Now, new research is showing that those production steps can also pay off with improved market values for your cattle and higher percentages of choice-graded cattle with earlyborn calves.
Gary Fike, Certified Angus Beef cattle specialist, says “tightening up your calving period will improve the marketability of your cattle.” He added that tightening up the calving period will make the calves more uniform, and the average price will be higher because a truck can be filled up with calves of a similar size.
“I think what’s most interesting about this whole idea is that extension researchers and universities have been telling cow-calf producers to tighten up those calving seasons for a long time to make the calves worth more,” Fike says.
Fike said you should also let someone else manage those late calves as you reap the benefits of the older calves.
“Depending on the size of your calf crop, if you have 10 to 20 of those past-63-day calves, you’d probably be better off to go ahead and get those calves preconditioned to sell them,” Fike said.
He added getting them weaned, preconditioned and sold is important because you will not bring the money from those like you do with the others. “They could make a nice, late, uniform group for someone else to manage because you can’t fill your pen with them,” he says.
Dewayne Schmidt, cow-calf producer and owner of Rosewood Ranch in Morgantown, Indiana, said tightening up that calving window is very important.
“When you’re selling those feeder calves, it brings a better premium in the tighter calving season,” Schmidt said. He added that in a tight calving season, they’ll look more uniform and more attractive for buyers.
Schmidt says he really aims for a calving season from March 1 to April 30 in his part of the country. “This year, I’m not trying to brag, but I could put a level across the backs of my calves, and having a tighter window surely helped out,” he said.
“When the first calf hits the ground, we pull our bulls off the pasture immediately and debate when to reintroduce them,” Schmidt said.
He added that bringing them out at a good time will provide a good window. “Last year we let our bulls breed in May and June for that good, natural service time frame and we had 100 percent conception,” he said.
Joe Frenette, cow-calf producer and owner of Frenette Beef Farms in Avoca, Michigan, says it’s difficult to tighten up the calving season where he lives due to muddy conditions and poor weather, but certainly agreed it’s a great idea.
“You can market larger and more uniform calves when it comes time for those preconditioned calf sales that generally take the calves born early in the breeding season,” he said.
One study conducted at the Tri-County Steer Carcass Futurity in Lewis, Iowa, took this tighter calving idea a little further and studied calves born in each part of the breeding season.
The study looked at Angus-Simmental rotational crossbred calves and compared their feedlot performance and final carcass weights.
Fike said the study viewed the final carcass grades based on which part of the calving season the calves were born. Cattle born in the early season, or 1 to 21 days, qualified for Certified Angus Beef® (CAB) 28.6 percent of the time compared to only 11.24 percent for the calves born after 63 days.
Calves in the mid-early, or 22 to 42 days, qualified for CAB 24.37 percent of the time, while those born 43 to 63 days managed only 16.28 percent.
In a CAB press release, Darrell Busby, Tri-County Steer Carcass Futurity manager, said he didn’t expect to see that large of a difference in quality for earlier-born calves. Busby was also surprised at how the later-born calves did not catch up to the earlier-born calves in terms of weight gain.
Fike said it’s difficult to determine what the profitability would be for those calves born in different periods, but you can estimate.
The gross price difference between the two groups would be about $35 to $40 when being sold at $190 per hundredweight. The final live weights for the earlier-born calves were 40 pounds heavier and 20 pounds heavier for the carcass weight.
“The most interesting part of the study, we noticed, was that the percentage of calves’ grading choice decreases as calves were born later in the season,” Fike says. He added the same decreases were there for CAB grading as well.
“The calves born in those first 21 days of the calving period had heavier feedlot delivery, final carcass weights, greater marbling scores and a higher percentage of Choice and CAB grading,” Fike said.
Fike says the early-born and heavier calves have also had more days on feed. “If you look at the average daily gain, there wasn’t any difference between mid-early calves and late calves,” Fike says. He added that the late calves also had better feed efficiency.
Fike said this study was done as a result of work from a similar study looking at progeny of a Red Angus-Simmental herd at the Gudmundsen Sandhills Laboratory in Whitman, Nebraska, and finished at the West Central Research and Extension Center in North Platte, Nebraska.
Rick Funston, beef cattle specialist at Nebraska, said earlier-born calves in the study were also the better-graded calves.
Funston said in a press release that the study showed 30 percent of calves born in the first 21 days of the calving period graded average choice or higher. Less than 17 percent of the later-born calves hit that mark.
Funston also noted there was a $77 advantage in carcass value for the older calves, but noted there were other profit advantages as well.
The study in Nebraska looked at the impact of heat synchronization on pasture mating, given proper herd nutrition and health. Cows given a prostaglandin injection tended to settle earlier in the season than unsynchronized herdmates.
Funston says another important impact of the cows that calve early is that they will have a longer period in which to rebreed. Funston added that the resultant increase in cow longevity would decrease the need for replacement heifers as well. 
