A building provides shelter. True statement. But just like today’s protein producers, today’s livestock facilities must work smarter and harder to be flexible, more tech-savvy, more informed, and collaborative to allow producers to be profitable, productive and sustainable.

Too much or not enough of any resource can cause producers problems. Water is a big one – essential to life and a resource that continues to require more attention and management.

When summer heat hits, cattle can become stressed when exposed to high temperatures, still air, high humidity, etc. Animal welfare is important to cattle producers. While you cannot control the weather, bringing cattle into a Summit Livestock monoslope facility allows producers to the optimize the environment and mitigate some of the biggest challenges caused by hot weather exposure.

Ashton Gronewold is a cow-calf producer from Carthage, Illinois. Building a Summit Livestock Facilities monoslope has allowed their family’s operation to grow, now involving and supporting several generations.

Cow-calf producers using Summit Livestock Facilities monoslopes can adjust their operations to bringing cows and calves under-roof full-time or part time. Adjusting away from a spring calving season helps cattle producers optimize marketing options. Typically, markets tend to be lowest when supplies are high.

Cow-calf operations on pasture are missing out. They’re missing the harvest of a valuable fertilizer resource...manure. Even with a dry-lot operation, rain and exposure to the elements diminishes the value of manure.

It’s calving season! During February, March and April, roughly 60 percent of nation’s calves are born. Several factors make spring the common season for calving; availability of feed resources, target market and access to labor are just a few.

There’s a growing interest among cow-calf producers in bringing their cow-calf operation under roof. Monoslope facilities provide unique solutions to many production challenges with an indoor-outdoor type environment.