Earlier this year, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) revealed that U.S. beef cattle supplies are at their lowest since 1961. Now Bloomberg is reporting that ranchers are shifting their breeding habits to hybridize their dairy cows to be beefier and heftier, capitalizing on the beef lulls and 2023’s debilitating milk glut.
Bloomberg noted: ‘Those hybrid calves — created by artificially inseminating a dairy cow with semen from a beef bull — are beefier than a pure dairy animal and can fetch the seller hundreds or even thousands of dollars apiece. That’s a big payday in an industry that last summer faced such a pronounced milk glut that farmers were forced to dump it down the drain.’
Milk prices are up and down and so farmers are always looking for a way to offset costs to be as efficient as possible.
said Amy Penterman, the owner of Dutch Dairy, which breeds approximately 70% of its 900-cow milking herd for beef.
Penterman added that the new revenue stream is “rewarding because the beef supply has diminished over the last few years. We’re able to add that extra supply into the market to keep the cost down for our consumers.”
Bloomberg went on to note:
Given the depleted beef supply, a week-old hybrid calf can now fetch between $400 to $800, up from $200 a few years ago, Penterman said. Farmers who raise the calves to adulthood can charge even more. Krent Frauhiger, a dairy manager in Indiana, rears the so-called “beef-on-dairy calves” for around 16 months until they are about 1,400 pounds. Those livestock can fetch about $2,500 each, nearing what farmers receive for an actual beef animal, he said. That’s far more profitable than raising replacement milking cows, which CoBank estimates in recent years actually lost farmers as much as $900 a heifer.
The diversified income stream is a welcome addition for America’s dairy producers, who struggled when demand — and in turn, prices — fell at the start of the pandemic. Although anxious shoppers were clearing out the milk aisle at grocery stores, that didn’t offset the drop in demand from closed restaurants and schools. Farmers had so much excess that they poured milk down the drain, a supply-management tool they’ve had to use again more recently.
The breakdown in the supply chain only added to the woes of the US dairy sector, which even before Covid-19 suffered a wave of closures and consolidations following years of low milk prices. The number of dairy farms in the US plummeted about 39% from 2017 to 2022, according to the government’s most recent agricultural census.
As the dairy industry teeters, demand for red meat remains strong. US consumers eat close to 60 pounds of beef a year. Milk and cheese prices are virtually unchanged from a decade ago, US Department of Agriculture data show, while ground beef prices have climbed more than 35%, touching a record high in November.
Beef prices have “just exploded and it’s been fuel on a fire,” said Steve Obert, the executive director of Indiana Dairy Producers.
Ten years from now, the beef herd’s probably going to get too big again and prices will be terrible and maybe they don’t want these dairy animals anymore. But for the next couple of years, that demand for dairy animals into the beef herd is probably going to stay strong.
Nate Donnay, the director of dairy market insight at StoneX Financial, said
AUTHOR COMMENTARY
It’s also worth noting that at the same time the media and health departments have launched this propaganda campaign against drinking raw, amidst fears of “bird flu” spreading in milk and even possibly meat at this point – which we can surmise is just gaslighting and telegraphing events to come.
If you think supplies are bad now, just wait until the elites declare open season in short order to start taxing the daylights out of the industry and start declaring bird flu in everything. SEE: United Nations To Demand Countries Consume Less Meat And Curb Livestock Production At COP28. Hints At 50% Global Production Cuts
[1] Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; [2] Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron; [3] Forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth. 1 Timothy 4:1-3
[7] Who goeth a warfare any time at his own charges? who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? or who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock? [8] Say I these things as a man? or saith not the law the same also? [9] For it is written in the law of Moses, Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen? [10] Or saith he it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written: that he that ploweth should plow in hope; and that he that thresheth in hope should be partaker of his hope. (1 Corinthians 9:7-10).
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