Important Lessons from a Decade Working with IRM/SPA

The critical success factors for running a high profit beef cowherd are (1) low overall costs, (2) low feed costs, (3) average or above calf weaning weight per cow exposed, and (4) high gross income.  These four critical success factors collectively determine unit cost of production, which is the cost of producing a hundredweight of calf.  This is the most powerful measure of economic efficiency in any beef cowherd.

The belief that profits are highly correlated with high weaning weights is not necessarily true.  High production efficiency [high level of outputs versus inputs] is a necessary condition, but not the only condition, for reaching a high net income.

---Harlan Hughes, North Dakota State University