Spring calving saves money - Margaret Gilmour
Spring calving saves money - Margaret Gilmour - Beef CRC - Beef Genetic Technologies
 Understanding more about the financial aspects of her business was what prompted Margaret Gilmour to join her local Beef Profit Partnership group.“I’d done a few courses run by the DPI prior to joining the BPP. This included ‘Breeding for Profit, ‘Beef cheque and ‘Practical beef marketing’,” she said. “But while these courses were more about minimizing risk, the BPP concentrates on the practical things you can do to improve the financial viability of your business.” Mrs Gilmour said their main focus is to produce more kilograms of beef per hectare. She said the group used the Cost of Production calculator to analyse their inputs and outputs. It was a practice she found invaluable. “Our herd is broken into a Spring and Autumn calving. The Autumn steers are sold at about 10 months of age, whereas the Spring calves are sold at about seven or eight months as we try to offload as many as we can coming into winter.” “I used the CoP calculator to determine whether there was a difference between Autumn and Spring calving. The results surprised Mrs Gilmour. “We found Spring calving was much more efficient. While you don’t get as big a return for a Spring calf as an Autumn one, the input costs are a lot lower.” “We don’t have to make as much hay or feed it out during Spring. You can also run your dry cows a little harder at that time of the year as there is still quite good feed growth during the Summer months.” To put it in dollar terms, Spring calving returned $0.22 per kilogram more than Autumn calving. “We get about $1.25 return per kilogram of beef. Our Costs of Production on Autumn calving was about $1.21 whereas during Spring that dropped to $0.99.” As a result of their analysis, the Gilmours are now moving their Autumn calvers over to Spring. Ultimately, they want to achieve a five per cent increase per kilogram of animal produced per hectare. “By converting one third of our breeding herd to Spring calving actually means you can wean your calves earlier,” she said. “As a result you can run more dry cows on the same amount of area. We are currently running about 16 DSE and hope to increase that to at least 20 DSE.” Besides the long term focus of increasing the number of kilograms of beef produced, the Gimours have also set other focuses. “The BPP process gave us the tools to set short, medium and long term goals or focuses. Each short term focus feeds into the big picture of producing more kilograms of beef,” she said. “In the short term we’ve focused on using the National Livestock Identification Service (NLIS) to improve the management of our herd.” They have being using NLIs to manage their cattle, which according to Mrs Gilmour has improved time management and made it easier to track their stock. “Our crush and scales are all in one, so as soon as the cattle walk in, their tag is read and they’re weighed. You can then see how much weight they’ve gained since the last time they were weighed,” she said. “I then upload the information onto my computer and everything we need is at our fingertips.” Mrs Gilmour said she likes the BPP process as it allows them to see where they have come from and where they are going. “I often do a situation analyses to see where we are at the moment and discover where the opportunities for improvement are,” she said. “I then follow up with the Cost of Production calculator to assess the impact of the changes we are making.” She said while the gains in the gross margins have been small, they are going in the right direction. “In 2005/06, our gross margin was $1.25. 2006/07 it jumped to $1.72 but in 2007/08 it had gone back to $1.30,” she said. “We sold off a lot of cows during that second year, which accounted for the big jump. But the value of a tool like this is that it allows you to see where real impacts can be made.” Mrs Gilmour maintains that she would not have made the changes to her calving regime had she not been a member of the group. “Sure we had looked at it, but it wasn’t until we actually crunched the numbers that we realised our Spring calving herd was costing us so much less,” she said. “Being able to bounce ideas off others in the group helped crystallize the fact that Spring calving was the way to go.” |
| For more information contact Maria Crawford, Vic DPI, Facilitator, Hamilton BPP Tel: (03) 5573 0900 or email Maria.Crawford@dpi.vic.gov.au |
