Best Cattle Crosses For Unassisted Calving

[Brute 23]

Liquid feed and/or cubes are generally a stopgap when you have standing grass that is poor grazing. Both have a point of efficiency also that can be surpassed. Both are great at a certain usage because of convenience but if the rates get too high they get really expensive. At that point you have to bring in a feed source like hay, wcs, or ground feed, etc.

A big decider for me is if we are about to drop calves and conditions are bad we will feed wcs. There is a 4 month window there that is crucial to breedback and kick that calf off.

Even that has a breaking point where you are better off early weaning and feeding them separately.

As a comparison, wcs is running around $11 for #50, $220/1000 in a tote. A cheap cube is around $14 a sack, which I wouldn't feed, and a 40% cs cube is like $16 or $18. None of them will have the fat of the wcs which is what I want for a cow to milk a calf and re-beed.

 

[rocfarm]

Liquid feed and/or cubes are generally a stopgap when you have standing grass that is poor grazing. Both have a point of efficiency also that can be surpassed. Both are great at a certain usage because of convenience but if the rates get too high they get really expensive. At that point you have to bring in a feed source like hay, wcs, or ground feed, etc.

A big decider for me is if we are about to drop calves and conditions are bad we will feed wcs. There is a 4 month window there that is crucial to breedback and kick that calf off.

Even that has a breaking point where you are better off early weaning and feeding them separately.

As a comparison, wcs is running around $11 for #50, $220/1000 in a tote. A cheap cube is around $14 a sack, which I wouldn't feed, and a 40% cs cube is like $16 or $18. None of them will have the fat of the wcs which is what I want for a cow to milk a calf and re-beed.

I believe it. I think I read some A&M fact sheets that talked about wcs being the most cost efficient. Definitely give up a bit of profit using tubs. But my goal is BCS 6 or more at calving with a tub out around then. We'll see if it works.

Will preg test mine in July.

I was interested in buying a solar feeder that I could put wcs, cotton seed meal, or even cubes into and refill once a month or so during the winter. But it doesn't pencil out. Tubs are still cheaper out to like 5 years, I think. And that wouldn't include maintenance of the feeder.

Always ask the deer hunters to feed cubes every day that they are there
during deer season, so that is some free labor and extra supplement. That plus tubs is a pretty good method for a part timer, I think.

 

[4hfarms]

I usually dont feed hay until Dec or Jan and start rotation on march1st. . Got away from me last year. Dry fall was not expected for us. Smarter now. Kinda worked out with prices up.

I pretty much follow the same practice and ideas as you. Always a learning process. Use a tub year round. Rotate daily. Try to keep about 35-45 day rotation. Hard to do when the weather doesn't coooperate. Running about 30 days each rotation now. Just need to loose them 2yr olds. Off to the barn....