A Balanced Diet

We hear a lot about eating a healthy, balanced diet as humans. Well, livestock are no different. They need a certain amount of energy, protein, vitamins and minerals in their diet to stay healthy, grow, have a safe pregnancy, and to produce milk after they've had their baby. Making sure they get a proper diet is the responsibility of their owner.

Another thing that comes into play for livestock, just as in humans, is the cost of their diet. As a rancher, I would love to be able to feed my cattle the best of everything. But, if I did that, I would be broke pretty quick, and then they would have nothing to eat. So, much as many families budget their food spending, ranchers also look at how they can provide the best possible feed to their livestock at the most affordable price.

Then there are "unique" years, like 2012, which resulted in a lot of feeds not producing as they were expected to. For example, without enough rain, a lot of grass that ranchers would normally make into hay for winter had to be grazed in the summer A lot of grains didn't produce enough of the actual grain to make it worthwhile to combine them, so they became hay.

When it was all said and done, ranchers had to do what they do every year - look at what they needed to winter their livestock, what they had on hand, what was available to buy, and how they could most effectively and economically produce a winter diet for their livestock that was affordable while also meeting their nutritional needs.

 

What did we do? Well, my fiancee (more on that later!), along with a lot of other producers, decided to grind hay. But, he went another step, and ground a lot of different kinds of hay into one big pile, creating a combination of forages that his cattle would like to eat, and which would meet a lot of their nutritional requirements. Here is a picture of the grinding setup, and all the hay he was combining to make a perfect meal for his cattle.

It's kind of like making a stir-fry, with some really good steak, some vegetables, rice and sauce, and mixing it all together so your kids will eat their vegetables and rice along with the meat and sauce.

He pays the guy you see above for the use of his machine. This year the guy was so busy that you had to be put on his list several weeks to months before he would actually get to your place. Planning in advance is also important to get the right feed, in the right form, at the right time, for feeding livestock.

 

 

 The way it works is you dump the bales into that big drum in the order you want them mixed. My fiancee was mixing about five different piles of hay together, ranging from some really good grain hay (some of that stuff that didn't do well enough to combine the grain this year) all the way down to some old, poor quality grass (this is valuable because it helps fill the animal up). He would drive around in his tractor from pile to pile and bring the hay in the order he wanted, and drop it in the drum, thus making his very own custom feed for his cows.

The engine on the front of the trailer runs the drum, and can be adjusted depending on the type of hay and speed that the rancher is bringing it. The conveyor on the back transports the ground hay to the pile, where it will be stored until it is fed.

 

 

Here he comes with the first type of bale, which is an older hay.

 

 

You just drive up, and drop the bale into the spinning drum,

 

 

Like so.

 

 

The drum spins the bale around while teeth on the bottom chew the bale, taking the blades of forage that could be well over a foot in length down to a couple inches.

 

 

How does this process improve the forage? By making the pieces of grass smaller, it makes them more palatable to a cow, and she is more likely to eat them. Mixing the high quality and poorer quality hays all together and grinding them means the cows will like eating it more than if you just rolled the hay out, and also means they will eat all the different kinds of hay at once. In comparison, if you rolled out a grain hay bale and an old grass bale, they would not eat the grass bale, and would waste it. Kind of like some kids and eating their vegetables.

 

 

Around it goes again.

 

 

The conveyor continually churns out the finished product into a pile. This is also a very dirty, dusty job, as you can see in the above photo. But it's worth it to have something good to feed your cows all winter, without having to buy a lot of additional forage.

 

 

Here he comes with another, different type of bale.

 

 

And another. You can see how more than one bale was in the drum most of the time, maximizing the mixing of the different hays. You can also see the controls for the engine on this side of the machine.

When he was all done, several hours later, he had turned multiple piles of almost useless forage and a couple piles of good stuff into something that would not only keep is cattle fed for the winter, but that they would like eating.

 

 

Here are his heifer calves, eating the ground hay mixture the next day. Since he is expecting these to grow at a specific level, he adds additional energy and protein supplements to their hay when he feeds it. This is another nice thing about having a big pile of ground hay - it works as a base for a lot of different meals for the different types of cattle he has on his place (calves, young cows, old cows, bulls). He can feed it straight out of the pile, or add different ingredients as he needs to for each group of cattle.

As I mentioned before, this is what a lot of producers in the western U.S. are doing with their various hay supplies this year to make feeding their cattle work, without going broke. Next year it will probably be something different for a lot of people, depending on the year, the cattle and numerous other factors.



