Take a long objective look at the beef industry. Opportunity awaits. MFA's Health Track Beef Alliance is structured around capturing data, seizing opportunity and profiting smartly. The implications are significant.

One of the biggest challenges facing any value-added program is measuring the increased return to a participant. There is absolutely no way to know how a given producer's cattle would have sold in a different situation than the one in which he or she actually did market calves. We have spent an enormous amount of time and resources building databases and analyzing sale data, and I am quite sure no one has worked at it harder.

Since Sept. 1, 2000, approximately 35,000 calves from nearly 450 producer patrons have been tagged with an MFA Health Track ear tag. The Health Track tag means the calves are source verified, vaccinated and boostered, castrated and dehorned, and weaned a minimum of 45 days. It also means they have consumed Cattle Charge for a minimum of 14 days after weaning.

MFA Cattle Charge plays an important role in creating the consistent level of immunity that has kept treatment rates below 1.3 percent and death loss below 0.3 percent. They are the only live animals with the Beef Mark of Quality on their tag.

The implications of this accomplishment are far-reaching and have made a significant impact on the cattle industry--not just from a production or profit perspective, but from a psychological aspect as well. Word is definitely spreading. Based on inquiries and buyer follow-up testimonials (and the general direction the industry is heading), interest in Health Track will continue to grow rapidly.

Benefits of tracking
With the help of the Missouri Department of Agriculture through the purchase of EID (electronic identification) tags and data management by CattleTrax, there is a very complete database on Health Track calves. The records are EID-based and can provide producers with herd management information and buyers with processing and health information.

In addition, analysis of the 45-day post-weaning period has given us the ability to measure the cost of participating. Our sales records allow us to accurately weigh those costs against the returns. The MFA field staff have worked very hard to help their customers collect chute-side information. That includes making scales available to record weaning weights to be able to measure Health Track's performance.

When we have enough information we can accurately rank a producer's cow herd by adjusted 205-day weights or in some cases by gross return on a carcass value basis. None of this is cheap or easy, and it is because they are MFA customers that Health Track participants are provided this service free of charge. We believe that the information has a value of its own and that value is increasing at an unbelievable speed.

Listening for opportunity
You don't have to buy or sell calves every day to know that livestock marketing is changing. Although consumer preferences are a large part of the impetus behind the changes, new technologies are making more marketing choices available. The key to successful marketing is to take advantage of every opportunity to add to your profit.

The most common examples of lost opportunity include selling your class of calves at the wrong time of year, not pre-conditioning and shrink. The less obvious reasons include draft size, inconsistency and overall genetic quality.

Some of these factors are easy to deal with; some aren't. Some can be changed quickly; others take a decade or more. What we have tried to accomplish with Health Track is to provide solutions for marketing problems that we can solve in the current marketing year, and measure enough of your production to help you work on long-range improvement.

Benefiting producers
An excellent example of how new technology was used to benefit producer marketing efforts was the commingled Health Track sale on June 14 at Joplin Regional Stockyards. There were 1,076 head of Health Track cattle offered for sale, 703 of which were commingled using Biosort video scanning equipment.

Although the Health Track calves were from $7/cwt to $12/cwt over the regular Monday sale, and $2/cwt to $5/cwt over the rest of the value-added sale, the real story is more important to a producer's bottom line but much less obvious.

The commingled Health Track calves sold in 25 drafts that averaged 28 head per draft and all sold in 33 minutes. The 373 non-commingled calves averaged eight head per draft and took considerably longer to sell.

By analyzing the makeup of these commingled drafts, you'll realize that most producers involved would have had several cuts of their calves sell in drafts smaller than five head. We all know what happens in that situation.

Using accurate weighted averages on all of the cattle sold on a given day for the analysis, we have shown that Health Track producers took advantage of most of the opportunities to increase profit discussed above.

Timing pays
Finally, I'd like to comment on calf marketing this fall. The graph accompanying this article shows USDA reported weighted average prices for Missouri feeder cattle from August 1999 through June 2001. It shows how important it is to move a calf sale from September and October to December and beyond.

Study the two arrows on the 450-pound and 550-pound lines. It shows $/cwt for a 450-pound, non-weaned calf in October and what it would sell for in December with 100 additional pounds gained in the Health Track program. These trend lines are very common and clearly demonstrate what the oversupply of lightweight calves in September and October does to the market. Don't fall victim to tradition in a rapidly changing environment.