Replaced with revised version of paper 02/22/11.

Critical factors affecting risk and profitability for cattle owners under contract grazing include cattle weight at purchase and time spent on pasture and feedlot. Buying lighter animals and placing them in pastures before sending them to feedlot is the most profitable as well as least risky...

Retained ownership has been found to be a profitable endeavor, yet many cow-calf producers choose not to retain their calves. While this paper does not directly explore the reasons producers might have for not retaining ownership, which may include uncertainty, it does explore innovative use of...

Cow-calf producers face an annual decision on when to sell their calves. They can sell them at any point between weaning and slaughter, with the objective of finding the profit maximizing selling point. This paper investigates the use of price signals to determine profit maximizing selling...

Adoption decisions and profitability of advanced breeding technologies are analyzed for U.S. dairy farms. The bivariate probit with selection model is used. Results show that specialized, younger, more educated farmers with longer planning horizons are more likely to adopt the technologies, with...

Increased litter sizes and associated piglet performance consequences, challenge swine producers. Stochastic modeling captured bioeconomic performance of individual piglets. As average litter size increased from 8.8 to 20.8 piglets, costs and revenues per head marketed from the demonstration...

This research examined a simple sorting strategy to reduce the prevalence of heavyweight carcass discounts. Cattle that were identified and sorted off at re-implant had a reduced prevalence of heavyweight carcasses versus unsorted cattle. Re-implant sorting was profitable at pen average...

Three manure application limits (N Limit, Annual P Limit and P Banking) were modeled with particular attention to the number of hours needed to appropriately distribute manure. The benefit and costs estimates indicated that P Banking was more profitable than N Limit which was more profitable...