How to improve condition before winter?

BJ · #1 10/26/07, 07:42 PM

We just took a 5 month old calf off the cow. She is a smaller size angus cross cow who is now 3 and raises a nice calf. She has always been rather lean...but now looks like a bone rack. I didn't realize how much the calf had brought her down. I'm going to seperate her from the herd and want to worm her and feed as she being smaller is always the one the larger cows push away from the hay.

What can I do to put weight on her quickly and get her in condition before the cold winter sents in.

Oxankle · #2 10/26/07, 08:08 PM

Plenty of good hay and some 20% cubes. (If all you have is so-so quality hay, feed her high protein, 37% cubes so that she can utilize the poor hay)

Cheapest "extra" is good hay or all the green grass she can eat. If you have good pasture just call her up daily and give her several several pounds of feed. Perhaps 3# to start, working it up every couple of days until you get 6 or 7 pounds into her daily.) By the time you have spent $50 on her you will be able to tell the difference. If she develops loose stools cut back on the protein.

If you have your own grain you are ahead of the game. Just let her eat in the pen so that she does not have to fight the other cows to get her share.

Within two weeks she will be waiting at the gate at feeding time, and if you're late she will tell you about it.

Ox

agmantoo · #3 10/26/07, 10:45 PM

My cattle were recently brought off the extended drought impacted pastures that were exhausted to be put on a rather poor roughage of cotton gin waste. There is little to choose from here in the way of feed, it just is not available. The young heifers with nursing calves are pretty much as you described yours. I am top dressing the roughage with cotton seed and the benefits are obvious. Additional protein in the feed will do wonders for such animals.

milkinpigs · #4 10/27/07, 12:00 AM

I would feed oats and fine ground corn(ground like corn meal) with a little syrup or dry molassses; would not worry too much about hay right now....the oats will take care of that. As agman says, top dressing with a little cottonseed meal or soybean meal will make a lot of difference in a just a little while.I Would not feed cubes......lots of fines and sweepings.... more bang for your buck in the meal.....a molasses tub @ 20 % or better while make her slick haired by winter

JeffNY · #5 10/27/07, 05:49 AM

Personally, id locate a bale of baleage. That stuff will condition an animal nicely. I feed this to my dairy, and they condition back quickly after calving. Dry hay can't compare, and its good all around.

Jeff

Oxankle · #6 10/27/07, 01:50 PM

Agman;
Good to hear from you. I've been wondering whether or not you got any rain. Cotton gin waste will keep them going, but the meal will help them digest it and as the man says "do them good too". The stuff was burned when I was a kid, but during the drought in '06 it was being fed in Texas. I am told that peanut hulls will work too.

Milkinpigs: Where are you getting your cubes? The cubes I buy are hard and without fines---fines would get wasted when you feed on the ground in the pasture. Broken cubes with fines are ok if you feed in bunks, but not in the pasture. As for the content, if it is grain, molasses & vegetable matter it does not matter much where it came from if the analysis is what it says on the tag.

JeffNY; Baleage is unheard of around here. Never saw any for sale. Only place I have seen it is in the Amish community where the dairymen put haylage up for winter. They use long tubes that appear to be sixty feet long or more. I have no idea how they manage that.
Ox