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Beef
From Page A-l
bam. Also, he notes, if he had had such fences, they would all have been washed away twice in the past two years.
Monira Rifaat Of Manor Farm said lower prices for feeder cattle has * forced her to try to reduce costs.
Her primary costs are labor and feed, and she has cut down on the use of outside labor and cut down on the cost of feeding by implementing rota- • tional grazing, increasing the use of her pastures. "I have tried to rely on native cold weather grasses, and in Virginia that is mostly fescue,” she said.
"I stiU have to make hay for January tlvough March, but I make less hay," she said. "We graze the fescue, rather than cut and bale it."
Another factor in her efforts to survive low prices "is to make sure I put out a superior quality commercial feed calf," she said. She is crossing Angus bulls with Simmental cows to produce cross-bred calves that are "more muscled, healthier and more growthy,” she said.
Ms. Rifaat said she sees some upturn in the market, and believes that will continue, but notes the low prices "have made all of us beef producers become more efficient in terms of the cost of our product."
She said the beef industry as a whole needs to make sure it produces a "more uniform product." Pork and chicken producers are doing better at that than beef producers, she said. Consumers want beef that is marbled but does not have a lot of back fat.
- Ifris possible to produce such beef through genetic selection of breeding animals, she said, but the farmer who produces the feeder calf generally does not know how well that calf meets such a test when it is slaughtered.
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