Southern Section Interdisciplinary Beef Cattle Symposium: Opportunities for stocker cattle in the southern United States.

Section annual meeting has been a well-attended addition to the program at the Southern Association of Agricultural Scientists (SAAS) annual conference. This venue allows broad participation by all attendees from the Southern Section of American Society of Animal Science (ASAS), and the symposium is also well attended by members of other societies associated with SAAS. The symposium in 2012, which was held in Birmingham, AL, on February 6, was developed to address economic and production management issues for modern stocker cattle production systems. Beef cattle production in the southern United States is driven by fl uctuations in multiple commodity markets, seasonality, weather patterns, production management capabilities, and many other factors. Taking advantage of the opportunities these fl uc-tuations present can be a key component of profi tability. The average age of cattle producers in the United States is 58 yr (USDA-NASS, 2007), indicating a reduction in young producers choosing this fi eld as a career. Stocker cattle production might provide an ideal entry into the industry. Cash fl ow can be more ideally managed for a beginning producer that might lack the fi nan-cial and resource capitol for cow–calf production. However , fi nancial and production risk management can be more intense. Moreover, health, production, and pasture management require a great deal of experiential knowledge compared with cow–calf production systems. The nomenclature around stocker cattle production can be confusing and regional jargon varies widely. In general, the term " stocker " refers to a weaned calf grown predominantly on standing forage with or without supplementation (Johnson et al., 2010). " Backgrounding " refers to growing weaned calves with a high concentrate ration, often in drylot housing. The term " feeder calf " is usually intended to describe weaned steers and heifers that are going straight to a feedlot without going through a stockering or back-grounding system. The stocker cattle industry in the Southern United States is based on several different scenarios: 1) purchasing mismanaged cattle, improving their health and appearance, and then selling them to feeders as a value-added product, 2) purchasing high-quality calves as small groups or singles, commingling them into uniform lots, and profi ting from improved marketing power , or 3) adding BW on forages or byproducts at a lower cost than could be done in the feedlot. A classic model has been to purchase intact males, castrate them, and then resell them after they have healed …