Ranch manager Joel Vaad shifted to later calving and made other
adjustments after carefully analyzing his options for reducing
feed costs and boosting returns at the Maxwell Ranch near
Livermore, Colo. The Maxwell Ranch is owned by the Colorado
State University Research Foundation but receives no funding
from the university and operates as a commercial ranch. The
ranch runs about 330 cows on 12,000 acres of northern Colorado
foothills — dry country where Vaad says he needs about 40 acres
to support each cow-calf pair through the year. For decades, the
ranch operated with a typical February–March calving season,
which Vaad says worked fine when feed prices were lower. The
ranch does not produce any hay and historically had purchased
hay for winter feeding. Back in the 1990s, with hay prices
around $60 per ton, Vaad says it cost around $110 per cow for
winter feed. But as we know, feed prices escalated over the past
decade, and in 2007, with alfalfa priced at $150 per ton, winter
feed costs at the Maxwell jumpe