Feeding Them Right
Stocker cattle operations can be diverse, but whether you own the cattle outright or custom graze, keep a close eye on seasonal pasture and supplements.
By Gary DiGiuseppe
There as many supplement options for stocker operators as there are types of stocker arrangements, and the choice of one can depend upon the other.
Dr. Ryan Reuter, agricultural research specialist for The Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation in Ardmore, Okla., says, “The classic, typical stocker operator would buy their calves at the sale barn and graze them until they use up the forage resource that they’ve grown and then sell those cattle, either back at a sale barn or direct to a feedyard.”
Those producers are exposed to the full risk of the cattle market, while others custom graze for other cattle owners or for feedlots and get paid by pound of gain. Still others partner with the feedlot or with the cow-calf operator.
So, the amount of supplementation may depend on the stocker’s stake in the cattle. “If you own the cattle, then however you can improve the gain of those cattle, you stand to get all the value of that extra gain,” Reuter says.
If you are providing custom grazing for cattle that belong to another owner, then Reuter suggests including details in the custom grazing agreement that explain who is “going to pay for what kind of supplements and what kind of supplements that you want to use. If you’re splitting the value of the gain with the cattle owner, that limits a lot of your supplementation options, just due to cost.”
While Reuter says all of the points in the custom grazing agreement are negotiable and every situation is different, the standard agreement for cattle on summer grass calls for the grazer to provide forage and perhaps a mineral supplement, but not supplemental feed.
He says, “If there’s a need for a protein supplement later in the summer — either the grazer or the cattle owner wants to do that — then they’ll negotiate how they’re going to split the costs and the revenue.”
Reuter says custom grazers typically get 40 to 50 cents for every pound they put on the cattle. Since they’re not getting the full return on cattle prices, they’ll look at the most efficient supplement program available from a feed-to-weight conversion standpoint. “I’m going to feed something like a high protein supplement in a small package,” he says, “maybe just 1 pound per day, and make sure it has an ionophore in it.”
Ionophores carry hitchhiking chemicals through cell membranes. They’re also used in the treatment of coccidiosis, but in this instance Reuter says they improve cattle feed efficiency.
He would only feed the supplement over the latter half of the grazing season, from July 15, and would expect the cattle to convert it at a rate of 3 pounds of supplement to 1 pound of additional gain. If the cattle need to gain at an even faster rate, Reuter says, “I’m going to have to visit with the cattle owner and get him to share in some of that expense or compensate me a little bit more for the additional gain that I’m going to be able to put on those cattle.”
If you own the cattle, on the other hand, you’ll get the full return from that weight gain — as of this past June, that penciled out to $1 to $1.10 per pound. “That gives me a lot more flexibility on what I can do for supplementation,” says Reuter.
“I may supplement the cattle from Day 1, when they go on pasture, and start by feeding 2 to 3 pounds of feed per day. Then, as we get later into the summer and the cattle get bigger, and the grass is a little lower quality, I might raise that up to 4 to 5 pounds of feed per day. I’m going to have more expense in terms of dollars of supplement that I’m putting into each animal, but I’m going to get better performance out of the animal. And I get all the value of the gain, and so that’s a more profitable situation.”
Supplement is different from substitute
Reuter differentiates between supplementation and substitution, which was practiced by producers during the worst of the 2011 drought when lack of grass forced them to turn to feedstuffs.
“You have to feed at a pretty high rate of supplement to offset a substantial amount of forage intake,” he says. “They weren’t really trying to improve the performance of cattle grazing grass. They were trying to make up for a severe lack of forage that they normally would have.”
He says there’s been a tremendous amount of research in the U.S. in the last 50 years on the effects of different feed supplements at different rates, on different kinds of cattle, and with different kinds of forages. As a result, livestock nutritionists can give producers a good idea of what to expect when they employ a supplementation program. However, Reuter notes wryly, “Not all cattle always read the textbooks about what they’re supposed to do. There are a lot of variables, and it’s a pretty complex biological system.”
Much of the recent research has been on the use of byproducts, which has grown rapidly with the availability of dried distillers grains from the rapidly expanding ethanol industry and corn gluten feed from other processors. Soybean hulls have also risen in popularity.
What do distillers grains do for stocker operations?
Dr. Jason Banta, assistant professor and Extension beef cattle specialist at the Texas A&M AgriLife Research and Extension Center in Overton, says for producers with access to distillers grains, it can be a good supplement.
