Loyd Sherburn has been raising commercial cattle in northern Nevada for a long time and really likes Charolais crosses. His home ranch is near Orovada, NV, (a small community with a population of less than 100 people), about 30 miles from the Oregon border and about 55 miles from Winnemucca.
“We’ve ranched on this place for 47 years. We started out leasing it and then about 25 years ago we bought it. We run a cow-calf operation with 1,500 mother cows and sell weaner calves. We’ve never kept yearlings. Our calves have sold through Superior for 37 years,” he says.
“We’ve been using the Charolais Advantage for 4 years. With this program, for every calf that’s sold through Superior (or any other sale) they charge a fee, but it’s a way to let the buyers know what your cattle are. It’s hard to judge how much additional money you might receive—what this program does for you—since you don’t know what price your calves would have brought without it. But we’ve had a lot of repeat buyers for our calves and I think this program has helped us,” Sherburn says.
“We use DeBruycker Charolais bulls on all our cows. This year DeBruyckers bought our two big loads of steers and Dave Woods bought the small end of our steers and they certainly paid a premium price. All my heifer calves went to Agri Beef; they bought the small, middle and large ones. They really like our cattle.”
The home ranch calves are all crossbred, and all of them are sold. No heifers are kept as replacements. “We buy the best black Angus heifers we can get. The first year they are bred to an easy-calving Angus bull. From then on, all they ever see is a Charolais bull,” he says.
“The Charolais Advantage program advertises the crossbred calves for us, to anybody who has purchased Charolais or Charolais-cross calves in the past. Those people will know that our calves are on that particular sale. Having more people interested in a set of calves is a big advantage. All it takes is one more buyer bidding on your calves to raise the price. I think it’s good to have this program and I think it is very reasonably priced,” says Sherburn.
“On the TSI (Terminal Sire Index) score, showing what our bull power does for us, our Home ranch calves are in the top 30% of the Charolais industry. Our actual score was 270, and that was the highest the Superior rep had seen on a commercial set of cattle. This means we must be doing the right thing!” Sherburn says.
“I believe that by having all the bells and whistles on our calves, it has made a difference. We do all the value-added programs a person can do; the only thing we don’t do is wean ahead of selling. We will never sell a weaned calf as long as we can get the kind of money we are getting just with the CharAdvantage. We do the Vac-34, Superior Verified, CharAdvantage, GAP, NHTC, Verified Natural, Superior genetics and BQA,” he says.
“My brother-in-law runs our UC ranch and does those calves the same way. Those calves are in the top 45% of the breed on TSI scores. I jokingly tell my brother-in-law that he’d do a little better on those scores if he’d just buy better bulls, but he doesn’t like spending that extra $1,000 to $1,500! In our situation, where we buy all our heifers, even though we try to buy the best we can find, we cannot make our cow herd or our calf crop better because we aren’t raising our own genetics.” Someone who keeps their own heifers can keep selecting and building a better herd of cows.
“Instead, we have to see if we can find good heifers. Some years we can get as good a heifers as we want and some years we can’t. So the bull power is very important and that’s where we put our money; we try and do it with our bulls,” he says.
“I have to blame my father-in-law, John Fallon, for getting us into all these value-added programs. He was president of the Public Lands Council and active in the wild horse issue. Years ago we were having a tough time selling calves; the market was really bad. He told the buyers that we would vaccinate our calves ahead of weaning if they would furnish the vaccine, so they did,” Sherburn says.
“Three years later, the buyers told us to vaccinate calves and pay for the vaccine ourselves and they would pay us extra for it. We didn’t get much extra but we did get the calves sold. John got us started down that path, and once it started there was no stopping; we kept doing more added-value programs.” Today, a person almost has to do these to get a good price; the calves that don’t have anything extra get discounted.
“I believe there are two ways to run a cattle operation. You either run it as cheap as possible and don’t do anything for those calves, or you throw everything at them. If you simply do middle-of-the-road you won’t make any money either way,” he says.
