A lot of questions remain about when producers will start rebuilding the U.S. cattle herd. Mark Johnson, the extension beef cattle breeding specialist for Oklahoma State University, says there are signs the industry needs to begin rebuilding its herds. That starts with selecting the right replacement females.

“I think we know we have the right set when our heifers breed up quickly, and they end up calving early in that following calving season, and they end up raising calves that are good and they fit our production environment, and they continue to do that year after year.”

The market has been sending rebuilding signals for a while now, and Johnson says producers are paying more attention.

“Well, we are at a point now where I’m starting to see some headlines as I read emails and magazines that we are in need of replacement heifers in this industry. And, of course, we’re at a historical point in our cattle cycle. Low inventory, extremely good prices, and it’s helped a lot of us pay down bills. Yet, we’re at a point where our cow inventory is going to age out if we don’t begin to keep more replacement heifers back, and we anticipate that’s going to happen. Typically, when that happens is when we see the market highs for the cycle. And so, at weaning or as yearlings, we begin to hold back more heifers to become cows, it’s probably going to help prices even more.”

There are tools available to help producers pick the right replacement females.

When I talk about all the tools that we have available to us now, I still think there’s value in looking at the heifers that have got a wider, deeper build, and the ones that have got a structural base that we know is going to contribute to longevity. But just knowing that the EPDs or the genetic values on the sires of those heifers, we’re at a point in time where that has value. If we’ve kept track of the EPDs on bulls we’ve used over the generations, we have a means to select for maternal traits. A lot of those are available in most registries now. We can also do genomic scorecards.”