K-State Ag Today: Beef Stocker Conference reveals surprise about industry

K-State Ag Today:

Beef Stocker Conference reveals surprise about industry

A national survey of stocker operators offers some surprising revelations about the industry. Kansas State University joined forces with ten other land grant universities, and "Beef Magazine," to conduct the first-ever National Stocker Survey.

Wes Ishmael, contributing editor of "Beef Magazine," discussed the results at this year's Beef Stocker Conference.

National Stocker Survey is a First (Beef Magazine story)

Lessons Learned (Beef Magazine story)

"The surprise in all that was is how few, from a population standpoint, how few pure stockers there are; about 17.2 percent would be those pure stockers. By and large, the cow-calf/stocker, over 60 percent would be the largest of those stocker folks."

Ishmael says it's never been a big secret that most stocker operators also have a cow-calf side to their business.

"But what the survey really points out is those cow-calf folks, how heavily vested they are in the stocker industry, in terms of the number of calves that they purchase, alongside their own calves, to stocker," Ishmael said. "With that said, at that level, there's very few, across all category types, that derive half or more of their annual gross income from stocker cattle."

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