Producers often contemplate expanding or contracting production to take advantage of cyclical cattle price trends. This study quantifies profitability and risk implications of (1) constant herd size, (2) dollar cost averaging, and (3) price signal-based, anticipatory countercyclical expansion/contraction strategies. Weather simulation on forages with different calving season and land use intensity showed fall calving herds with added hay sales from greater fertilizer use and the countercyclical herd size management strategy to be most profitable regardless of weather or time period analyzed. Income risk was comparable to least fertilizer use. Overall, holding herd size constant led to little regret.
Using both multivariate regression and artificial neural networks, the relative impact of variables affecting cow-calf profitability was examined over two cattle cycles for spring- and fall-calving herds that varied in size by time period analyzed when using different fertility management affecting forage yields with and without weather uncertainty. Neural networks had greater predictive accuracy than regression but at the cost of lesser transparency and predictive consistency. Explaining profitability, price, and quantity of cattle sold were consistently and respectively ranked first and second using both approaches. Importance rankings for hay sold and fertilizer were low and less consistent across techniques employed.
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