Winter calf feeding rations?

[ALLFARMER]

We are feeding timothy brome alfalfa hay shredded at bunk & feeding rolled barley 5lb/hd morning & night. We cut out the alfalfa hay & a self feeder of oats. We cut these out after we caught 2 bloating on seperate occasions. Now we lost one to bloat. We really can't practically add rumensin at this point since we have the barley piled & covered with at tarp near the bunk fence. Just wondering how other guys are making feeding calves without silage?

[kato]

We've never fed silage. We feed a ration made up of mostly screening pellets that has rumensin, minerals, and some grain added. The amount and type of grain varies according to the stage the calves are at. It's in self feeders, and they get mostly brome hay in self feeders too.

Ya, I know it's not the most trendy way to feed calves, but it works for us. the pellets aren't that hot of a feed, so the calves don't get fat unless we keep them too long. ;-)

We also save a bundle on fuel, machinery costs and tractor wear and tear. If we were processing feed at home we'd never get to go to the house.

[smcgrath76]

I took a real quick stab at your ration through cowbytes without knowing the feed test results, the age or weight of your calves, your corral conditions, or the ammount of hay you are feeding. Basically at 10 pounds of barley a day and 5 pounds of brome, 5 pounds of timothy, 5 pounds of alfalfa the software predicts around 3 pounds per day gain. Not much different if you move to 7.5 timothy, 7.5 brome and take out the alfalfa.
We have not found many issues with alfalfa and bloat. We are backgrounding calves on greenfeed and alfalfa/brome hay, putting out bales into three corrals once a week/two weeks and then opening gates every so often. No grain. We run the tractor about 3 hours once a week to feed. We have not had any problems and the calves certainly have free choice access to alfalfa, at least on the first couple of days in each pen.
One issue may be high digestibility barley, depending on size of the calves, etc. or the balance of alfalfa to other fibre sources? Just a thought.

[rkaiser]

I guess you have to decide if you are out to gamble, and try to make make money off grain growth or willing to allow the cattle to make you money on good quality hay alone. Thank goodness for you feeder folks that barley prices came down this year. Will likely follow the Oil price rise again; once that starts and the ethanol thing becomes viable again.

We feed nothing but hay and a good quality mineral to our stock over the winter months and still manage to get some decent gains. Genetics will tend to play a factor however ---- wink wink

[coppertop]

why an I not surprised that you managed to get the GENETIC comment in Randy ?
The key thing when feeding only hay is to feed good mineral and GOOD quality hay.

[per]

Good quality hay grown on balanced soil should not need mineral. Happy New Year Randy, you are absolutely right, some cattle genetics convert better than others.

[coppertop]

per, the soil isn't the only criteria for measuring the amount of mineral in cattle ration. All too often producers don't realize they need to test their water supply as well.
In our area we are selenium deficient, and some areas are copper deficient, so testing feed, soils and water are all good management practices.
I would never shortchange my cattle on mineral.

[ALLFARMER]

Thanks for the comments guys! We 80% of the time have selenium available to all our cattle. I guess once the weather warms up a little we will weigh some calves again. Well I guess I could set a goal and say well weigh them this weekend. They are certainly eating more hay 40 to 50% more now that we bought a new bale processor and shread it for them at the bunk. We used to just remove string and set them in from of the bunk. Our calves are about half black angus and the other have are black baldies. I am thinking the baldies are better mothers, have a thicker coat and the calves are gaining better. Anythink warmer than -25 with no wind is going to seem warm!

[per]

If the soil is se and cu deficient then the hay would be short of these things. My point was exactly that. We need to know exactly what we are feeding and feed mineral to replace only what we are missing. In my case se is short as well. I am rereading the Albrecht Papers and Reams Theory of Ionization and the possibly Smart Alix comment stemmed from there. I in no way meant to say that the proper mineral doesn't need to enter the cow, just that the shotgun approach masks our deficiencies farther up stream in the production of the feedstuffs.