Get em in the truck, slam the door, wait for the check. How much planning goes into your cattle marketing? Across the country, it varies from long-term contract holders to those who cut out a few head now and then to pay bills. Either extreme can leave money on the table.

Demand for beef is down. Can you blame the recession? Not entirely, but its a darned inconvenient coincidence. Its hard to argue that beef quality was too low, because production of every class of premium beef has been trending up for some time.

Cows cant do math, but their owners should at least do some counting. From financial balance sheets to stocking rates, a precise inventory is a must. Beyond that, you need cows that are worth owning. Cows that matter, that count because of what they can profitably produce.

While your calves are frisking in the sun, the last thing on their minds should be the first thing on yours. The fact that your cows gave birth to calves creates a wellspring of opportunity that can trickle along toward sale day or grow to a profitable river.

Most North American cowherds calve in the ?spring,? very broadly defined as January to May because folks contending with wind chill don?t want to admit they calve in the winter. Spring continues for the first three weeks of June, but we tend to call that summer calving.

These are penny-pinching times. Thermostats and consumer spending are down. People are traveling less and doing without frills. Cattlemen often embrace this conservative spirit, even in the good years. We know that the cattle cycle turns, and favorable prices can only last so long.

As the trailer door clangs shut on a disappointment, there’s time for a final explanation: “You are a good-looking cow. Your sire is the most popular, balanced-trait bull we could find. We paid more for your momma than any other animal on the farm, and you were our son’s prize 4-H project. But it’s data that counts. With the lowest index in the herd after two calves in three years, you ARE the weakest link. Goodbye.” Sure, it’s harsh from the perspective of a cow that can’t justify her keep. But if you’re a producer interested in profit, it makes sense. The only question might be whether the culling was overdue. A few cows lose money for you every year. Records can tell you if they are the same ones, or just random events. Experience, backed by records, often tells us cows don’t deserve a second chance—their fault, your fault or nobody’s fault—especially when cull prices are high. Bad luck seems to follow some cows from the start. The heifer with a backwards calf at 3 a.m. decides to calve under a fence as a three-year-old. You find it in time, but the next year it’s something else. The open second-calf heifer that charmed her way into a second chance produces the only calf that dies after weaning the next time around. You can supply a hundred more examples. Animal science is not an exact one, but much of what passes for luck may be better defined one day. In the mean time, consider each hard-luck case a prime candidate for culling. Without a live calf, you can’t pay bills, let alone track postweaning performance and carcass data. This fact is so obvious and important that some producers give it 100 percent of their attention. That can be a mistake, however. Taking care of job one is not taking care of the whole job, so save a few percentage points of attention. You may have the maternal side of your herd in such fine tune that it beats every national average for fertility and efficiency. It’s like owning a golden link to profit, you might think. But how do your calves perform in the next production-chain link? If you don’t know, you must consider another possibility: Your calves could be a weak link in the effort to regain consumer demand. Without consumer dollars, nobody in the beef industry can pay bills, let alone carve out a bright future and grow the national herd. The industry has always known this, but there were a few weak links in the way we looked at demand signals. We produced our interpretation of what we thought consumers said they wanted. Unfortunately, too much of the taste fat went out with the waste fat. Consumers didn’t know enough meat science to understand that would happen. To them, beef simply missed the target. They moved on while an industry struggled back from the brink. Experience has shown us that the way to capture more cash from consumers is to produce what we know they want: consistently flavorful, tender, juicy beef. We know that a calf has to arrive in a feedlot in excellent health with an immune system ready for group living. It has to gain and convert feed to pounds of desirable beef at a rate that is at least average. And it has to hang a carcass on the rail that returns a profit to its owner, processor and future links along the chain to a satisfied consumer.