if it gets cold. And the cattle will tell you if you're feeding them and they're cleaning the bunks out every day and you come out to feed them the next day and they're crowding the bunks, you're not feeding them enough.

[19:20] Alisha: Right.

[19:20] Perry: You know, and I guess we never run into the situation where he's called me and said, "Man, you got these cattle way too heavy." But that's, that gets back to having a nutritionist and having our rations set up so that we do get that two-and-a-half to three pounds. And we've had a couple of years where we've only gotten 2.2 or 2.1 pounds in. And it's.... Some of it is the cattle all different breeds feed different. Different cattle feed different. There's a reason why certain calves at the sale barn bring better money. Just because they're better calves.

[19:59] Alisha: Right. Yep.

[19:59] Perry: Yeah.

[20:00] Alisha: So since you started custom feeding to now, what would you say is the biggest change that you've made on your operation?

[20:09] Perry: Well, from when we started custom feeding, we went to the, the fence line bunks. I really don't know if there's been a whole lot of changes. We've changed our rations and we've changed some of the feeds. We used to buy wheat mid pellets, and when we quit feeding the heifers, we quit feeding the wheat mid pellets and went to the corn. And when the distillers come out, we went to them right away for a protein source. And it's a good feed. You know, it's. It's by no means a cheap feed, but it's the cheapest protein source we found so far.

[20:50] Alisha: So do you see in the next 10, 15, 20 years custom feeding changing drastically, or do you see it kind of staying pretty steady? Like, is there any technology advancements that are coming up that are going to make a huge change in how people custom feed or the price of cattle? Do you think that there's going to be any drastic changes kind of in the next years?

[21:15] Perry: Well, I think one of the things we're going to see in the feeding industry, whether it's customer self feeding, is barns. Confinement barns, I think, or hoop barns. With the cost of feeding and right now the cost of cattle, that consistency is going to be a big issue. And that's why most of these finish places up here in the northern part of went to barns. You can do a little bit of climate control. I think confinement feeding is going to get to be bigger with land values, urban sprawl. The sad part is nobody wants a feedlot in their backyard.

[21:56] It's going to have to happen because people want to move out in the country and want to buy up land and, and we're going to have to confine whether it's cattle or pigs or anything in order to maintain feeding the numbers we are. It's just, it's just a fact of the way the business is going.

[22:16] Alisha: So to kind of wrap it up, do you have any advice for young farmers or ranchers that are kind of just getting started? Whether it's, you know, cow calf or custom feeding or whatever it may be in the cattle industry, you know, it's long days and long hours. But any advice that you wish you would have known when you were younger that somebody would have said to you like, hey, just keep going or things will get better or you know, any advice to some young Farm Bureau members?

[22:44] Perry: Well, I guess the biggest advice I'd have is don't do things the hard way. The feed systems, the feed trucks definitely take some of the work out of this.

[22:56] Alisha: So don't carry the pails. 

[22.58] Perry: Don't carry the pails.

[23:00] Alisha: I'm gonna have to tell my dad that. He still believes in carrying pails. And sometimes I'm like, how many pails do we have to carry?

[23:07] Perry: Still there, there is advantages. We, we feed our bulls with a truck, but I still carry a couple pails a night. Yep, it's a disposition deal and getting used to people. So there is advantages to carrying buckets. The custom cattle, they're going to end up in a processing plant. So disposition is not probably a big issue. Although there has been studies done that cattle with poor disposition don't feed as well.

[23:36] So yeah, I mean it's, and we're seeing this in every industry. People are trying to work a little smarter. Nobody's using their back the way we did 30 years ago because that's why everybody that's 60 years old has back issues because we just picked it up and carried it. Now they're getting pallet forks or they're getting a lift to lift it. So yeah, it's a full-time job, these cattle. And I guess that's the other thing. If you're going to get into farming or ranching, you got to do the work. There's just no way around it. I mean, you can custom hire a lot of this stuff, but a lot of that stuff you custom hire is your profit margin.

[24:22] Alisha: Right. And a lot of it, unlike other industries, a lot of it is you have to do it and work to know what works and what doesn't work, and being okay with asking your neighbor or asking for help or saying, "Hey, how do you do this? This isn't working for me." The farming and ranching community, you know, it's. It's getting smaller every year, and I think we need to rely on each other a little bit more that knowing that we're one big community and, hey, it's okay to say this is not working for me, like, what, what can I do to improve this? And knowing that there are people that are willing to help you.

[25:00] Perry: Well, and there's. There's people out there. You look at the farmers, they all have an agronomist that they deal with that tells them what they should spray, gives them suggestions on what type of seed to plant or what day of corn to seed. It's no different in this livestock industry. We've got nutritionists, we've got vets that we deal with sometimes talking to somebody that's doing it and saying, "Hey, this is what I'm running into. Have you run into this?" And you go, "Yeah, I have, but you should maybe try this." It's hard for farmers to take advice.

[25:40] Alisha: It sure is. So the last question that we ask everybody in this harvest season is, is this year's cattle market a boom or a bust?

[25:48] Perry: Oh, it's definitely a boom. How long it's going to hold? I don't know. If I did, I'd sell the week before. Yeah, but it's. It's a good cattle market, and it's all the way through. I mean, the slaughter cow, the bull market, the calf market is really good right now.

[26:08] Alisha: It is. It's great.

[26:10] Perry: You know, the problem is, is we need this market because of our inputs. I mean, you look at what it cost 20 years ago to put a crop in. The dollars that are spent nowadays in ag is just unbelievable.

[26:29] Alisha: Well, that kind of wraps up everything. So, Perry, I really appreciate you taking the time today and allowing me to be your other passenger in your feed truck today.

[Straight Talk stinger]

[26:42] Emmery: You've been listening to Straight Talk with NDFB. Thank you for joining us as we harvest it across North Dakota. We have a few more episodes to release, and then coming in January, we will be releasing our new season focused on legislative issues in North Dakota. As always, if you have any questions or have anything you want to feature on Straight Talk with NDFB, please contact us at emmery@ndfb.org.

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