I’m John Gragg, and me and my wife Stacey, we raise a few beef cattle out here north of Lincoln.  We’ve always, usually, we’d wean our calves and feed ’em for a while because we’d kind of like to time the market and not sell when everybody else is selling and so on. So we just never actually knew if we were making any money or not. So when we got involved with Farmers Co-op and Purina Animal Nutrition, we actually had the opportunity to visit the research farm and found out about Purina Plus.  We wanted to take advantage of the Purina nutritional wean-vac program and at least try it and see how it worked. Teaming up together and helping us has been rewarding. We are able to know what we’re doing now. First, we weigh our cattle when we wean ’em every 21 days and prior to sale. And we keep track of how much feed we feed. Christi gives us advice on how we need to adjust our feed and provides us close-outs with the Purina program.

We also wean and vaccinate them under Purina’s suggested protocols, which has really helped improve calf sickness. We seem to be getting our calves started quicker with eating. It always seemed like some struggled whenever they were weaned and coming to the feed trough. They did a lot of balling and stuff and now we’re able to notice a big difference in using the Purina weaning feed and getting ’em started right.  And we’ve also noticed that they gained weight in the first 21 days which I know I don’t think they did before.  We now know that they are and they are getting started right.

We’ve kept up with it and we know what we’re gaining per day and how much money we’re making. We go back and look at the markets in the past we’ve been fortunate each time the market has gotten better as we did have ’em weaned. And we have weaned from as low as 44 days up to 115. So during the winter, whenever things are slowed down, we aren’t bailing hay and this that, we’ve got more time. And if we have the hay, we hold them, we feed them a little longer that way and I feel like we really do good once they get to that seems like that 60 days, we still really excel with gaining weight and calves are doing very well. Then that way we can sell ’em at one of the local salebarn wean “vac” sales and the local livestock auction that we’re using, they honor the Purina Plus program.

So we enjoy doing it this way. I enjoy the whole feeding out of the calf. I kind of see what our calves are doing once they are pulled off the cow. And so I think that helps me be better at herd improvements, we are all the time trying to improve our genetics, save better heifers, buy better heifers, buy better bulls. That’s the main thing that we’ve noticed. Get the consistency and get our cows bred back.  So our wean weights are tighter and it’s been helping us a lot. Another thing I feel like by weaning our calves, we are actually helping them at the next production segment.  The calf is already stressed, pulling him off his mama at that time, and if you haul him to a sale barn, it’s maybe three or four days before the calf makes it to where it’s going to end up.

By the time we get them in the pen, I’d say half the time they’re already settled down, eating better, gaining better. And so the next owner or production segment, it should help that buyer and it’s better for the whole industry with a wean-vac program. That’s the main thing that I like about weaning our calves. I sure like being teamed with the Purina Plus program and our local COOP, they’ve been really good about helping us. Farmers Cooperative makes our feed cost-effective because they’re always watching the grain markets and adjusting buying strategies to keep the feed cost at minimal cost as they can. We can usually book our feed and it sure helps to know what we’re going to have in calf before we actually sell him.  And that’s been the biggest thing I’ve noticed about that, is just knowing what’s going to happen, where we’re going to be at whenever we do get ready to sell these calves.

Christi, do you have any questions?

John! I mean, you did a great job and I really appreciate it. So you guys went to the Purina research farm in 2021, came back, you got to see the technology and get exposed to what we do up there at the Purina FARM and you have weaned every set of calves since then on Purina Plus program. And it’s been a pleasure to work with you and Stacey, and I think you hit everything on that nail right? It’s that you’ve been doing it, but you weren’t tracking the performance. And then I come through and I give you some closeout, we look at them at day zero, day 21 and if you’re holding them to that 115 days. We kind of did a catchweight in between there. We talked about how to increase the feed to help keep calves gaining and where you want to hit in the market. It’s been a pleasure to partner with you guys and I appreciate the partnership back and I know Farmers Cooperative does too. So it’s been an honor to be able to work with you guys.

That’s one thing, I can say for the Purina research farm, by going up there and seeing firsthand what does happen, it’s not just a guessing game. There’s real research that goes behind the product and if it isn’t cost-effective, they drop the whole project from what I’ve seen. And so if it doesn’t make money, they aren’t going to do it or if it’s not cost-effective, they get out there and they share the knowledge and pass it on and help us.

Oh, that’s great. So, John, I think that’s good for me.