Cattle feeding program for winter

They will be around 450kg roughly,in my opinion its waste of time feeding those type of stock at those weights anything more than good silage and minerals..you'll sink €200 worth of feed into them easily between now and the end of march plus straw and labour you would be as far on mart them now..probly worth €750-€800 to sell now now and will cost you €1000+ to get them back out to the ring again in late March

The person buying will want to finish them off grass next summer. If they're too pushed he won't buy as they'll go backwards first. It all depends on the silage, but a mineral balancing the beet should be first. They need to grow, not fatten this winter.

I think protein may what is lacking in that diet. Maybe some soya and minerals.

At 18 months old are you sure they are not heavier than 350kg?

They should not be far off the weight for a finisher to take over at that age. Can you get them weighed - can you get someone with scales for the BEEP to come in and weigh them for you? Done deal has ad's for folk to come on farm and weigh them for you, or maybe you can hire them from somewhere.

If they are still growing you'll need protein for them. If you are going to just give silage get it tested to be sure it is decent stuff.

Get the silage tested and from that you will be able to determine how much meal they need.

OP, I don't believe everything in the IFJ but the table on page 44 this week may go some way to answering your question.

A store animal with a target gain of 0.6kg ADG would need these level of meals, depending on the quality of silage;

66 DMD - 2kg conc/day 70 DMD - 1.25kg/day 74 DMD - 0.5kg/day

To achieve similar gain with a weanling will require 3, 2, 1 kg/day respectively

To finish cattle with a gain of 1kg/day would require 7, 5.5, 4kg/day respectively

Hi Bass, where do you get the limestone flour?

Thanks Bass

You can hire a scales from Tirlan for €50.

It's a good deal, guaranteed it's always calibrated and takes the guess work out of weights

Have you enough spuds until end of March

@westeast as WT says aversion will not have enough P. You want to grow your stock first. About 170-200 grams of soya bean meal per 10kg of potatoes. If you are feeding maize about 80 grams of soya bean meal per kg of maize. Fodder beet is similar in protein DM as spuds so much the same treatment.

If you plan on finishing these out of the shed up the rate of feed but drop the protein to 100 grams/ 10 kgs of veet or potatoes for the last 10-12 weeks.

A lot will depend on the quality of your silage if it cut mid/late May or out in mid June. If it too early in May you may need to add a bit of straw to the diet during the last 70-80days or something like soya hulls or oat hulls