huge muddy mess in pastures. Where the ground freezes, it’s a terrific way to renovate poor spots in pastures: because it’s frozen, the sod won’t be badly cut up by the cattle, and, in the spring, the ground will be covered with a layer of manure mixed with hay, the best fertilizer there is.
With outwintering, you can either haul hay out to the feeders a few times a week, or you can set all of your bales out during the fall and not have to start a tractor all winter. In October, I calculate how many bales I think I’ll need for the number of cattle I’m carrying through the winter and for the length of time I think the ground will be frozen. With a tractor and hayfork, I set out the round bales in three or four rows, spaced 15–20 feet apart on all sides. When the bales are in place, I cut and pull off all of the twine (or netting wrap) by hand. I build a three-strand electric fence around three sides of the rows, leaving one side open. I roll the round-bale feeders out of storage and pop them over the bales at the head of the rows on the side that I left open. Then I stick plastic step-in posts into the next row of bales and run two strands of electric wire across them to keep the cows from the rest of the hay.
Constructing this “hay corral” takes me 20–30 hours, but it’s pleasant work in moderate weather, and it means I won’t have to start the tractor on cold mornings or fight with twine or round bales frozen to the ground. Instead, once or twice a week, I unplug the electric fence, walk out to the hay corral, move the portable electric wire back one row, tip the feeders on their sides, roll them over to the new row of bales, then walk back and plug in the fence again. This takes all of fifteen minutes. What’s left of the old bales is bedding for the cows, keeping them clean and out of the snow. In the spring, what was a poor area of pasture will be fertilized, and, by late summer, the pasture will be deep green and growing taller and lusher than anywhere else.
Grain
Cattle love grain. It brings them running when we want them, and it can produce tender, tasty beef from even mediocre animals. Although the most common grain fed to cattle is field corn, they will eat a wide variety of other offerings. For the small operator, corn is usually the cheapest, most available, and easiest grain to buy in small quantities (under a ton). Corn should be ground or rolled so the cattle can digest it better.
Talk to your feed store about other feed options in your area or additional additives, especially if you are fattening a steer for slaughter. Corn alone isn’t high enough in protein to satisfactorily fatten an animal during a short period. Corn and good pasture will do the job, but if you don’t have lush pasture or high-quality legume hay during the finishing period, you should talk to your feed dealer about formulating a finishing ration. In addition, in some regions, there are cheaper alternatives to corn, making it worth your while to inquire.
Beef cows whose purpose is to produce calves, not meat, don’t need grain if they’re on good pasture in summer and adequate hay in the winter. But I give them a little anyway, as do most beef producers I know. It’s called “training grain.” A small amount—a pound or less for each cow—brings them running every morning when I call, and getting them in when I need to work with them is never a problem. As a bonus, the cows teach their new calves about grain each year, so when it’s time to start the calves on grain, they know exactly what to do.
You should start calves on grain no later than when you wean them. If you want to start them before weaning, set up a “creep feeder” that will keep the cows out of the calves’ grain. A creep feeder is a pen or shed with an opening too narrow for cows but wide enough for calves. Inside is a bunker feeder for the calves. I generally put a board over the opening as well to make it too low for a cow to squeeze under. If you have an old shed not being used for anything else, it might work well for a creep feeder.
Until you put weaned calves on a finishing ration, grain isn’t essential to their diets, but it will help them grow a little faster. Many cattle owners “rough” calves through the winter on hay alone and don’t start them on grain until four months or so before slaughter. But feeding weaned calves a pound or two of grain per head per day will quickly teach them to come when called, help them grow, and keep them tame.
| ADVICE FROM THE FARM Feeding Cattle We have no barn. The round bales are stored outside. The cattle are wintered in a half-wooded horseshoe “coulee” of about 40 acres, with a year-round spring. We feed the round bales right on the ground, and the cows clean it up pretty good. What little they do not eat is their bedding. No sense in having the cows eat all the hay and then haul in straw to a barn just to have a damp place where the sun doesn’t shine and disease builds up. —Mike Hanley I probably have them on a finishing ration for four to seven months because I don’t feed a lot of grain. I put them in a little early, and I don’t feed them really heavily, maybe 15–20 pounds of a mix of corn and barley. The rest is silage and hay. I think you get a better meat and fewer health problems. —Donna Foster For finishing at home, doing it by the pail method—buying your corn and oats and protein supplement and mixing it yourself—saves the extra expense of having the mill mix it. A lot [of supplements] contain antibiotics and stuff, and we don’t use those. —Rudy Erickson Consider putting up oat hay, sweet clover, sorghum-sudan hybrid mixes, forages mixed with grains, and soybean hay. All these are things I’ve seen put up in my lifetime, and with the new equipment today it can be done a lot easier than in the old days. Any of these fed properly to livestock is very good feed. —Dave Nesja |
Feeding Dairy Calves
Dairy bull calves need a lot of extra care and special feeding for the first few months. While a beef calf gets as much of his mother’s milk and affection as he wants for the first six months or more of life, a dairy calf loses his mother and his mother’s milk within three days of birth. So be kind to these babies, even though they’re often incredibly stubborn. They’ll be a little lost and stressed and vulnerable to sickness.
If you buy dairy calves, pick up a sack of milk replacer for each calf from the feed store and a two-quart calf bottle and nipple per calf from the farm supply store. Follow the directions on the sack for how to mix the replacer, how often to feed, and at what temperature.
At first, it may take a little persuading to get the calf to drink from the bottle. If he won’t take the nipple, try backing him into a corner and then straddling him with your legs. Pull his head up and hold it with one hand, stick the nipple in his mouth with the other hand, and squeeze a little milk onto his tongue. Calves usually catch on pretty quickly. To prevent choking, don’t hold the bottle any higher than the height of the calf’s shoulder. Calves drink amazingly fast, and the milk will be gone long before their sucking instinct is satisfied.
Calves will try to suck on each other, which isn’t a great idea, so distract them with calf feed. This is a sweetened grain mix that should be fed free-choice (available at all times) from the time they’re a few days old. Take some in your hand and stick it in their mouths after each bottle feeding until they figure out how to eat it themselves. Feed it in a bucket or box attached to the side of their pen, placed high enough that they won’t poop in it (too often). In case you can’t get them outside in a small area with some green grass to nibble once they’re a few days old, keep some high-quality hay available for them. They need to get used to hay while they’re still young and open-minded about trying new things.
One sack of milk replacer and one to two sacks of calf feed will raise a dairy calf until weaning at eight weeks of age or older. Grain feeding should continue according to the directions on the sack of calf feed, with a gradual transition to an adult ration as the calf’s digestive system matures. Get a calf outside and on pasture as early as possible. You can buy calves in winter, but they’re more susceptible then to pneumonia and scours (diarrhea), so provide them with a draft-free, deeply bedded pen, and keep it clean. Give them a good grooming with a cattle brush every day. This mimics the cow’s licking and is stimulating and
