Living by the market means using one commodity to boost the other.

These are calves from our cow herd; they’ll go to slaughter in April or May,” said Bill Leffler, waving his hand toward a feedlot pen of mostly black 600-pounders. “Unless we decide to sell them as warmed-up feeder cattle. If the feeder price stays where it is now, that’s an option we’ll consider.”

Bill Leffler and his father, Jackie, like to keep open as many options as possible with their crops-and-cattle operation in Lyon County, Kan. Normally, they wean calves from their own spring-calving herd and buy 300 to 400 more to go with them in the Leffler finishing pens. In spring, they typically buy 400 to 500 steers to run on summer grass, then put these cattle into the feedlot, with aim to finish in January or February.

However, as Bill Leffler noted, the cattle market has been anything but typical this fall and that may prompt some changes in the normal course of things.

“We try to stay flexible with both crops and cattle,” Leffler said. “We don’t like to have too many eggs in one basket. The way we do things, cattle and crops are complementary enterprises.”

The Lefflers have farmed land along the Neosho River since 1941, when Bill’s grandfather moved the family here. They grow corn, soybeans and wheat on about 2,000 acres of riverbottom and second bottom land; some of it subject to flooding in spring or fall, and all of it subject to hot, dry summer weather.

“When we get the summer rain, we can grow good crops,” Leffler remarked. “We concentrate on corn, soybeans and winter wheat, and we do quite a bit of double cropping. We come in with a second crop of soybeans on our better wheat acres.”

To the extent that he can, Leffler hedges his bets against dry weather in mid-summer.

“We plant early, and that gives us an advantage 9 out of 10 years,” he noted. “I like to have the corn planter in the field by April 1. Corn planted that early is tasseling by mid-June and that’s usually ahead of our driest weather.

“And we scatter hybrid maturities,” he added. “Most of our corn is 112- to 115-day hybrids, but we plant some acres to shorter season and longer season corn. This past year, we grew 118-day corn and it got caught trying to pollinate during the July drought. But we cut it for silage—that’s one way we make crops and cattle complement each other. I also like to plant flex-type hybrids, rather than more determinant types, to give corn a wider window of pollination. And I try to match the hybrid to our soil types as much as possible.

“We also spread the maturity range on soybeans we grow, from about Group 3.8 to Group 4.7 maturity,” he said. “If we can’t vary the planting date, we try to juggle the maturity groups, and we also try to fit soybeans to the soil type.”

The Lefflers grow Roundup Ready soybeans in virtually all of their bean fields, and have been planting Roundup Ready corn in some fields.

“So far, Roundup Ready is the most reliable weed-control system we have, so we use it,” said Leffler. “Where we spray early and plant early, we also put a grass herbicide in the preemergence treatment. Then, we’ll often come in with a second Roundup spray, depending on how fast the crop—and the weeds—grow and the condition of the soil in the field.”

Four years ago, the Lefflers contracted with AGChoice (the MFA affiliate) at Emporia to sample their fields on 2.5-acre grids.

“That gives us a better basis for matching seed to the kind of soil in a particular field, and lets us do a better job with soil fertility,” Bill explained. “We found that the pH varied considerably; we now have pH up in all soils. We apply lime and micronutrients with variable-rate applications, but we still blanket apply the major nutrients N, P and K. I’d like to go to variably applied split applications of fertilizer, but we have some ground that floods periodically and that makes early fertilizer application risky.

“We do use a 10-34-0 starter fertilizer on corn, and that helps,” he continued. “A starter application helps get corn up and growing when we plant early in cool soils. Dale Long [manager of the Emporia AGChoice] and his crew work with us closely on both fertility and weed control. We used to do our own spraying, but AGChoice is timely and accurate. Using their services lets us avoid carrying a bigger inventory of equipment and saves us the labor of an additional man before and during planting time.”

On most soils, the Lefflers do some minimum tillage before planting. They plant corn in 30-inch rows; soybeans in 15-inch rows; and seed wheat with a Great Plains drill.

“Because we plant so early, we like to stir the soil first and let it warm up,” said Bill. “We don’t do a lot of tillage—just enough to break the surface crust and allow the soil to dry and warm some. Where we can, as in soybean stubble in more mellow soil, we’ll plant without prior tillage. But most of our fields get a light tillage before planting.”

The produce of much of the Leffler crop land is marketed through finished beef animals. Their corn, corn silage and hay, plus purchased protein, are mixed in a bunk-fed ration until they finish in April or May, which is traditionally the highest beef market of the year.

The Lefflers finish another 400 to 500 head of purchased calves for the January to February market.

“We sell cattle to IBP at Emporia, on IBP’s grid,” he continued. “We sell cattle this way for a couple of reasons. For one, IBP is just down the road. Also, we can tailor cattle to the grid pretty well and selling this way gets us carcass data back on our cattle. We use that information in managing the selection and breeding of our own cow herd.

“We run a mostly Angus-base cow herd, but we have been doing some experimenting with sire breeds,” Leffler explained. “We’re using Red Angus, black Simmental and Angus sires on our cows. We’ll watch them, to see which cross works best for our system. We aren’t interested solely in weaning weights; we need cattle that will perform all the way from conception to carcass.”

“Some years, we may not add a lot of value to our grain and forage by putting them through cattle,” he said. “But it works often enough that we intend to stay with it.”