Angus Stakes
What are your females worth?
March 21, 2025
As I write this, the temperature here in Missouri is dipping below 0° F, adding a myriad of chores to the list — many revolving around water and its various physical states. I can’t feel too bad. The in-laws are going to wake up to –18°, and friends south are going to deal with cold their facilities aren’t made to handle.
While my family is wrapping up calving, many are just getting started, and that north wind is not helping.
There’s a reason CattleFax begins its outlook seminar with Matt Makens’ weather forecast for the coming year (see here). The weather the Good Lord gives us drives a lot of decisions in the cattle industry. No moisture = no grass = no cows. Moisture = grass = happy cows.
Greener pastures
As you receive this issue, we’ll be approaching April. Life’s going to look a whole lot greener, granted more for some than others. According to the Industry Insights survey we conducted through CattleFax, most of our audience will be in the thick of spring calving. Barring a weather or a health wreck, you’ll soon have the most valuable calf crop you’ve ever produced on the ground.
Let me repeat that. You’ll soon have the most valuable calf crop you’ve ever produced on the ground.
CattleFax is predicting the 550-lb. steer price to average $340 per hundredweight (cwt.) in 2025 — $79 per cwt. ahead of what they averaged in 2023. That’s $1,870 for a 550-pound (lb.) steer — $434.50 more than two years back.
The spot corn futures price it has forecast at $4.40 per bushel (bu.) in 2025 vs. $5.64 in 2023 and $4.24 in 2024.
Where would you put the value on heifers?
With the national cow herd starting the year at a record low of 28 million head, what are your heifer calves worth? Obviously, with on-feed inventories low, they will be valuable as feeder calves. This year, however, may be the year to visit with your local extension agent, your seedstock supplier or your Angus regional manager about what those heifers could be worth as bred heifers next year, especially if you have some details to back up their value.
Producers already enrolled in AngusLinkSM have the Maternal Score available on their Genetic Merit ScorecardSM to demonstrate an enrollment group’s genetic potential for use as replacement heifers.
In “Common Ground” (see here), CEO Mark McCully provides a great description of using dollar value indexes ($Values) fitting your breeding objectives.
In “Sorting Gate” (see here), Angus Genetics Inc. (AGI) President Kelli Retallick-Riley shares how you can use GeneMax® Advantage™ to DNA profile your high-percentage Angus females. The profiles, which now incorporate $Values, can be used to help select the best replacement heifers, to help match them to the right sires and to enhance their marketability.
With prices where they are, this year may offer financial opportunity to invest in the genetic description of your herd by profiling those heifer calves. That investment on the front end can help tell you whether those heifers will be worth more in your herd or in the feedlot, and that can open up opportunities to manage those heifers more efficiently for their purposed end point.
In coming months, GeneMax Advantage users will benefit from a Herd Intelligence report that will offer even more insight as to how to interpret the information on your herd.
Selecting better females
Adding to its suite of maternal trait predictions, the American Angus Association will in late May move functional longevity (FL) and teat and udder expected progeny differences (EPDs) out of the research phase and offer them as production EPDs, and they will be incorporated into $M (maternal weaned calf value).
“Being able to enhance these tools has been a goal of the Board for years and is only possible through the commitment breeders have made to whole-herd reporting, where we now have nearly 170,000 females enrolled,” said Jonathan Perry, president and chairman of the American Angus Association in his letter to the membership after the February Board meeting.
We list those breeders who have gone a step further than inventory reporting to enroll in MaternalPlus® beginning on page 130 (available online here). These herds have made the commitment to collect and turn in the additional data necessary to build the framework for an EPD like FL or heifer pregnancy (HP).
There is always risk in the cattle business — weather, the economy, black swans. However, using tools available to make better selection and marketing decisions improves your chances of success.
Female Foundations
With our focus on females this month, we invited Angus seedstock suppliers and industry affiliates who shared a focus on females to participate in a special advertising section. We want to shine a spotlight on those breeders. You’ll find the section on here.
Topics: Female Foundations , Industry Insights , Management , Marketing
Publication: Angus Beef Bulletin
Issue: April 2025
Related Content
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Current Angus Beef Bulletin
The April issue has a “Focus On Females,” including a special advertising section devoted to herds intent on providing the female foundation.
