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Steff,
If you are restricting yourself to buying a bottle calf, (1) you won't get him finished in 10-12 months, especially if you get a Holstein and (2) I don't know about where you are but it's pretty rare to find beef bottle calves, especially at a sale barn. Maybe during calving season you'll get some orphans through.
If you butcher that light, maybe just grind it all up into hamburger meat. People who grass-feed let it hang longer (up to 28 days), and it is tougher because it doesn't have that marbling. When they carcass test, the sheer force numbers on grass fed are higher. It'll tend to get dry and tough real fast with dry cooking, so either sear it well, develop a taste for more rare, or moisture cook.
So, let's say you then look at a 500 lb. calf (weaned). Feeder heifers will sell for less than steers and finish lighter, although they'll have lower ADG and feed conversion. I'd want that heifer discount to be more than $0.08 to $0.10/lb to make them a better buy. Around here, nice 500 lb. beef heifers are selling for $1.25/lb. and nice 500 lb. steers for $1.34/lb., so it's about a wash as to whether it's better value to buy a heifer. Funny how feeder cattle buyers figure that out.
Let's say she has an ADG of 2.75 lbs./day and she finishes at 1150 lbs., you'll have her for a shade under 8 months.
At this age, how much "grain" the animal needs, we have to define what grain is and we have to know the protein of the hay you're feeding. I would start the animal with predominantly grass hay and then shift to a grass-legume mix. If the animal (500 lb) had never had grain, I'd start it on about 2.5 lbs/day of either a 15% beef grower (bagged feed) or similar amount of ground shelled corn and a touch of 40% protein supplement. At the end of two weeks time, I'd try to have that grain ration up to at least 5.5 lbs. of the bagged feed or 5 lbs. ground shelled corn + 1/2 lb. of 40% protein supplement. By 700-800 lbs., I'd be looking at the animal getting 2.5%-3% of this "grain" (So, about 22 lbs. of ground shelled corn and 1-1.5 lbs. of 40% supplement per day), with supplement amount depending on the crude protein in the hay being fed.
You might be able to find a feed mill to grind a small batch for you, but 1000 lbs. is a pretty small batch for delivery. I'd watch the coarseness of feed I got from a mill and I'd howl like a cut dog if they brought me any fine-ground powder. I reckon the feed mills that would custom grind small batches and bag it for you are mostly gone, although some exist in Amish country. Might find that bagged feed is what you can handle. Another option might be to buy a used gravity box and running gear (and tarp) and store your feed in that, although that's not air tight.
I grind my own feed and mix it, because I want the shell corn to be just barely nicked not ground to powder. (Cattle will digest ground shell corn better than whole shell corn.) I start out with a mix that is 53.33% ground shell corn, 26.67% whole oats, 16.67% 40 percent pelleted protein supplement, and balance dry molasses. I also include trace minerals and vitamins in the mix, and give free-choice salt and dical-phos mineral. Since this grain mix doesn't have as much corn, it isn't hot and I can step the cattle up a bit quicker. As the cattle get bigger, I reduce the amount of oats, protein supplement and molasses until I am fattening them out on 74% ground shelled corn, 15 % whole oats and 10% supplement + 1% molasses and vitamins+trace minerals.
I feed twice a day and don't use steer stuffers. I prefer to bunk feed so I can read the bunk and know when to feed more or less. As the cattle get to heavier weights, I'll shift to feeding hay that is more grass and away from the grass-alfalfa mix. I feed square bales twice a day and they always have hay in front of them but I try to minimize the waste.
I use implants (and re-implant) and I use an ionophore (Rumensin) in the grain mix. The organic police don't like implants and Rumensin is an antibiotic. I like to feed whole oats because they add fiber and bulk that keeps the rumen working. Feeding oats is an old-school approach, but when feeders step-up cattle too quickly on these hot rations (high-energy ration without sufficient roughage), you'll get feeders that get over-conditioned without growing, won't eat enough and will have poorer feed conversion.
A mix of haylage and corn silage is real good for feeders, but they won't finish well without grain. Back in the old days, I used to feed a lot of corn silage to steers. I doubt that you have ready access to haylage and silage, so that might not be practical.
I would never give any beef or dairy animal unlimited alfalfa hay, especially feeders.
I hate big round bales about as much as anyone who ever walked the earth. Unless you're feeding TMR and have a tub grinder, they are a waste of hay. You'll pay more per ton for small squares but you ought to recover it with less waste.
Grass-fed beef has more beta-carotene, Vitamin E, CLA and those omega-3s, but you can get those from green leafy vegetables. I seriously doubt that grass-fed has more omega-6 than grain-fed, since that's the gripe against grain-fed, ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 too high. Look at the cost of green leafy vegetables vs. the premium on grass-fed beef and see which way is cheaper way to get nutrition. Notice as well that most people who are touting the benefits of grass-fed beef are, no surprise, producers who grass-feed.
The number one nutritional requirement of cattle is energy, not protein. Cattle derive energy from the cellulose in roughages, the starch in feed grains, fat and oil. A finishing ration is usually 12-13% crude protein. Crude protein builds muscle, but it isn't the primary nutritional requirement.
Low-quality grass pasture has around 8 percent crude protein, and high quality grass-legume pasture can be 18% cp. Baled hay can be anywhere from 10% cp to 28%. Corn is around 9-10% crude protein, wheat, oats and barley from 12-13% cp. Oilseeds (soybeans, cotton seeds) have much higher crude protein: 40% cp for whole soybeans, 23% for cottonseed.
I'd trade one home-grown steer for 12 feedlot steers any day of the week, especially if I got to pick them out of the lot. At current fat cattle prices and assuming the home-grown steer would grade slightly less, I'd make that 12 for 1 trade, pay the commission and trucking and pocket $12,000. I'd make that trade all day long, butcher another steer and have enough to eat lobster and shrimp every week, drive a new pickup, etc.
If you don't have access to a scale, you can estimate their weight by using a tape. Take their heart girth (HG) measurement, and then measure from the pin bone to the point of shoulder (PBS). These measures are in inches. Estimated weight = (HG x HG x PBS/300). Better yet go to the sale barn and sit there and try to guess the weight of cattle as they come in -- do it for feeder cattle of different breeds and sizes and fats as well -- see how close you are. Most good cattlemen can put a steer's weight within 20-40 lbs.
I wouldn't push too hard on the need for having two or more steers in a pen to get higher gains. First off, if you can't eat all the meat from one, then you're going to have to find someone to buy even more meat. It's not much more work to have two than one, but if you're just looking to feed yourself, one is enough.
I remember the first steers I helped feed out was in 1939. Two shorthorns we fed out and hauled to South St. Paul in a Model A Truck. I did some figuring and reckon that I've fed out close to 16,000 beef steers and heifers and Holstein steers. I wish I could say I made money on all of them, but I'd be lying. Lots of ways you can feed steers out, and I'm not looking for converts or saying there is only one way to do things. If you find a method that works, run with it. Personally, for butchering for the table, I'll take a well-finished Holstein steer and have just as good eating as colored cattle. Some of the best colored steers I ever fed out were some Simmental steers out of Extra, some Simmental-Black Angus crosses and long ago a pair of Black Angus-Shorthorn cross steers.
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"Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity." Gen. George S. Patton Jr.
Last edited by milkstoolcowboy; 02/19/05 at 05:41 PM.
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