Early Weaning

Weaning our heifer's calves early had me fairly nervous. It was 102 degrees the day following weaning, and 103 degrees the day after that. I was sweating from more than just the heat as our light calves kicked up dust and bawled around the corral. But, although the dust never settled, the cattle did. So far, this has been one of the easiest weanings I can remember. Not one calf has been treated for sickness, they're eating and gaining like crazy, and are calm and relaxed.
These calves were taken off their mothers over a month earlier than we normally would due to the drought this year. Weaning early will allow their mothers to switch from using energy to make milk to using energy to put on condition before winter sets in, and in maintaining their new pregnancy. My dad said he can't remember ever weaning in the middle of August before.
Weaning is one of those ranch practices that is very unique on each operation. What works for one guy may not for the next due to differences in environment, weather, cattle, facilities, disease history and the number of people available to help. Here's what we did this year.

First, we do not precondition, or give any weaning shots. All these calves will be given is a 7-way booster a couple weeks after they're weaned to prevent them from contracting Blackleg. This is a pretty unique management practice, and we are able to do it successfully in part because disease is rare in our area and our cattle are not co-mingled with anyone elses. We do have a complete health program for them, and that is covered further on in this post.
When we wean, it occurs at a corral located a few miles from our house. We sort and load the calves onto our cattle pot, haul them home, and unload them. This means the cows are bawling at a set of corrals far enough away they can't be heard by the calves, and vice versa. Instead of looking for mom, we've found the calves settle down and go to eating faster than when we had the cows right outside the corral.

Keeping the calves full is among our top priorities. They are locked in a smaller pen, shown in the top photo, for the first couple days to prevent them from walking. Walking is when the calves get to walking (as if that wasn't self explanatory) around the corral. Pretty soon they're all worked up, and possibly running, instead of settling down and eating. Walking is bad, and can result in the corral being torn down, increased sickness, reduced feed intake and gain, and higher anxiety levels in the calves. These are all the opposite of what we are trying to accomplish as we wean.

After they're over the initial surprise of being weaned, and we deem they're ready based on extensive observation, we open up the corral and they're given access to a much larger area. Within this area are two bottomless feed bunks we keep full of ground grass hay. They also have access to two round bale feeders from their smaller pen, also full of grass hay. If calves are eating, they aren't thinking about mom as much, and when calves are eating they're going to be gaining. We want to get them gaining as much and as fast as possible; as ranchers we always sell pounds. Plus, full calves are happy calves, and we want them to be happy.

 Every morning we fill the bottomless bunks. Just this week we had to start filling them twice a day because the calves are starting to eat a lot more. As you can see they like to eat and aren't bothered by the loud tractor and hay buster. Feeding time is also when we walk through and observe the calves for any potential problems, concerns or issues. Diligent observation can convert a potentially major issue into a minor concern a lot of the time.

 We also feed lick tubs with our hay. These in the blue plastic containers are supposed to be a special weaning tub, but somehow the order was messed up and we got calving tubs instead (????)

 Here's the ingredient list. Different tub varieties will have different ingredients, and levels of protein, fat, fiber. etc... All tubs provide a lot of vital nutrients and energy, and these (as in, the ones they were supposed to be) are added to the calve's ration to compliment the hay they're also consuming. We are currently switching from these to another, regular calf tub that comes in a cardboard, completely biodegradable tub. If I had the right two labels to compare, I would tell/show you the differences between the two.

 Then there is the water, which is always a critical factor of any ration. Lots of readily available, clean water is essential at all times on our operation, and weaning is no different. The foam is the result of a treatment we put in the water, shown below.

 We add powdered tetracycline, and Corid, to our calves water for health reasons. The tetracycline is a bright yellow powder, and the Corid is a liquid.

 Here is the tetracycline label. We add this to a cistern for a set number of days to prevent respiratory problems (pneumonia) in our freshly weaned calves. In some ways, this combats the same issues that a weaning vaccination program would. In case you missed it, each tub of this costs about $85, and we have to add multiple tubs to the several thousand gallons of water the calves will drink during their time on this. It's not cheap.

 Here's the Corid label. This is used in an attempt to prevent coccidiosis, which can be a very serious and fatal problem in our area. We are doing the 21-day treatment this year. These bottles cost between $95 and $110 each, and so far we've gone through over a half dozen of them. Again, not cheap, but worth it to keep the calves healthy.
We add both of these to a 7,000 gallon cistern, which we've calculated out to gallons per foot. We've also calculated how much of each additive we need to add per foot of water. This way we can turn on the cistern, add the proper amount of Corid and tetracycline, let it fill up a foot, or two or three, then turn it off and have everything mixed and ready to go. A "story pole" is how we measure the depth of the cistern. I know, almost to the minute, how long it takes the well to pump a foot of water into the cistern.

As I mentioned before, so far this year our system is working like a champ. The calves are happy, full and healthy. Nothing better than seeing a corral full of calves lounging around chewing their cuds!