Beef cattle and their eating habits

Dang interesting title.

Planned it as an attention grabber, Roger. No experience in this field?

Sorry. I don't even know how much my cats eat in a day.

A guide to the daily feed requirements of beef cattle is shown in the table below. Requirements are for maintenance unless otherwise stated, except for cows with calves which will be loosing weight. (For a cow in early lactation, total energy requirements of the animal can be greater than it's ability to consume feed energy. At this time it is normal to loose weight).

The quantity of hay in the table assumes all requirements are being met from hay and the hay is of reasonable quality (8.5 megajoules per kg. dry matter). A small square bale is approx. 25 kg. so in the table, 8 kg. is about 1/3 of a small square bale.

Table 1. A guide to the daily requirements of beef cattle
Kg. hay/head/day
(good quality)
(no pasture feed)

Cow (450 kg)* + calf (1-3 months) 12KG
Dry cow (450 kg) middle-late pregnancy 9KG
Bulls (700 kg) 10KG
Early weaned calf (150 kg) < 6 mths, 0.25 kg/day wt. gain 4 KG
Weaner (250 kg) 6-12 mths, 0.25 kg/day wt. gain 5.5KG
Yearling (350 kg) 12-18 mths, maintenance 5.5 KG
Steer (500 kg), maintenance 8 KG

* British breed cows. Beef dairy cows can have 25-35% greater requirements.
** Crude protein level in diet may limit intake
*** Performance on limit of maximum dry matter intake.

The hay required in table 1 assumes no pasture is being fed. Fresh pasture has a high energy content (11MJ/kg DM) and even a small amount of pasture can significantly reduce the amount of supplement required. For example, 4kg of pasture dry matter per day would reduce the hay required for a cow and young calf in the above table by approximately 50%.

Summary

For beef producers facing a feed shortage a range of options are available but the earlier the decisions are made the better (and usually the cheaper the outcome). Each farm situation is different and needs to be considered on its merits.

we feed hay as a "free choice" amount (usually about 1/3 to 1/2 bale of orchard grass hay per dy and about 5-10 lb of grain per day) (in winter only) Now, we have gradually worked the cattle off the grain and they are on pasture till they are marketed in the fall.

The sheep get about 2 lb grain per day and free choice hay(alfalfa) in winter. Now they too havebeen weaned off the feed ration and only the ewes with lambs are getting grain (about 3lb per day-we have measuring cups and a large power auger that screw feeds grain/molasses mix from a big "Fibredome" bin)
Sheep, especially ewes , are touchier in changing their feed habits than cattle, but you never just go from feeding hay to next day feeding grain, we make the changeover in about a 2 week spread. WHen we are breeding the sheep, we basically put them on just normal grass pasture for most of the summer, then about 4 weeks before we put in the rams we change over their feed to alfalfa/grain in a process thats called "flushing"

Now, some cattle (lot feeders) really slam the feed into their cattle to keep them fattening up and just giving them enough exercise to walk from the barn to the pastures. We raide Dexter/Redface and a few Angus/hereford mixes. and we are really more quantitative with the sheep feed program since sheep and lambs are our main crop.

You interested in raising some livestock? Get to know a good vet.Because you will be "going to school" about livestock health and learning that all livestock;s job is to try to find different ways to attempt to die on you. Your job is to keep them from doing their job. It takes a few years but you will learn. Took us about 3 years to "get it" .

Overfeeding is a big problem to beginners. The free choice with hay is ok with cattle but with sheep, there is a problem with "wasteage"

Old farming adage: They are born to die... one way or another.

Thanks, gents.

Now, if you wanted to control feed intake, with a 1300 pound/590 kg hay bale already in the feeder, how many hours would you let a 1700 pound/770kg bull into the feed pen?

What about for a 1200 pound/545kg cow due to calf within the month?

And what would be the chow down time for a yearling?

Another one I've heard;

If you have live ones, you're gonna have dead ones.

Assume 10 kg per day the bale should last roughly 2 months.

Judge daily timing by how much of the bale is left.

Start with 1/2 hour each day, if there is only 1/3 left after (say) 20 days reduce the time or provide access only every second day.

Assuming the bull has access to pasture or roughage of some kind you can feed for longer each time but only provide access to hay (say) every 3rd day.

Alter the number of access days per week according to feed stock left.

