9 management tips when feeding dairy-beef animals this winter

Are you feeding dairy-beef animals this winter? Gordon Peppard, DairyBeef 500 Advisor, shares nine key tips to maximise performance, limit costs and ensure animals remain healthy over the winter months.

Every day cattle are on farm there are significant costs associated with keeping them. Therefore, adequate weight gain each and every day is required so that animals cover their own cost and leave a margin for the farmer.

1). Maximise intake

In order to maximise your performance over the winter feeding period, you need to provide all the correct parameters to achieve maximum intake. It is essential to minimise stress and digestive upsets. Maximising intake and increasing growth rates will reduce days to slaughter and improve your feed conversion efficiency.

Lower dry matter silage can lead to poor thrive as animals are unable to consume a minimum of 2% of their bodyweight on a dry matter basis. For example, a 300kg weanling would require a minimum of 6 -7kg of dry matter per day. If the silage is only 20% dry matter, they would need to eat 30-35kg of fresh silage per day if no concentrates were fed.

2). Pen space

Every finishing animal on slats will require 2.5 to 3m² and weanlings a minimum of 1.5 to 2m². Increase the lying space where animals are on straw. Where possible, animals should be grouped according to their weight. Where there are too many animals in a pen, then there are less feeding opportunities for each animal. Every time they get a chance to eat they will consume larger volumes of feed, producing more acid in the rumen, increasing the chances of rumen upsets.

3). Feed space

Ensure that all animals have enough feeding space (see recommended feed space in table 1 below), so that every animal in the pen can feed at the same time and that there is no bullying.

Table 1: Recommended feeding space requirements

4). Water

There should be fresh, clean water available at all times. If you wouldn’t drink it yourself, it’s not clean enough! Have a minimum of one trough per 10 animals. Depending on diet type, particularly where high concentrate/grain diets are fed, large animals could require over 60 litres of water per day, check your troughs to ensure that they can supply this.

5). Feed

Feed should be of excellent quality with a high feed value. Ensure that the forage is palatable, poor quality silage will reduce intake and cause digestive upsets. Diet should be consistent, fed at the same time every day, and the levels should be adjusted to avoid waste. Silage should be tested and feed concentrates accordingly. Feed should be balanced for minerals and vitamins. Additives may have a role to play as a buffer to stabilise the rumen.

6). Housing

Ensure that there is good ventilation but avoiding drafts at animal level. The animal should have a dry lie and be comfortable. Avoid mixing animals once they are housed as this increases stress.

Have the feed barrier at the correct height; rub marks on the back of the neck indicate that it is too low and is restricting access and therefore intake. Clean troughs regularly and remove waste feed. Troughs should have a smooth surface and not rough stone or damaged concrete as damage to the tongue when licking will cause soreness and reduce intakes.

7). Health plan

Have a health programme in place to ensure that worms, liver fluke, rumen fluke and external parasites like lice and mange are controlled and are not affecting performance. Watch out for lameness and treat/footbath as required. Watch withdrawal periods where animals will become fit for slaughter in the near future.

8). Know your market specifications

Make yourself familiar with the carcass specifications of your factory and know the target carcass weights required. Are you finishing heifers, steers or bulls? Each will have different finishing feed periods. Watch heifers and early-maturing animals don’t go over fat. Heifers have the shortest feeding period, then steers followed by bulls with the longest feeding period.

9). Monitor performance

The winter housing period on farms in Ireland can represent between 25 and 40% of the yearly production cycle depending on farm location.

Achieving a good performance, with good average daily gains, over the winter is essential in order to keep your farm’s weight gain high, increasing farm output and reducing the days to slaughter.

Poor performance means extending the animal’s lifetime on the farm, increasing feed required, reducing stocking rate and ultimately reducing performance and profitability.

Regular weighing of animals is the best way to accurately monitor your farm’s performance. Ideally, animals would be weighed at or just before housing, two months later and again at turn out to grass. Regular weighing throughout the second grazing season is also very important.

Gordon Peppard is an advisor on Teagasc’s DairyBeef 500 Programme. For more information, tips and advice and to sign-up to the DairyBeef 500 newsletter, click here.