Today we're going to talk about the beef cow lifecycle. We'll start off covering the basic aspects of the lifecycle of beef animals. We'll then move into the predominant feeds that are fed to the animals during their production cycle. And then we'll look at some nuances of daily weight gain in terms of time to market as well as economic returns to producers. >> I'd like to go through the typical lifecycle of beef cattle. We'll start with the brood cows. And we have brood cows here in the background along with their baby calves. These calves in the background are about six months old. So we'll go back a few months when these cows calved. And we'll even go back another ten months from there and go back to when these cows were bred. We do use artificial insemination in our herd, and we AI all our virgin females as heifers, and then turn them in with a herd bull. We also AI several of our cows, and then turn them in with the herd bulls. So we are typically breeding in May and June, pull our bulls out in July. That will have our cows start to calf the end of February and we're usually finished by the 1st of April. So when those babies come, they get prepped from their mother. Each one gets an ear tagging, so we know which calf belong to which cow. And we also have [COUGH] the information that we go back to, so we know which bull by and that's put right on their ear tag. From that point, they stay with their mothers all summer long. They're on grass the entire time. We feed no extra supplement, except for a vitamin mineral pack that they get in a mineral feeder, and that's fed loose. And they have free choice to that every day. The calves, as they get older and bigger, are using less milk and eating more grass. As they're eating more grass, we also supplement the calves then, with what we call creepfeed. It's a high protein ration that we put in a feeder that only the calves can enter, the mother cows cannot. So we have several of them in our pastures, so that's the only supplement that the cow or calf gets throughout the summer. Now, let's go into the fall. We get into the fall and our calves now are going to be weaned. So weaning means we're taking them away from their mother. Prior to weaning, we vaccinate all the calves twice, so that we are vaccinating against all the beef cattle diseases that are prevalent in our area. We also deworm the calves. And that way they are free of all internal and external parasites and they're ready to go on their own at that point. So now it's October and we take the baby calves away from the mothers. The mothers then return back to pasture. They stay on pasture until the grass is used. Usually by sometime in December, then we supplement the cows with hay. The cows stay on hay then until they're returned to pasture, the following spring. So that is the life cycle of the cow along with her baby calf. >> The next aspect to look at is the replacement heifer. In other words the animal that's going to become the future replacement cow. So in the fall, when the animals are weaned, the calves weaned off of their mothers, the male and cull animals are separated from the female replacement animals. The female replacement animals are selected based on what types of weight gains occurred, what their temperament is, and also what kind of conformation they have. So these are going to be the animals that are going to determine the future genetics of the herd. Generally they are then bred, so that they re-calve and produce their first calf at approximately 18 to 24 months. So they join the cow herd and become what's called the brood cow after they have calved for the first time. The males, and any cull animals, are then reared for meat production, and they can go through a variety of different types of feeding systems depending on what the economics of the times are. Initially, they might stay on grass and are grass-fed, and in some systems they can be grass fed and ultimately go to market and harvested as grass-fed beef. Of course because the nutrient density of the grasses might vary and tends to be of lower density than grains, this often takes an extended period of time. Sometimes 18 to 36 months of time. What's happened over the history of the beef industry has been the movement to feeding grain concentrates. And that is done in what are called feed lots. And animals entering these systems are called finishing steers. So at approximately 10 to 14 months of age, a male calf can be taken off of the grass and exposed to the feed lot.