| ADVICE FROM THE FARM Feeding Cattle We have no barn. The round bales are stored outside. The cattle are wintered in a half-wooded horseshoe “coulee” of about 40 acres, with a year-round spring. We feed the round bales right on the ground, and the cows clean it up pretty good. What little they do not eat is their bedding. No sense in having the cows eat all the hay and then haul in straw to a barn just to have a damp place where the sun doesn’t shine and disease builds up. —Mike Hanley I probably have them on a finishing ration for four to seven months because I don’t feed a lot of grain. I put them in a little early, and I don’t feed them really heavily, maybe 15–20 pounds of a mix of corn and barley. The rest is silage and hay. I think you get a better meat and fewer health problems. —Donna Foster For finishing at home, doing it by the pail method—buying your corn and oats and protein supplement and mixing it yourself—saves the extra expense of having the mill mix it. A lot [of supplements] contain antibiotics and stuff, and we don’t use those. —Rudy Erickson Consider putting up oat hay, sweet clover, sorghum-sudan hybrid mixes, forages mixed with grains, and soybean hay. All these are things I’ve seen put up in my lifetime, and with the new equipment today it can be done a lot easier than in the old days. Any of these fed properly to livestock is very good feed. —Dave Nesja |
Feeding Dairy Calves
Dairy bull calves need a lot of extra care and special feeding for the first few months. While a beef calf gets as much of his mother’s milk and affection as he wants for the first six months or more of life, a dairy calf loses his mother and his mother’s milk within three days of birth. So be kind to these babies, even though they’re often incredibly stubborn. They’ll be a little lost and stressed and vulnerable to sickness.
If you buy dairy calves, pick up a sack of milk replacer for each calf from the feed store and a two-quart calf bottle and nipple per calf from the farm supply store. Follow the directions on the sack for how to mix the replacer, how often to feed, and at what temperature.
At first, it may take a little persuading to get the calf to drink from the bottle. If he won’t take the nipple, try backing him into a corner and then straddling him with your legs. Pull his head up and hold it with one hand, stick the nipple in his mouth with the other hand, and squeeze a little milk onto his tongue. Calves usually catch on pretty quickly. To prevent choking, don’t hold the bottle any higher than the height of the calf’s shoulder. Calves drink amazingly fast, and the milk will be gone long before their sucking instinct is satisfied.
Calves will try to suck on each other, which isn’t a great idea, so distract them with calf feed. This is a sweetened grain mix that should be fed free-choice (available at all times) from the time they’re a few days old. Take some in your hand and stick it in their mouths after each bottle feeding until they figure out how to eat it themselves. Feed it in a bucket or box attached to the side of their pen, placed high enough that they won’t poop in it (too often). In case you can’t get them outside in a small area with some green grass to nibble once they’re a few days old, keep some high-quality hay available for them. They need to get used to hay while they’re still young and open-minded about trying new things.
One sack of milk replacer and one to two sacks of calf feed will raise a dairy calf until weaning at eight weeks of age or older. Grain feeding should continue according to the directions on the sack of calf feed, with a gradual transition to an adult ration as the calf’s digestive system matures. Get a calf outside and on pasture as early as possible. You can buy calves in winter, but they’re more susceptible then to pneumonia and scours (diarrhea), so provide them with a draft-free, deeply bedded pen, and keep it clean. Give them a good grooming with a cattle brush every day. This mimics the cow’s licking and is stimulating and comforting for the calf. A happy calf is more likely to be a healthy calf.
Finishing Rations
There are two approaches to fattening a steer for your freezer. The first is to use time and low-cost inputs, and the second is to speed up the process with a formulated ration fed at a high rate. The first approach usually makes the most sense for small farms because it doesn’t require an expensive ration or a separate pen. If you don’t have any land for grazing, it’s possible to put a weaned calf directly onto a finishing ration, provided it’s the right breed and a fast-growing animal. However, the animal will still need plenty of forage-based fiber in its diet. Most calves need some time to mature before they will fatten and are better off on pasture or hay until they’re at least a year old.
You also have some choice as to when you send an animal to the processing plant. You can have “baby beef” from a steer as young as a year, although steers are normally kept until they’re more mature and have put on some exterior fat. A steer from one of the English breeds can be ready for slaughter as young as sixteen months, while a steer from a continental breed may not finish until it’s two or more years old, depending to a large extent on how much grain you feed. On a small farm, it’s practical to keep the steers on pasture and feed them grain once or twice a day. If the pasture is excellent, 4 or 5 pounds of corn (usually with a protein supplement) each day will have most steers ready for slaughter in three to four months. Generally, it’s a good idea to finish a steer before the age of twenty months to ensure a tender carcass. Please remember, however, that these are just rules of thumb; finishing cattle is not an exact science.
If the steer is on good pasture, it’s helpful if you can time the finishing so that it coincides with the end of the grazing season. Cattle gain weight faster and more cheaply on good pasture than on hay. If the steer is out with a cow herd, he can be trained to come to a separate pen for his ration. To do this, watch where the steer normally is when the herd comes in for the morning drink or grain ration. If he’s at the front of the line, close the gate behind him and move him forward into another pen. If he’s at the back of the line, close the gate behind the cows and feed the steer with a low bucket in the pasture. If he’s in the middle, you’ll have to finesse getting the cows ahead and keeping the steer behind for a few days until he figures out to stay behind for his ration.
Grass Finishing
Cattle can be finished on grass, but it takes expertise to turn out high-quality beef without grain. If you are interested in grass-finishing, you first will need to buy the right cattle. Short-legged animals from the English breeds are probably your best bet. Second, you will need superb pasture, lush and high enough in protein that it will enable a steer to gain no fewer than 1.7 pounds per day for the last ninety days before slaughter. In most areas, this takes a combination of pastures and planted annual forages plus experienced management. However, any cattle can be raised to maturity on grass and slaughtered for edible beef.
| Finished or Fat? Most of us can’t just walk up to a steer, jam a thumb into his back fat, and know that he’s ready. Two beef-raising friends, Barry and Libby Quinn, told me that you just have to develop an eye for finish. Former extension agent, current friend, and lifelong beef producer Dan Riley told us that a steer is ready for slaughter when you can see the fat around its cod, over its pinbones, and on the rear flank. If a steer has fat around the tailhead, it’s close to grading prime; if it has a fat brisket, it’s too fat. |
Water
Clean water should be available at all times for your cattle. If the water isn’t fresh, they may not drink as much as they should. Tip the water tank a couple of times a season and scrub out the algae. A float valve, available at farm supply stores, will keep the tank full when you’re not around. In below-freezing weather, install a tank heater and plan on filling the tank daily because a float valve freezes up in cold weather.
Unless you run a hose out to the paddocks, your cattle will need to come into the barnyard for a drink. When building your paddocks, create lanes that give your cattle easy access to the barnyard. These can be built with