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Feed Them Right

published: February 10th 2010
by: Mark Landefeld
source: Feed and Dairy

Feeding beef cattle during the winter can be a challenging experience if being profitable is one of your goals. Proper nutrition is a key component for a successful cow/calf operation.

Cows go through many physiological changes during a year. The winter/early spring feeding period is one of the most critical times to provide adequate nutrition for the cow because of her needs at this time.

The feed

Feed usually accounts for the single largest input cost associated with beef cattle. The winter feeding period generally becomes the largest portion of this cost. Stored feeds such as hay normally cost producers three to five times as much as grazing a summer pasture or stockpiled feed in a paddock, when cost is calculated.

It’s critical to keep the amount of stored feed fed to an acceptable minimum so costs are kept under control, but you must still feed enough hay to meet the nutritional needs of the cow. We must maintain the cow’s dietary needs if strong healthy calves are to be born in the spring and also get cows re-bred in a timely manner to maintain acceptable calving intervals.

So, we quickly see how overfeeding becomes costly, but don’t ever forget that undernourished cows may be a disaster. Under nourished cows are ones not receiving enough nutrients from their feed.

Notice I did not say it’s cows not being fed enough hay. Cows can be under nourished even though they are eating all they can eat. Feeding the correct quantity of hay is important, but feeding the correct quality of the hay during each production stage is the key.

Quantity

We often use the figures 2.5-3 percent of a cow’s body weight as the amount of dry matter a beef animal needs per day.

So, a 1,300 pound cow would require approximately 33-39 of dry matter each day.

Don’t forget this is a dry matter calculation.

To calculate the amount of hay we must actually feed, we must account for the moisture in the hay. Most stored hay will be roughly 90 percent dry matter so we divide our 33-39 pounds by 90 percent (.90) and get an as-fed-amount of 37-43 pounds of hay per day for our 1300 pound cow.

Quality

Here’s the catch. Doing these calculations still do not assure us the proper amounts of nutrients are being fed. Remember we said cows can starve eating all they could eat. Quality of hay must be accounted to ensure the nutrients being fed are adequate.

Poor quality hay has high percentages of non-digestible (neutral detergent fiber) material in it. Because of this, a cow can not eat more than about 1.5 percent of her body weight in neutral detergent fiber material.

Poor quality forage does not pass through the rumen as quickly as high-quality forage, hence the cow is full, but still lacks the nutrients she needs to maintain productivity.

Laboratory forage analyses I’ve had done sometimes reveal that hay does not contain the nutrients I thought it might.

Feeding Factors. Many factors must be taken into consideration when feeding cows — frame size, body condition, age, time of the year, stage of gestation, types of feed, feed quality, fluctuations in air temperature, mud, rainfall and the list could go on.

Animals require energy for maintenance, growth, work, and milk or meat production. Feeds are evaluated in terms of the amount of energy and crude protein the animal can obtain from them. Providing the correct quantity and quality of feed, at the proper time, is what producers must do to maximize production, maintain cows in proper body condition, and keep costs under control.

Knowledge

Knowledge of your hay’s quality, the amount consumed, and nutrient needs for all classes of livestock in your operation is essential to make the best use of forages available. Nutritional needs for cattle of various ages, weights, and production stages are published in numerous places and easy to obtain. Accurate nutritional data of your hay lots will only be known if you have laboratory analyses done.

Whatever method one uses to determine quantities of feed fed, producers should regularly monitor body condition of all livestock. This will help verify if nutrients being fed are calculated properly, distribution among all animals is adequate, and boss cows are not keeping timid cows from eating enough forage, causing them to lose weight.

A body condition scoring chart that shows pictures and lists body condition descriptions may be found at http://ohioline.osu.edu/l292/index.html.

Additional Information. For more information about quantity and quality of nutrients cattle should be fed, contact a member of the OSU Extension Forage Team. Names and phone numbers of team members are listed on the Forage Team Web site under the Directory tab at http://forages.osu.edu/.