Backgrounding Beef Animals For Higher Profit

Most South African beef producers sell their weaners straight to feedlots for finishing. Chéri-Lynn Steyn, a master’s student in agricultural economics, explains how backgrounding these animals can increase the income of commercial beef farms and even of the feedlots themselves.

- Chéri-Lynn Steyn

There are few guidelines on how long to background an animal in South Africa. According to Chéri- Lynn Steyn, local beef producers background their beef weaners for anything between one month and 18 months.

The backgrounding of beef animals takes place after they have been weaned and before they are placed in a feedlot. During this period, the animals are usually left to graze and, as a result, their daily growth is slower than if they were intensively feedlotted on a concentrate ration for maximised growth.

One of the main reasons for backgrounding is to allow weaners time to build their skeletal frames and muscling, instead of the fat that they would be putting on in a feedlot. Backgrounding cattle on forage is also far cheaper than giving them feedlot concentrate.

Chéri-Lynn Steyn, a master’s student in agricultural economics at the University of the Free State, highlights yet another advantage of backgrounding: during the process, weaners can be managed for health preconditioning before going to a feedlot. This is only necessary, however, where beef calves have not been sufficiently managed with pre-weaning health protocols.

She explains that there are three types of backgrounding producers: the cow-calf producer, the specialised backgrounding producer, and the feedlot producer.

“[The first two] may decide to hold back a batch of weaners for a while in order to sell larger, backgrounded animals with more kilograms of beef on-the-hoof. The resulting higher income will cover the added expense of backgrounding the animals.”