Most of the farmers around her feed out into paddocks but only feed out 2 or 3 times a week.

Cattle do not have to eat every day to maintain condition unless milking or feeding. They probably are going to lose condition anyway with calves at foot.

I hope your not using alfalfa on beef cattle? We grow about 30 acres of alfalfa and its all used for flushing and lambing ewes and for sale. We use orchard grass for most cattle feed hay.
Do you have good soil?, we grow about 7 T per acre for alfalfa, about 9 for orchard grass, and about10 for clover (weve gotten away from clover)
Our good orchard grasses are about 15% protein while alfalfa is about 22 to 24% (we have our hays tested so I can gage soil and crop yields) .

We get about 3 cuttings of hay per season around here with the heaviest (and coarsest utting the first one).
Western(Nevada) hay is superior because its finer stemmed , especially the alfalfa, but we have bigger yields per acre than they do and hay costs have skyrocketed with the fuel surcharges.

What are you planning to grow? or is this just an armchair exercise?

It just grew out of a discussion with some neighbors, FM. Thanks for the help. Dadpad too.

Would you believe that, in 33 years of beef medical practice, nothing similar to this ever came up? We were always trying to figure ways to get more feed into them, not the other way around.

cowdoc. Around here , the best time to buy feeder cattle is in the fall because the dairy?beef operations dont want to carry over feeders into a season with no pasture. Our pastures are the primary feed and every good cattle steward rotates his stock . We rotate our sheep on a biweekly basis because we can run about 5 sheep per acre. However, rotation helps prevent worm problems. What are pastures like in your area? how long do they stay useable through the yer,and whats the amount of sheep (and cattle) per acre you can graze?

REmember JTT was having a discussion with friends , I dont think he has any direct experience on raising stock.

PS cowdoc, Our grain feed costs have DOUBLED in the past year. SO weve gone and ut bak on the hay we sell and now we feed a lot more hay in big (700 lb) bales .

Out here, there is so little private land (our county is 92% public land) that pasture rotation consists of grazing the bottoms in the fall, after haying them in the summer. Our winter pastures become hay fields after the cows are turned out on the range. Our cattle per acre depends on the terrain and the length of the range permit. The past several years, many of our ranchers have had to come home early, not because they were out of feed, but because they were out of water. With the ong-standing drought, a lot of our springs have dried up. With the amount of snow we got this winter, we're hoping at least some of them come back this summer. Grain prices affect us only indirectly. We grow no grain or row crops here, and there is no railroad within 150 miles. The few cattle we finish are grass-fed. The vast majority of our calves are trucked to feedlots in the Midwest in the fall, mostly in October. As you can tell, farmerman, things are a bit different out here from operations in the East, South, or on the plains.

Thanks cowdoc. We have some friends that run 25000 ewes in New MExico, and they say that "You graze 5 sheep per acre and we graze 5 acres per sheep"

With the jet stream meanderin north, I think that the higher country up north will have a growing amount of recharge. This will probably be at the expense of increased desertification to the south and east of the ranges.

The problem with hay here is that we can cut a field and get a rain in the middle of the drying process. Makes for a lot of moldy hay which the sheep have problems with. (We keep the rough but not moldy hay for heifers)

How does it work with haying on public land? do you pay someone? permit or by the ton?

Similar here cowdoc. Man from snow river country if you've ever seen that movie.
The mountain cattlemen graze and breed on mountain pasture over the summer and bring the herds down to the low country for winter. Less and less now as the government recinds leases. calves are sold off to restockers and feedlots.
Some cropping occors here. There is a good sized pasture grass seed industry here. Annual and perennial rygrass, cocksfoot, fescue etc.

We seem to have more low country than you, if google earth is a good indication and run mostly mixed farming with cattle and sheep.

Hope you dont mind but I perused your location on google earth.
I'm intruiged as to what this is that I can see around your location cowdoc, I assume some form of irrigation? Why cicular?


If you have google earth my location is 37: 03': 17.79" S 146: 04': 59.19" E

The circles are created by using a pivot irrigation rig, depends on the layout of the field, sometimes you will get a half circle effect {there are a few in that picture} if the actual pivot point is located on one side of the field as apposed to the center...but circles tend to be the most common.

DADPAD. The circles are called "Center pivot irrigation" I believe that they are standardized to be a quarter square each (a Township and Range surveying tool). A square is 640 acres or 1 mile square.