Beef cattle

But I'm sure not going to attack the guy for looking out for the American people.

Beef is high, but everything is high.

And I think our industry says, well, why are you kind of picking on us when everything else is just as high? I think we should take it as a compliment in some ways that people want our product.

And they could be eating pork or they could be chicken.

Correct.

Been there a long time, got a lot of experience with beef cattle in the Midwest.

So today we're gonna talk about heat stress and the impact of heat stress on performance.

So we're going through, you know, especially even here where I'm at in Oregon, it's, it's, it's hot.

And within the thermal neutral zone, there's what we call the thermal comfort zone, and that's a s- a little bit smaller slice, and that's a, that's the zone where the animal doesn't have to expend any energy to either stay warm or stay cool.

And so, um, you know, when we get outside those zones, the animals start to, to s- either expend energy or, or suffer in performance because they're moving energy into a non-productive function just to be able to maintain metabolism.

So how is heat exchanged in, in beef cattle?

Okay.

Well, that's okay.

You've come to the Rural Ambassador Programme through beef cattle, I understand.

What's your background with agriculture?

Yeah, so I wasn't born into agriculture as a lot of young rural ambassadors are.

It was an amazing opportunity to be able to do the Heifer Expo year in, year out.

You met so many people, made so many connections.

So along with the Heifer Expo, I have worked across the beef cattle industry, whether it's in a feedlot, in showing, breeding, all that sort of stuff.

I also am heavily involved in education.

The beef cow and heifer investment analysis tool turns a buy or raise decision into a quantifiable break-even price, letting producers see the maximum they can pay for a heifer while still hitting their target return.

Small shifts in assumptions, such as weaning rate, discount rate, calf price outlook, can move the break-even price and net present value, underscoring how operation-specific the decision is.

The tool doesn't tell producers whether to buy, raise, or weight, but it does give them a shared, transparent framework for weighing that decision as heifer prices sit at record highs and replacement inventories sit at their second lowest level since the 40s.

So I stayed in the 4-H.

I showed Beef Animals all those years.

But then I went, I did the Mech Ag as well as, it's funny looking back, I did AutoCAD.

I also was doing the shop classes where we were learning the computers and drafting and stuff like that.

You seem like a very calm man for a man who must be so busy.

But there is potatoes, there's an apple orchard, there's cereals and there's beef cattle as well.

So give people just, I guess, paint a picture for people of where we are and how big the farm is at the minute.

we're about seven miles from a toy we've uh 48 hectares we do beef for lethal organics of course we sell everything through these organics we do potatoes for green earth organics we grow our own feed um we've bees we do apple juice oh my god

life.

You have other stuff going on in the farm as well.

I saw some beef cattle when I was driving by.

Yeah,