from weaning to silage/grain

[canada]

just thought id see if anyone had some good advice on starting out weaned calves (coming off the liner) to a grain/silage background lot. eg. oat greenfeed, oats -> barley ??
thanks

[kato]

We don't use silage, but we do start quite a few calves. We feed screening pellets and hay as a rule. Someone else here will be able to tell you about silage, I would think.

The trick when changing diets in cattle is to be gradual. It gives their rumens time to adjust to the new feed. Giving hay in the beginning is probably close to what they had before weaning, and they'll go to it right away.

We give them good hay for the first few days, as well as big tubs of protein supplement. The tubs are very tasty, and seem to get their appetites going and get them over the stress a lot quicker.

Really fresh weaned calves aren't nearly as interested in grain as they are in the tubs. Even sick calves will stand and lick them before they will eat grain.

[wd40]

Your goal is to get the calves up to full "DIGESTABLE DRY MATTER" intake as fast as possible. Which will include sufficient energy and protein, again, in "DIGESTABLE" form.

The number one best way, and cheapest over all, is with bagged silage. Preferably a mix of Alfalfa and grain silage.

We are able to get weaned calves to that level in sometimes 4 days.

Their first 7 to 10 days they require more energy because they are more active running around the pen bawling etc.

The key is forage digestable quality.

Bagged feed eliminates degrigation to dry matter, energy and protein.