backgrounding calves on swaths

[kpb]

My neighbour who has an operation similar to mine is backgrounding 5 weight (in the fall) calves on his swaths this year. We've both wintered our cows on swaths but we both generally background our calves on silage, even the ones going to grass next summer. Have any of you backgrounded grass calves on swaths? He's using some sort of protein supplement in tanks to up the protein and doesn't care if he gets much gain since he'll get compensatory gain on the grass this summer. But we're not quite sure if they're gaining at all. What do you guys think? Can we swath graze our grassers? Sure would save a lot of machinery and silaging costs if we could even if they just gained a pound a day.
thx in advance for your interest and replies.


kpb

[grassfarmer]

kpb, I've no experience of swath grazing but am interested in using it for cows. I know Stan Church down at Balzac swath grazes his purebred Simmental heifers through until spring then brings them into the feedlot to flush them before breeding. He says it certainly sorts out the ones that can live on forage from those that can't! Saying that their calves will be earlier born and hence a good bit bigger than 500lbs in the fall - maybe that makes a difference?
I would think it would be tough on smaller calves, they might be very wasteful, wouldn't manage on snow for water and wouldn't graze in a blizzard where a cow might?
kbp you guys are running big numbers of cattle and have got to know if the calves are gaining weight or not. It's nearly April surely your neighbour has check weighed them before now? I know I couldn't afford to background calves without check weighing them.

[kpb]

grassfarmer, I should have been clearer in my post--my neighbour is swath grazing these calves as an experiment (I told him I didn't think you could do it and have the calves gain anything). He's only got 100 on the swaths and hasn't weighed them because they're off his home base and, I guess, he's been busy with the rest of his herd at home. You're right that normally we would both weigh and have been weighing our feeding calves at home as we both have scales. But we've both been eye-balling these 100 over the winter and I'm going to be interested to see what they come off the swaths like in the spring.
As to water he has a waterer in the field that they use. They came through the winter storms very well and actually look really calm and adjusted. He moves them, I think, about every two or three days by moving the electric fence. Lastly I should have told you that the swaths are barley-oats mixed.
Thanks for your input grassfarmer, this is kind of an informal experiment for us but if it works it could change our operations and save a pile of money. The reason I brought it up is I broke the discharge shaft on my silage truck today and it's not cheap getting those things fixed.

kpb

[Cattleman]

I will sure be interested to hear your results!!
We have been swath grazing with our cows a bit in the fall, and we are happy with it. No idea on the calves though. Although I suppose last year with the markets the way they were we had our March calves on the cows till late November, on swaths, but we were supplemental feeding a bit but with poor hay. The cows and calves seemed to hold up fairly well but by the end the calves were slowing down, but it saved us weaning and feeding them.

Good luck!

[grassfarmer]

kpb, OK now I understand your post better. I always find cattle hard to weigh by eye in the field and value my cheap little scale very much.
I got a surprise last month with some calves we weighed. We ran some open cows with the bull in October 03 like a lot of people and got a small group of calves born in the first week of July. We got the cows bred back quickly so they will calf in May this year but ran them with their "fall" calves through until January 1st when we meant to wean them. January came and it was so damn cold I left them on the cows and weaned finally on February 1st. We then put them on hay and 3lbs of millrun (they never had any creep)and weighed them in late February. A guy was in looking at a bull we were selling and commented they were nice calves - probably weighed about 500lbs. The two biggest were 680lbs and they averaged 630lb! I was surprised to say the least!

[cowman]

Now you're probably going to shoot me but for several years we've just let our calves run out with their mommas right up until they are about to have their new babies!
I know it isn't the best practice but it sure makes life easier and quite frankly in the long term it sure helps the bottom line! Some of the young younger cows definitely didn't survive this ordeal...but the ones that did are definitely money makers!
Most of these cows eventually get disgusted with this big old calf and boot him off but some keep right on feeding him and stiil crank out a pretty decent baby!
I wiil note we don't do this with our repacements...still wean them in late November...but I sometimes wonder???
A few of these "late weaners" have made it as cows and they seem to work out fairly well?
I've always believed that the darned cows are supposed to keep me...not the other way around! I take, with a grain of salt everything the "experts" tell me? There are no rules on this place...just whatever works for me?

[PureCountry]

I've ran pairs on swaths for 3 years now til November, selling calves then kicking the replacements and cows back out on swaths. I've found that the replacements who winter on swaths till weaning them Jan. 1st, are much better foragers the next year. I've never seen any negative to the process.

I heard the Campbells at Meadow Lake swath-graze their pairs through most of the winter, but I'm not sure how they feel about it. I know with our calves being born in June/July this year, we're going to try swath-grazing or bale-grazing everything through the whole winter.

[cswilson]

I'mnot sure where they'd swath graze as they have no farmland so to speak of. We swath grazed for years but quite frankly it got to be more expensive than buying feed for us. I own zero equipment so by the time we went through the hassle of hiring it done it was just as easy and economical to feed. We can usually get hay delivered right to the cows mouth. About the only time we'd do it now would be if we were renovating a pasture but we haven't done any of that for at least 15 years. Campbell's maybe swathed some of their meadows and swath grazed them-I know last winter they got in a bit of a wreck with screening pellets in midwinter.