“Typically we think of distillers grains as a protein supplement,” Banta says, “and it works really well for that, but in recent years there has been research using distillers grains on a winter annual pasture.” While cattle on winter annuals don’t necessarily need the protein, those producers are using distillers grain as an energy supplement due to cost, and Banta says it’s worked well for them.
There are some handicaps to using distillers grains. They come in both wet and dry versions. Wet distillers grains have not been dehydrated and have a very short shelf life. Banta says, “A lot of producers are just unable to feed up a full truckload before it starts going bad. So sometimes even though it looks very attractive from a cost standpoint, because of storage and spoilage concerns, it may not be the best choice.”
Dried distillers grain with solubles (DDGS) are a different situation. “We don’t have the storage problem on it,” reports Banta. “We do have some handling issues on it, though. It usually doesn’t store in bins really well. We usually look at storing it in some kind of a commodity shed.”
There are also nutritional issues. Banta says distillers grains have very unfavorable calcium-to-phosphorus ratios, and higher concentrations of it in the feed may need to be accompanied with a calcium supplement. Similarly, the sulfur level in distillers grains can be very high, although it’s highly variable from batch to batch. Again, it becomes a concern if distillers grains are replacing a lot of forage.
In addition, distillers grains may contain aflatoxin, and the producer needs to make sure he’s not bringing home a feedstuff that will sicken his cattle.
Banta says the feedstuff chosen will be dictated in part by the condition and availability of the forage. “If we’re grazing a winter annual forage such as wheat or ryegrass,” he says, “during a large part of the year, that forage has much more protein in it than those cattle are ever able to utilize.”
In that situation inadequate energy intake may be limiting performance, so an energy supplement like corn or soybean hulls is needed to help the cattle utilize some of the extra protein.
The opposite of that, says Banta, is a situation “where we’re grazing some native range pasture, doing some summer grazing or maybe even some stockpiled native range during the fall or winter.” In that case protein is the limiting nutrient that’s reducing intake, and the feedstuff of choice would be strategic small amounts of cottonseed meal or soybean meal, just a couple of times a week.
In yet another situation, if the cattle are grazing a warm-season perennial forage like bermudagrass during the summer, Banta says their average unsupplemented daily gains may not be much more than a pound a day. “In that situation,” he says, “we’re probably going to come in with a combination protein and energy supplement, to help get some more weight gain on those cattle. So it’s really a case-by-case basis as far as what’s going to be the most appropriate supplement.”
Banta has developed a chart to help guide producers in the amount of supplementation needed to meet their average daily gain (ADG) goal.
Match the supplement plan to the marketing plan
Another determining factor for supplementation is the marketing plan of the producer. “The pasture may be sufficient where the calves are gaining a pound … or 2 pounds a day,” says Banta, “but based on when the producer is trying to sell the cattle, even 2 pounds a day may not reach their target market weight.” In that situation, supplement is needed to stay current with the marketing plan.
Or, the pasture may be deficient in either energy or protein. Rather than attempt to test standing forage, which is always changing in quality, “we’ll look at the species of forage we’re using, what the growing conditions are like — have we had good rainfall? — and then try to look at historic performance for that species of forage in our area,” he says.
The type of cattle the producer plans to put on the pasture is another factor.
Banta says it’s a good idea to occasionally check-weigh at least some of the cattle to see whether you’re on track to reach your marketing window or, if not, to decide what kind of supplement to use. Frequent checks are not needed. For cattle that will be on grass for 100 days, he recommends only 1 or 2 weighings at strategic times.
The choice of supplement does not necessarily have to be the one that offers the cheapest protein or energy per unit. “Maybe there’s one that’s just slightly more expensive, but it’s easier for us to handle or we can get a more consistent supply of that product,” Banta says. “Or maybe it has some nutrient other than protein or energy that’s valuable for us in that situation.”
That can be calcium which, as was earlier noted, may be needed with high distillers grains rations. Banta says additional calcium may also be needed for cattle grazing winter annual forages like wheat and ryegrass. In those cases, calcium may be the nutrient that will “become first limiting, meaning it’s the one that limits the amount of weight gain the cattle will have.”
In those cases, adding more calcium through a feed or mineral supplement can mean the difference between ADGs of 2, 2.1 or 2.2 pounds per day.
Remember that supplement is used when it’s needed. Banta says, “There may be times where we start off not supplementing and then we supplement for a period of time, but then we get some more rains and that forage starts producing better, so then we back the cattle off the supplement… Our supplementation’s really going to be dictated by that forage quality and performance of the cattle.”
“Feeding Them Right” is excerpted from the September 2012 issue of The Cattleman magazine.