Ours are 100% forage only. We could feed a little grain, and I'm a believer that as long as the ration is 3/4 or more forage, they'll still be a long lasting bull. However, we choose to let them do it au naturale, and when we identify the bulls that are thrifty, vigourous, easy fleshing, quiet, good footed, big nutted, 70% body 30% leg, born in the first cycle and out of older proven cows, that's the group we pick from for sale and on-farm use. The rest are steers, which is 70-80% of our bulls. That suits us fine because with our beef program, the steers usually end up netting a little more money. No papers, testing or sale expenses.
We have noticed differences when we don't feed grain. In the first few years we were flat out culling more bulls than we used to. Some for small nuts, some for fertility, but mostly just on performance. The last few years it's getting better as our herd becomes more uniform. I think that's fantastic for our customers. There's very little chance of a forage bull surprising anyone. THere's been no feed to hide anything, so what you see is what you get.