Bringing Grass Cattle Back Into the Feedlot

November 25, 2014 by Kris Stroeve

I have had a lot of calls from people asking how to best deal with cattle that have been in the feedlot for backgrounding, out to grass over the summer, and then back in for finishing. Some of you want to keep the past history for future treatment, health, and production information. Others don't care about it and just want to start fresh when they come back in. Either way, this should help.

If You Want to Start Fresh

Do a search for those animals that went out to grass. Make sure you have the right bunch. Then select all animals and choose Bulk Update from the Modify button. Use this window to change the status of all the animals to "Not Current".

At this point you are ready to process these cattle and Fusion will now recognize them as new cattle and start billing their new lot from that day forward.

If You Want To Retain History, But Not Billing

This can be fairly simple if the correct steps are taken beforehand. If you know a certain group of cattle will be going to grass over summer then coming back in the fall, make sure you have those cattle identified in a way that you can do a search to find those ID's before they arrive in the fall. This can be done with custom IDs.

When those same cattle come back in the fall, do a search for them in the animal list window using the ID mentioned above. Then select all animals and choose Bulk Update from the Modify button. Now you will check the Change Status To checkbox and select Current from the drop list. You will also use this window to change the Location/Lot to the new lot that they will be going into. The options below the location/lot check box should be set to Move Animal To New Lot On Date, usually with the current date set. At this time be sure to hit the tab key to get the cursor out of the lot field. Once that is done select anything else you’d like to change at a lot level like current and home pens, cattle type. You may even want to add a note.

At this point you are ready to process cattle. Fusion will now recognize them from the new lot and bill accordingly.

If you need or want to change the management tag number you will have to set up a job that will overwrite custom IDs. To do this you will have to select the “Overwrite if this ID already exists” checkbox in the "Change Custom ID" subjob. This will apply to every one of your custom ID’s you want to change.