February 2020 Articles

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Recordkeeping for Ranchers

Recordkeeping for Ranchers Dr. Shane Gadberry, Professor - Ruminant Nutrition, University of Arkansas The recently completed Arkansas Beef Industry Assessment indicated ranch recordkeeping as a limitation in production. Ranch records are not only important when it comes tax time but also for benchmarking and tracking progress toward ranch goals. With many transactions being electronic, financial records may be easier to pull together in comparison to production records. A categorized list of income and expenses can easily be summarized using an enterprise production budget. Expenses are often placed into larger categories of fixed or variable costs. Fixed costs are those costs that remain more constant as herd inventory increases or decreases. An example fixed cost would be depreciation on equipment. Variable costs are those costs that change with herd inventory. For example, veterinary medical expenses will be greater during periods of more cattle in the herd and lesser when herd size is smaller. While income and expense totals are important for taxes, an enterprise budget goes further to summarize these values on a unit basis. Two common units used are per head or per hundredweight (cwt) of calf weaned. In a cow-calf system, marketing weaned calves is the main revenue source. Summarizing income and expenses on a per cwt of calf weaned is helpful in looking at the enterprise from the standpoint of inputs to outputs where the inputs are expenses and market value of cattle sold. The enterprise budget can determine where your greatest expenses occur which may indicate areas of production that need additional attention. Production records are equally important as financial records. For many, production records may be limited to animal ID, sex, calving dates, health, and disposal records. These are a very good start. Calving dates can be used to determine which cows are calving every 365 days and which cows are not. Calving dates can also determine the length and distribution of the calving season. A summary of the number of cows calving each month is a starting point for developing a plan to go from a long to a short breeding and calving season. Both health and disposal records can help determine recurring issues that affect profitability. Other records that only add the expense of time to collect include characteristics that can be visually scored like calving ease, docility, muscle score, and body condition. There are other characteristics that impact production such as hair score, foot scores, and udder scores. Records of weight and gestational pregnancy determination require investing in good working facilities and scales. Early pregnancy determination can help reduce the additional economic strain of feeding open cows – remember they cause the unit cost of production to go up on a per cwt of calf weaned basis. Weight is also economically important in sire culling decisions, replacement heifer retention, and cow culling decisions. Cows that are excessively large but wean a small calf are good cull prospects. To get the most out of records, information needs to be transferred from paper forms to computer programs. The first decision is determining whether a spreadsheet or commercial software package best fits one’s needs. While Microsoft Excel is probably the most recognized spreadsheet program with both cloud based and device install options, there are also free products like LibreOffice (device install) and Google Sheets (cloud based). Spreadsheets offer powerful tools like pivot tables for summarizing information into meaningful groups. These groups could be different herds, production seasons, years, sires, etc. Commercial ranch management software offers the benefit of form entry, pre-established fields, and reporting. When considering commercial software, look for features like user defined fields and summary reporting capabilities. User defined fields are important in case there are records you intend to keep that aren’t included by default. Look for reporting capabilities that provide meaningful group summaries similar to those described with pivot table summaries. Similar to spreadsheets, both cloud based and device installed ranch management systems are on the market. Cloud based will have a monthly or annual subscription fee, whereas, device installed applications are one time fees. The benefit of cloud based systems is the data is accessible any time from multiple device types like computers and cell phones, your data is (hopefully) backed up by the provider so there is less concern with data loss from computer crashes, and there is less concern about the software not working with new versions of operating systems or differing operating systems. Two common concerns producers share with cloud systems are information security and loss of information if a company goes out of business. To avoid these issues, look to companies that are established and reputable. Also, when looking into commercial software, look to those companies that offer trial versions or trial periods and take the program for a test drive before purchasing. For those interested in using spreadsheets for production record keeping, we’ve been offering a 3 hour hands-on crash course to demonstrate spreadsheet functionality from formulas to pivot tables with example herd data. If this workshop interests you, contact your local county Extension agent about hosting a workshop in your area. Shane Gadberry is a professor and Extension specialist in the department of Animal Science, University of Arkansas, Division of Agriculture. His programs focus on herd nutrition, management and GoGREEN marketing