[rkaiser]

When I was up at Campbels a couple of springs ago, they had used a kind of round bale grazing approach. Just dropped the bought hay off the truck in their small paddocks and cut the strings. Opened and closed electric gates for chores that winter when the cows couldn't graze the pastures.
I asked about waste and learned from Don that buying hay is not only supplying feed to the cows, but importing nutrients to the land as well.

We import all of our nutrients but use some iron to deliver it to the cows.

Swath grazing looks to me like a hell of a plan. Neighbors just north of Crossfield look like they have swath grazed all winter without feeding a bale. Took some planning and maybe a few years of experience I would expect.

I'd like to hear more about swath grazing calves as well. Iron sucks! I'd even like to hire a neighbor to seed and swath.

[grassfarmer]

Can some of you guys give me a daily feed cost on swaths? I'm currently in the same position as cswilson - buying feed (and nutrients, Randy) - hay, staw, silage whatever is best value. If I want to crop/ hay / silage I can get everything done custom by my local colony for a reduced rate.(I sometimes run a baler or swather for them if they are busy in return)
I'm tempted with swathgrazing in a year like 04 - a guy down at Leslieville spent $115 an acre on oat swaths and got 240 AUDs per acre off it - worked out about 50 cents a day. I have not been able to feed cows that cheap on hay and straw this winter even with the lower prices. How cheap do you need to buy feed to be cheaper than swathgrazing? I guess the previous 2 years $115 an acre spent on oats wouldn't have produced much even in this area with relatively good moisture. In a dry year of course the purchased feed is all dearer too.
At what price does swathgrazing become too expensive relative to buying fodder or visa versa?

[cswilson]

Swath grazing can be effective in a good year for sure but in a drought or a winter like we've just had not so good. I think if I ever did it again I'd plant maybe enough to carry the pairs till I wean. I'd only do it on rented land as I don't care to ever see black dirt on our place again if I can help it. It's getting hard to hire farmers to do that sort of thing as by swath grazing seeding time most have parked their stuff.

[kpb]

grassfarmer, I've been ruminating while feeding the calves this morning about your question regarding swath grazing costs. I think .50 per dry cow is probably about right--here's how I figured it: it costs me about $80 per acre to plant and swath a crop of barley. East of Carstairs we figure on averaging, say 4,000 lbs of dry matter per acre. If a dry cow eats 25 lbs. of dry matter per day, an acre could support 160 cows for a day. $80 divided by 160 equals .50 per head per day with no wastage. So maybe add in a nickle per head for wastage?
These figures are rough.
Now it costs me .50 a head a day to feed a dry cow silage before machinery costs. In other words 2,000 lbs. of silage costs me a little over $20 in the pit. But machinery and fuel are killers. Still, I can mix mineral in the silage which is a plus and, for calves of course, the grain.
I've been very interested in what cowman said about leaving the calves on the cow as long as possible. We were always told not to do this but I think I'm going to give it a try this winter with some animals. It's actually a way of backgrounding the calves. Very interesting.
And cs wilson has also made me think--this year we bought cow hay for about $25 a bale so it would have been cheaper to graze the cows as long as possible on our grass, then buy in whatever feed we needed. I think, grassfarmer, that this would have been cheaper than either swathgrazing, silage feeding or feeding your own hay. But in most years our hay to buy in cost is more like $40 a bale plus transport to the yard. That might make it too costly.
I think swath grazing is an excellent way to go but I don't see it much cheaper than silage feeding on a crop basis. You don't have machinery costs which is a real plus but if I'm starting everything up anyways to feed the calves then I'm not sure my cow machinery costs are really big. Which gets us back to whether it's possible to background calves on swaths which would save a pile of machinery costs.
Sorry for the long ramble--these numbers any use to you, grassfarmer?

kpb

[cswilson]

We've tried leaving calves on cows and didn't like it much-we were practicing evolution more than selection. If we did it again I'd build a creep pen for the calves with some good second cut hay and their own bedding. Where our cows winter out is not a very kind place for calves to say the least-sometimes the paddock I want manure on isn't too sheltered.

[kpb]

cs wilson, would you consider creep feeding the calves and leaving on the cows and out on the range or do you think it's better just to take them off and feed them in the lot? I don't want the calves to go backwards over the winter--there's no money in that so maybe they do have to come in for proper feeding as we've always done.

kpb

[cswilson]

I usually wean pretty early anything over a 100 days old and keep them in the pens-I find it pretty expensive to feed a calf through the cows mouth in winter. Those light calves don't eat a heck of alot on their own and we can keep them on water up in the yard. Our old cows winter on snow and that can get pretty tough on calves. We usually just roll hay out for them (12-15lbs) and if it gets cold we'll feed them 3-5 lbs of screening pellets. I used to winter on straight hay but in real cold weather gets pretty tough on them-they'll make compemsatory gains on grass but last several dry years been hard to find good yearling pasture.