Grazing Gains
The return on investment of implants in cattle on pasture helps ranchers improve their profits and make more beef using less.
By Nicole Lane Erceg
If a salesman offered a product that cost only $1 but promised in a few short months it would turn into $35, one might assume he was peddling snake oil.
A far cry from a con man, Wade Nichols, Ph.D., senior technical services manager for Merck Animal Health, is a respected scientist with 30 years of experience in the cattle industry. He isn’t selling any quick fixes for profitable cattle, but he does recommend grazing implants as one of the most simple production practices that add to a rancher’s bottom line.
It’s common practice for cattle to receive implants upon arrival at a feedyard, but what about on the ranch? Nichols says that a proper implant strategy can help ranchers gain about 25 to 30 pounds [per animal] between branding and weaning while calves are on pasture. For ranchers or stocker operators who continue to graze cattle, an additional implant can help add an average of another 25 to 30 pounds of gain between weaning and shipment.
Economics make the decision simple. When the implant cost per dose is about $1 and cattle price per pound is $1.50, a rancher could expect about a $36 return on investment per calf. Multiply that by 50 head and one simple management change could mean a check worth about $1,800.
“The return on investment today with implants is phenomenal,” says Nichols. “We are making about a 30-to-1 return. It’s the most economically viable thing ranchers can do as a production practice to make money.”
Phony premiums
Despite the math, many ranchers avoid using implants during the grazing phase for fear it might lead to a discount at the sale barn. In today’s consumer market, cattle that can qualify for a natural program are in demand. However, Nichols says research from Superior Livestock Auction has shown that implanted calves and non-implanted calves earn the same price at auction. From his experience, the only cattlemen that benefit financially from targeting a natural program are those who are contracted to do so.
“Ranchers who think they are getting a premium by going to the auction yard and saying the calves aren’t implanted are not actually getting a premium and instead are giving up about $20 to $35 per head for nothing,” says Nichols.
Even with premium programs for natural cattle, implanting may still be more profitable. For a program like the USDA Non-Hormone Treated Cattle to be more cost-effective, the premium per head would need to be greater than the average additional profit gained from implanting.
Added benefits
Nevertheless, can there be too much of a good thing? When a calf receives its first implant at 90 days of age, what impact does that have on the rest of the production chain?
Again, Nichols turns to numbers and shares that using implants starting in the pasture helps ranchers and consumers reap benefits from doing more with less. While implants in the feedlot can create exceptional gains, the incremental additional pounds from implanting while on pasture add dollars and create more beef with less grass. He also shares that implants can still add value, even in situations where forage nutritional quality is not optimal.
“We can use these implants and get economical gains on very low rates of gain,” says Nichols citing research from Oklahoma State University comparing Revalor G to non-implanted cattle on grass.
Research gathered at West Texas A&M University says that implanting at the ranch level doesn’t deter implant opportunity in the feedlot. The added pounds on the ranch just create more beef to feed additional consumers.
Nichols says that cattle implanted at branding, again at weaning and in the feedyard can have approximately 150 additional pounds when compared to non-implanted cattle. This additional muscle mass and weight converts to about 94 pounds of additional carcass weight and about 47 pounds of retail meat. In the United States, the average beef consumption per person is 57 pounds. Through using beef production technologies like implants, one calf can grow enough additional beef to feed almost another person.
“It’s a very efficient utilization of resources,” says Nichols.
The catch? Implants may have an impact on meat quality. Nichols says aggressive implant use at a high dose does shorten the marbling window. He says this can result in lower USDA Quality Grades if the animal is not allowed the time on feed needed to reach 29 percent empty-body fat.
“Empty-body fat is the amount of fat in the body, minus the feed and water in the gut,” explains Nichols. “When cattle are fed to about 30 percent empty-body fat, I’ve never gotten a call about my cattle not grading.”
The hormone effect
Hormone implants help improve the rate of gain and feed conversion in growing cattle, but what actually happens when we implant calves?
Nichols shares that the slow and steady release of hormone from the implant influences the endocrine system in the calf to increase IGF-1 (insulin-like growth factor 1) which helps improve nutrient utilization once it crosses the gut wall, to increase muscle gain. He explains that cattle are born with all the muscle fiber they are ever going to have.
“As ranchers, no matter how exceptional our nutrition, we can’t increase muscle fiber itself, but we can grow the size of the muscle fibers,” says Nichols. “What we do with these cattle is use a little bit of hormone to increase that muscle fiber size and get more efficient gains.”
He explains hormone use as the ability to get the growth benefits of a bull, without the headache.
“All we are doing is taking a little bit of the hormone out of the testes and putting it back in the ear,” says Nichols. “It’s not enough to get secondary sex characteristics and the added problems of feeding bulls, but it’s just enough for the animal to improve performance.”
Proper implanting
For grazing cattle, Nichols recommends using the implant Ralgro at about 90 days of age or at branding, then re-implanting with Revalor-G at weaning. Both of these low-dose, slow releasing implants are designed to help cattle maximize the nutrition they receive while on pasture. When choosing an implant strategy, Nichols recommends consulting a veterinarian or nutritionist and administering exactly as instructed.
“It’s very, very important to follow label instructions,” says Nichols. “That keeps you out of trouble and your investment sound.”
Nichols adds that following procedures when implanting will best capture the economic value. The implant should be inserted only in the ear, between the 2 main cartilage ribs halfway between the base and tip of the ear. Implant gun needles should be kept clean, sharp and sanitized to avoid bacterial spread from calf to calf.
In the cattle business, there is no such thing as “easy money.” However, Nichols says that small management decisions like implant and technology implementations can make great gains happen in the pasture.
“When administered properly, using an implant is always positive,” says Nichols. There’s nothing else that makes more return at any part of production than implants, and that includes when cattle are in the pasture.” ❚
“Grazing Gains” is excerpted from the September 2017 issue of The Cattleman magazine.