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Beef
The Frieburger brothers -- doing what it takes to stay profitable‘We make good money and we do so because we don’t let anybody else have a piece of it,’ says Kevin about the 500-head beef operation he and his brother Larry run near Walkerton by KATE PROCTER Larry and Kevin Frieburger have found ways to make a living farming, in spite of current conditions. On their farm near Walkerton, they produce beef, pork and chicken -- and they take their products from birth to finish. “We make good money and we do so because we don’t let anybody else have a piece of it,” says Kevin. Some people seem to be afraid to admit that their farm is profitable, but at the Frieburger operation, the brothers know that if something doesn’t make a profit, they have no time to spend on it. The Frieburgers have 500 cows at their Sandy Ridge Ranch. They finish all the calves in their own feedlot with feed that they grow on 1,700 owned and 700 rented acres. They keep about 130 replacement heifers each year, so they don’t have to bring cows into their herd.While they admit that the most profitable part of their operation is their 1,100 head farrow-to-finish swine herd, which goes under the name of Georgedale Farms, Kevin likes the cows. So he makes sure they turn a profit, just like everything else on the farm. The brothers used to have fewer cows and would buy calves to fill their feedlot from western Canada, but they felt they were giving away too much money. Trucking, shrink loss, buyers’ fees, sickness, stress and mortality cost producers every time cattle change hands. So the brothers built their cowherd to the point where they wouldn’t have to buy in calves for the feedlot. “You don’t have to look too hard to find an extra $30 to $50 per head” in savings, says Larry. Small feedlots of 500 head or less, like theirs, are not efficient enough to survive, he adds. Feeding their own calves is also important to Kevin. “I’m making exceptionally good cattle and I don’t think I would get paid for that” if they were sold to a feedlot, he says. Feeding calves which they have produced themselves also helps the brothers see what works and what doesn’t in their breeding program. “I won’t buy a bull that isn’t doing four and a half to five pounds a day” on Beef Improvement Ontario’s (BIO) bull test program, he says. At one time, the Frieburgers were buying bulls strictly on growth rate, but they found that their cows were just getting bigger and bigger, and were eating more. Worse yet, they were not milking. So they moved back to smaller framed cows and put more emphasis on getting bulls that will produce good milking cows with sturdy legs and good feet. Right now, the cow herd is not that uniform, with cows of every size, but they are working at producing an Angus Hereford cross cow that will be bred to a Charolais to make market animals. “It takes a long time to swing this many cows,” says Kevin. In 1980, they bought their first cows from Western Canada. But the cows would get very big -- up to 1,800 pounds -- and would destroy everything in their path if they had to be caught for any reason. So they are now aiming for a 1,200-pound cow, on average, “so they don’t eat you out of house and home,” says Kevin. The cows are vaccinated twice with a four-way plus Lepto vaccine, once before breeding and once before being turned out to grass. The calves are given Bovashield 5 in late summer when the bulls are pulled off and again in November. The Frieburgers also look at the time it takes to do certain jobs. When processing cattle, they have one person for each job that is being done and aim to put one animal per minute through the chute. “If we get up to two minutes per animal, guys are sleeping,” says Kevin. They also work long hours. “We sacrificed everything. It didn’t matter how late or how early,” he says. During calving, someone stays with the cows 24 hours a day in a small cabin in the field. They have a bathtub there that can be filled with water heated by a wood stove to warm calves that have been chilled. The toughest problem at calving is people, says Kevin. He and his brother have been doing this job for 25 years and they know what to look for, but inexperienced people have not had a chance to develop this knowledge. If a calving cow needs assistance, they use a four-wheeler to bring the cow into the calving crate and pull the calf. “In 15 minutes, I can have a cow in the crate, the calf pulled and be back in bed. It’s easier to do that than to keep getting up and checking,” says Kevin. They have between 700 and 800 acres of pasture and they don’t clip it because it costs too much to go over that much land. They divide their pastures and cattle, keeping to about 100 cows per pasture. Kevin plans on having 15 cows per yearling bull and 25 cows per two-year-old bull, while a mature bull can handle 35 cows. The bulls stay out for eight weeks and then they are kept together on a pasture at another farm. “If you are not bred in that time, you’re gone,” he says. The Frieburgers have an 80 per cent pregnancy rate for heifers and usually have between 11 and 12 per cent of their cows open at pregnancy checking time. They do not do any artificial insemination, something Kevin believes is a waste of time for commercial producers. “I’d rather buy the best bulls in Ontario,” he says. The Frieburgers currently have about 25 bulls, which live together on 25 acres. Part of being profitable is keeping costs down. They have very low veterinary costs and last year they had the vet come to their farm just to do pregnancy checks, do one caesarean section and replace one prolapsed uterus. Kevin pays particular attention to two numbers when looking at calving percentage. He calculates the number of calves weaned from the number of cows with a positive pregnancy check conducted in the fall. In the past four years, about 94 percent of the cows that tested positive have successfully weaned calves. Kevin’s other benchmark is equally impressive. Over the past 14 years 96 per cent of the cows that carried a calf to full term weaned a calf. Cull cows remain a tough sell and it is difficult to know where to send them to get the most money, says Kevin. Regardless of where they go, he stresses that feeding the cows before sending them out the door pays off. “If you put weight on a cow, you’ll get paid,” he says. In 2003 after BSE concerns closed the American border to live cattle, Gencor, the farmer-owned artificial insemination co-operative, formed Gencor Foods Inc., to provide a processing plant for cull cows. At that time, the brothers supported the endeavour, but Kevin now feels Gencor is not paying as much as other Canadian processors. Currently, the brothers send half their market animals to Brussels Stockyards and half to Cargill. Larry explains that watching the market is important because, in a strong market, it often pays to sell the cattle live at auction. When the market is softer, it may be better to sell direct to the packer. The cows are fed a ration of straight hay when not on pasture and the brothers wrap everything. Kevin says the cows waste less hay when it has been wrapped, compared to dry hay. He figures that there is 10 per cent more dry hay wasted in the feeders, plus the amount lost at harvest in the field. He also thinks that large square bales produce less wasted hay than round bales. Their hay is straight alfalfa, which only stays down two years because of their crop rotation. In the pasture, they mix two pounds of “everything” -- including tall fescue, birds foot trefoil, reed canary grass and alfalfa. Having a mixture of different species ensures that something will get established in all areas of the pasture, regardless of the topography, soil type or drainage. Their pastures are all class 2 agricultural land, with anything else being included in their crop rotation. Kevin has calculated that it takes 2.85 acres of land for every finished animal out of the feedlot. This figure includes what it takes to feed the cow -- pasture, hay, barlage and cobmeal, together with the calf and replacement heifers required to keep the cowherd numbers up. Using custom rates, he has calculated that it costs $1.25 per head for cow upkeep but, since they have their own equipment, he figures they can do it for less. “Everybody is trying to cut costs,” says Kevin. Because of their size, the Frieburgers can buy inputs in bulk, which reduces their costs. They buy twine and plastic wrap by the skid, salt and mineral by the tonne, Ivomec in a 20-litre container and trailer loads of by-products. Their finisher ration consists of cob meal, dry corn, supplement and dry hay, and they do use implants on their steers. “If you are going to be in the market, you have to use every tool you have,” says Kevin. BF |