Calving is underway

BUFFALO — It's hard to feel anything but optimism on a morning like this. The air smells of spring, fecund and rich. Wisps of green grass are beginning to dot the landscape. The weather has been largely favorable for calving, and cattle prices have reached historic highs.

With calving well underway in the area, ranchers are looking forward to higher calf prices this fall and keeping a close eye on water availability and hay stocks.

"Marketwise, there is optimism out there," said Jim Magagna, Wyoming Stock Growers Association executive director. "The market has been good this past year, and we can reasonably expect that to continue through 2024, which is good for this year's calf crop. The issue is going to be, how much drought are we going to suffer this summer?"

This spring, some 40,000 calves will be born on Johnson County ranches, making beef cattle production the county's No. 1 agricultural product and making this time of year critical to many ranching families' livelihoods.

At the Peterson Family Ranch - composed of Lisa and children Hannah, Hayden and Hunter - just east of Buffalo, calving began mid-February and will finish around the middle of April.

So far, things have gone smoothly, and favorable weather is a big part of that.

"It's a big relief, especially for the range cows and calves,” Hunter Peterson said. "You don't have to worry about them as much."

With the exception of a few days, calving season has been dry and sunny, meaning fewer concerns about newborn calves getting dry or even freezing to death.

And the mild winter means that the cows are healthy and unstressed, meaning they will be able to better support the new calf and they will return to pregestational condition more quickly.

Shelby Rosasco, University of Wyoming assistant professor and extension beef specialist, said maternal health can affect both the cow and her calf.

"Thin cows at calving produce less colostrum and give birth to less vigorous calves that are slower to stand and have lower immunoglobulin levels, which can impact their immune system and ability to overcome early-calfhood disease challenges," she said. "In addition, adequate body condition at calving can also impact stamina during calving, colostrum quality and influence subsequent rebreeding."

On this morning, Hayden and Hunter have just finished feeding the heifers and cows that are pastured near their home.

"They've got it pretty good here," Hayden said. "It's a pretty easy life."

That herd is mostly heifers. Having the heifers so near the home means that the Petersons can keep a watchful eye on them – and night checks aren't too bad either, Hayden said.

"If you look out and see one away from the rest, that's the one that is calving," Hayden said.

After the heifer calves, she and her calf will stay near the house for about a week — long enough for the family to ensure that the calf is healthy and the cow is going to care for her calf.

Then the cow and her calf will be loaded up and moved to join the family's larger herd out on the Powder River. Even those range cows have had a pretty easy winter, Hunter said.

With all the moisture last spring and summer, there has been grass for the cows to graze all winter long. And the relatively mild weather also meant that the cows weren't burning as many calories just to keep warm, which in turn meant less feed was needed.

Last fall, the Petersons held back more replacement heifers than they might have in a typical year. That decision might prove especially profitable this fall at shipping time. That's because cattle prices have soared this year.

CattleFax predicted that steer calves will average $290 per 100 pounds when they are shipped this fall, up $28 from last year, according to its recently released 2024 price outlook. Magagna said that even cull cows are selling for "extremely high" prices.

"That certainly helps if you have a cow that isn't productive that you can sell," he said. "And that can be a significant source of additional revenue on top of the calf crop."

Magana said that the "concerning things" about current record cattle prices are that those prices are the result of a dramatic decline in beef production.

The USDA cattle inventory report released in February confirmed the continued liquidation of cows over the past year.

Total cattle numbers were down 2% from one year ago, to 28.2 million head, making this the smallest U.S. beef herd since 1951. Magana said the drop is due to drought and other weather-related conditions that caused producers to shrink their herds.

Those weather conditions were exacerbated by low prices in 2021 and 2022, which forced some producers to sell more animals because they needed capital.

The question for many Wyoming producers this year will be whether the current dry period turns into a full-fledged drought with the potential to affect range forage and hay production.

"The issue is going to be what kind of year we're going to have productionwise. We haven't seen losses of young calves due to weather like we did last year during calving; that will be helpful," he said. "The history seems to be that when the prices are the highest, the production seems to be the lowest."

This story was published on April 4, 2024.