Feeding a beefer for slaughter

[djdewetsa]

We have a product BeefMaker - We mix it with only maize. And is fed without roufhage.
Almost all feedlots use them as its the cheapest and fastest way to feed steers for slaughter.
However its only for slaughter animals.

[carragheendexters]

Hi Everyone,

Joel,

It really depends on the season and the age of the animal that we want to kill. If we have had a good season and good feed, we will perhaps only feed for 30 days, just to top them off. However if it is during the dry season, or drought conditions, they will need longer and more grain. My preference is rolled barley, and perhaps a little crushed lupins as well if we need to get the protein up. We are able to buy rolled barley with molasses already mixed in, which the cattle love and gives the more complex carbs plus also the sugars from the molasses. Here in Australia corn is rarely used, we don't grow it to the extent that you guys over there do, and it is quite expensive. The most that I will ever feed corn is to the chooks in winter, to help them keep warm. If used in summer they would get too fat. The dairy areas over here will sometimes grow corn, but for greenchop. They also grow sorghum for greenchop as well. We also do grow other forage crops such as oats, lucerne, millet, clover etc, as well as ordinary pasture hay or silage.

We are currently using a complete pellet for the cattle which is produced locally for local conditions, when there is little or no forage on the ground. It has barley, sorghum, and lucerne (alfalafa) hay, straw, plus a few other additives (minerals, vitamins etc) all hammer milled and then extruded into a pellet, which we are finding more economical than using hay.

We don't feed to a time frame but to a fat cover. We try and have about 4-6mm (maybe about 1/5inch) fat on the ribs and 6-8mm (maybe about 1/3rd inch) fat on P8 site.

We find that this gives good overall fat cover for a reasonably long hanging time, without any drying of the meat. Also, as unhealthy as it is, we like the fat as it gives the meat flavour. We don't worry too much about lean meat, or a low fat diet.

Patti and Lakeportfarms, you are so fortunate to have good growing conditions to produce good pasture. I am sure that your pasture is very high in natural sugars when  it is kept short and actively growing, and is great for finishing cattle on.

 We do have some areas in Australia like that, some parts of Victoria and of course Tasmania (which the others on here never let you forget that it has perfect conditions for cattle LOL). We have 2 properties, one on the coast where our main pasture species in summer are things like kikuyu and paspaslum , which are sub-tropical and have very low digestibility if longer than  10cm (4 inches). We can get some clovers to grow but little persistence, the kike overwhelms the clover. We have a legume called maku lotus (Tony-Tonhou, may know this one, it is  a NZ species) that we grow but it only has a short growing season. During late autumn, winter, and early spring, nothing grows. The perennial rye is overwhelmed by the kike and killed off, little persistence. You can grow annual and Italian rye, but it is expensive to grow and only get one season out of it. The species of pasture you talk about don't not grow here on the coast, we are very limited as to what grows. The soil fertility is not so great, as the high rainfall leaches the soil.

On our other property which is 4 hours inland, we are limited by rainfall. We have the most beautiful fertile soil, and very little rain, which is seasonal. We don't get rain from later in spring right through to late autumn. By don't get rain, I mean none, or not enough to even lay the dust. We do strip graze, just for budgeting the dry feed that we have, and my tread-in posts have become hammer-ins, thump-ins, getthemins-anywhichwayyoucan-ins, at the moment. The ground is now so hard that I struggle, sometimes I just give up and get my husband to do it. Then you have to factor in the regularity that we have droughts, not the 6 month dry periods that many call droughts, but sometimes the years of drought, the last one was something like 10 years. On our inland property, once the feed is eaten, it will not grow again till the next rains, it is dead. When it rains, where it went to head and seeded, it will all shoot away again for some great pasture. Late winter and early spring is our best growth season. We have mostly annuals, and sub clover. I'll try and post some photos of what it looks like in summer over here. You will be shocked.

I'm sure you also have areas over there in the US that would have climate conditions very similar to what we have here in Australia, it really is that you have to work with what you've got and where you live, and not everywhere is ideal for grass finishing cattle because of the climate, or the soil structure. One thing we don't have is your snow BRRRRRRR, you can keep that one LOL. Though, have to clarify, some areas do have some snow, we just don't.

regards Louise

[lakeportfarms]

Louise, I think you post perfectly sums up the fact that we all have our unique challenges to raising our Dexters, however their adaptability and diversity of type (along with all of the other well published attributes) are well suited for a variety of conditions. Despite the traits the breed possesses, a one size fits all approach to how we handle those conditions for one, may be a recipe for failure for another. I think if I moved to another part of our country, or there to Australia, though I'd have a bit of a headstart in some things, I'd be starting back at the beginning with what works, and what doesn't in many others. Thanks for your particular description of your own challenges. I'll keep our snow and green grass in the summer though..lol

Hans

[ssrdex]

Hi Louise, I've got to ditto Hans...thanks very much for the well thought out and concise response!

[ssrdex]

Hi Louise, I've got to ditto Hans...thanks very much for the well thought out and concise response!