“On a strong market you maybe don’t get quite as much advantage doing all the extra things, but on a down market all those bells and whistles will make a difference. Whatever the top dollar is that day, that’s what your calves are going to bring.”
This family ranch has tried just about every breed. “Anything that was popular, we tried it, but we finally ended up with Charolais and have been with this breed now for nearly 30 years. DeBruyckers do a good job with their bulls and I don’t worry about birthweight because we only use those bulls on mature cows—second calf and older—and we never have a problem. One year I decided to raise my own heifers so I bought a set of really good black heifers and AI’ed them to a Charolais bull and used Charolais as cleanup bulls. I had no more calving problems with those than I did with Angus bulls on heifers. I went to DeBruyckers and told them I needed a calving-ease Charolais bull and he got me semen from Mr. Smooth. The two cleanup bulls were also calving-ease bulls. They both did a really good job and we had no trouble calving.”
Sherburn decided, however, that it is simpler to buy Angus heifers and not try to raise his own cows, and just buy good Charolais bulls to get the sought-after crossbred calves. Many feedlots prefer them.
“They might marble a little better and quicker—at a lower weight—than a straight Charolais. They probably won’t get quite as big before they finish. Brett DeBruycker sent me all the statistics on those calves in the feedlot, their feed conversion, etc. I don’t know much about those numbers so I took them to Wade Small, who works for Agri Beef, and asked him how we did. He said those cattle really knocked it out of the park. It’s nice to know that by spending extra money for bulls, we have excellent calves! We always have repeat buyers, and Agri-Beef has been buying at least one or two loads every year—and this year they bought all the heifers.”
What is the CharAdvantage?
CharAdvantage is an age, source and genetic certification program designed to add more value to Charolais-influenced feeder cattle. By enrolling in this program, a producer receives source, age and genetic verification for the calf crop currently being marketed. By documenting this information, participants can add value for buyers seeking feeder cattle with a known background that can qualify for added marketing opportunities and programs. CharAdvantage partners with IMI Global to create opportunities for producers seeking more premiums in the marketplace.
There are two tag options to enroll in this program: Option 1 is an EID (electronic ID) tag at a cost of $4/head for the EID tag and verification. Option 2 is an EID plus visual tag at $5.25/head for the tags and verification.
After cattle are enrolled, producers receive a certificate with several aspects of age, source and genetic components of the feeder cattle being offered. In addition, several other elements are included on the certificate: seedstock origin of the sires/dams that produced the cattle, composite TSI score and average TSI score of American International Charolais Association (AICA) sires/dams of the feeder cattle, marbling indicator (whether average of seedstock parents are above breed average for Marbling EPD), Genomically Enhanced EPD Indicator notes if accuracy of sire/dam EPDs is increased due to Genomically Enhanced EPDs, marketing venue for feeder cattle, BQA certification of origin ranch or farm, and additional health and management protocols for enrolled cattle.
In addition to age, source and genetic verification, producers can also elect to enroll their cattle in additional programs for an added fee if desired. The NHTC program and the Verified Natural Beef Program allows your cattle to be eligible for buyers and brands exporting beef products to the European Union. NHTC calves can never receive any growth hormone implants. Calves marketed as VNB cannot receive growth hormones, antibiotics or animal by-products of any kind.
Calves must be identified with a CharAdvantage EID tag before they leave the farm/ranch of origin. The operation must maintain a quality manual (which is provided) and train all family members and employees on NHTC or VNB requirements and proper procedures. An onsite audit of your operation is required annually.
Calves must move through NHTC or VNB approved locations at all times (they cannot sell through an auction market that is not approved to manage NHTC or VNB cattle). NHTC or VNB enrollment is available for an additional service fee of $750 plus travel for an onsite audit (in addition to the per-head cost). This is an annual fee for this service. — Heather Smith Thomas for AICA
