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Replacement heifer feed?

A

Angus Cattle Shower

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Before I sell off my cattle my brother an d{I have been working on making a bit of a new corral, for our feeder cattle on one side, and replacement heifers/cown on the other.

My question is this. What is different about your feed for replacement heifers then the feed for the rest of your herd and why?
 
Angus Cattle Shower said:
My question is this. What is different about your feed for replacement heifers then the feed for the rest of your herd and why?
Click to expand...

With mine anymore there is no difference- after they are weaned they go back with the old cows of all age and are treated the same...The only exception is that some of the heifers that are AIed get some grain/feed mix for a month in the spring so I can give them MGA and get them synchronized...

But many do feed their heifers their better quality hay- and some grain or feed supplement- usually to gain somewhere around 1.75 to 2 or 2.5 lbs per day or whatever weight they want to get them to by breeding time.....
 
Ours get only hay and mineral. No grain, nothing else. But they
do get our best hay. Young cattle don't have a developed rumen
like older cattle do, therefore it helps for them to have feed that
is more highly digestible. We don't have much alfalfa here, but
we do give them a mixture (more grass than alfalfa) and try
to give them hay that is fine and not coarse. Seems to work
just fine as we've done it a long time like that. They grow out
to their genetics...

Oh, and we feed them on the ground, not in a hay feeder.
If you can feed them, even in bunks, where they clean the feed
up before you give them more, it seems to work better. They
don't get messy behind and they don't get a big hay belly.
Feeding twice a day is a good thing too, but we don't do that.

FWIW
 
we don't feed ours very great at all, grass hay and mineral
just enough to keep them growing just a little,1-1.5# day
they grow their frame but are NOT fleshy, turn out on old grass as soon as we can depending on weather, usually end of march or April--
BUT, we don't turn bulls out till June 25th so they have lots of time to fill up on green feed and get to cycling good.
we get a great breed up this way and cheap winter costs.
we spend less than $100 per winter per head.closer to $75, depending on the year.
you can spend a whole lot more wintering them,but ask yourself, when will you get that money back?? will it be on the first calf?second?when?

My opinion is the worst thing you can do is lock them in a lot and feed them too good. Then they are fleshy when you turn out and they shrink-
if you turn you're bulls out early then this doesn't work as when they go to shrinking they aren't cycling good.

In any management plan all things work together. You can't starve a profit out of a cow, but you can't nesacarily feed a profit into it either!
If they are in good enough shape to cycle and breed what else do you need?
 
we do pretty much the same thing , but they get 6 lbs of whole oats , cattle in are area get pushed and have bad feet and are poor milkers , some guys that don't do anything ,most times they get the first calf ,but have a higher rate of open cattle as 3 year olds they need to be fed because there growing ,they don't need to be fed to go to the plant
 
I feed replacements with the philosophy that if they all look good, I am overfeeding. I can identify the easy keepers and make better selection decisions.
 
My opinion...replacements should be fed what they will eat as cows. Making sure they get the best "cow fed" is important because they are still growing. Like Doug said...the quicker you identify the easy keeper from the culls, the more money you will save.
The problem with feeding grain is with rumen bacteria populations. The bacteria that processes starch/grain is different from the bacteria that process cellulose. When you take the grain away, the grain bacteria begin eating the cellulose bacteria...inefficient rumen...cattle lose weight.
 
My replacements get the rough go out and work for your living treatment that every thing else gets. The easy keepers eventually rise to the top and amongst other criteria those are now the replacements.
 
Our replacements get what the big girls get. Grass hay and mineral. Welcome to the ranch, girls!! We've had real good luck, too. Did not pull one calf this year from our first calf heifers.
 
I agree with the slow development of heifers to a certain extent. Enough nutrients so they grow, but not too much so that they get fat. There has been lots of studies done, but I think you would be surprised at how many cows are culled between the ages of 3 and 4 years old because of coming in open. Unfortunate because they are just reaching to prime of their life. Are they open because they were too fat as heifers? Or simply, they came in as first calvers with too little groceries and struggled ever since?

Anybody tried distiller's grains for developing heifers?
 
We expect our heifers to calve at 22-24 months so I try to have them
weighing about 900-1000# at a year old.

When we wean in the fall we self-feed all calves (steers & heifers) a
high fiber feed until they are marketed (about 800#). The replacement
heifers remain on this same feed until bred in the spring. By then we
have green up and lots of grass so we turn them out with the main herd.

Next spring I plan to pull the heifers about 60 days before calving and put
them back on feed until about 30 days after calving. In the past we have
not done this and I do see some of my 3 year olds leaving because they
did not breed back.

Since our cows are all dry in winter (2nd trimester bred) we only feed
hay. The last couple of years we have fed corn gluten feed (21% pro.)
in late Dec., Jan., Feb. at a rate of about 5#/head/day. I usually double
up and feed every other day to cut down labor. I really like the fact that
the cows go into the spring in better body condition. Jan. & Feb. are
usually hard on cattle here as it is usually very wet and 30-40 degrees
most of the time.

Lane
 
bingo just ranchin , I think distillers grains would work well , most of the feedlots in the area use a greater percent of them in there starting rations . you just have be careful not to feed to much , high in protein cheaper then grain
 
Replacement heifer calves go with all the rest at weaning and get hay/straw and mineral at our place, once the snow sets in. Bred heifers graze native until the snow gets too deep and then go on swaths, just like the rest of the cowherd. They get pig fat on native. We shoot to calve out heifers at 2 years old weighing around 900# or a bit more.
The second calvers are the ones that really need the energy and we will sometimes split them out and put them on swaths a bit early to pick up condition. Weaning that first good calf, rebreeding and growing all at the same time is a pretty big job.
 

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