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OSU Extension BEEF Team

BEEF Cattle questions may be directed to the OSU Extension BEEF Team through Stephen Boyles or Stan Smith, Editor

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Previous issues of the BEEF Cattle letter

Issue # 558

October 17, 2007

Diet Management of Developing Beef Heifers - Steve Boyles, OSU Extension Beef Specialist

Heifers are commonly developed most economically on high forage rations supplemented with grains and grain by-products, protein concentrates, and minerals. Here are some example rations based on varying forage quality, heifer weight, and gain.

Example rations for developing replacement heifers.

Forages vary considerably in level of protein and energy and should be analyzed in order to accurately balance rations. Corn silage typically is higher in energy than most forages but only moderate in protein and will produce adequate heifer growing gains with little or no grain feeding if protein levels are balanced. There is limited opportunity for use of crop residues such as straw or corn stover in growing heifer's diet, since these products are generally low in energy, protein, vitamins, and minerals. Gains of about 1 to 1.5 pounds per day might be anticipated by heifer calves grazing corn stalks in late fall and early winter when supplemented with protein, vitamins, and minerals.

Insufficient energy intake results in poor growth and can have devastating effects on breeding performance of heifers as yearlings and on their subsequent performance in the cowherd. The following is research which examined the effect of winter nutrition level on heifer development, reproductive performance and calf production.

Effect of winter nutrition level during heifer development on subsequent performance of replacement heifers.(1)

Producers should consider splitting the heifers into two or more feeding groups (based on weight) if a large group of heifers will be developed. This will allow more precise feeding of each group based on necessary target breeding weights and daily gains.

Minimum Nutrient Requirements of Heifers (100% Dry matter basis, NRC-1996)

Energy Requirement - Listed requirements are for cattle under thermoneutral conditions. Increasing listed requirement for TDN by 1% for each 1 degree drop below 10øF for cattle in winter hair should be sufficient in adjusting for cold temperatures. Under dry cold conditions to -10°F intake may increase to compensate.

Protein Requirements - Listed requirements should be adequate in 50% of cases. Increasing listed requirement by 15% should be sufficient in 85% of cases. Increasing listed requirement by 30% should be sufficient in 100% of cases.

Mineral Requirements - In addition to listed calcium and phosphorous requirements, the following are suggested minimum requirements for trace minerals: sodium chloride .08%,

potassium .65%, magnesium .10%, sulfur .10%, cobalt 10 ppm, iodine .5 ppm, iron 50 ppm, manganese 40 ppm, selenium .20 ppm, zinc 30 ppm.

Vitamin Requirements - Suggested requirements for growing heifers per pound of dry ration are 1000 IU/Vit A, 125 IU/Vit D, and 5-25 IU/Vit E.

Weaning and first appearance of the heifer into the growing lot is a critical period. Calves which have not been creep fed must be trained to eat harvested forage and grain from a bunk. It is important that first feeds are highly palatable, safe, and high in nutrients. Complete commercial starter feeds are convenient choices.

Water, minerals and vitamins are sometimes the forgotten nutrients. Feed analysis will help assure you are meeting their needs. Remember, the supplement you use for forage-based diets and grain-based diets probably are not the same. Work with someone knowledge able of nutrition in meeting these nutritional needs.

General recommendations for mineral needs.

If a scale is available, it is helpful to weigh the heifers every 30 to 60 days to insure they are on target. If all heifers cannot be weighed, 10 to 20 percent that are representative of the group could be weighed to estimate how the whole group is performing. Diets can be slightly modified in response to observed performance.

What Are You Going to Do with Your Heifers? - Richard Stephens, OSU Extension Educator, Gallia County

What am I going to do with my replacement heifers this fall? With feeder calf prices doing well and the shortage of forages due to the drought, many beef producers are asking this question. There may be an alternative however. The Ohio Cattlemen Association and OSU Extension have teamed up to offer the Ohio Heifer Development Program and Sale. The program started last year with a pilot site in Brown County where 75 heifers were developed and AI bred to calving ease bulls.

Why would you want someone else to develop your replacement heifers? Its simple, EFFICIENCY. The misconception that you can turn heifers out with older cows and a herd bull is one that plagues southeastern Ohio. Heifers need to be fed differently than cows to maximize their potential. Heifers that weigh 600- 700 pounds are at a critical part of their growth. They need the proper mix of energy, protein, fat, and minerals to not only grow frame and muscle, but also to properly develop their reproductive tract. Whereas a 5 year old cow for example, needs a diet that is going to maintain her condition and allow calf growth. Your heifer, when fed properly will tend to mature earlier and be more efficient.

What is efficiency when talking about replacement heifers? Efficiency is characterized in many different ways. First, it's ease of conception. When you are turning your cows out with a herd bull and don't care when calves hit the ground, this isn't that important. But if you are trying to artificially inseminate or calve in a relatively small window, ease of conception is very important. Ease of conception means the heifer/cow conceives on the first heat cycle. The more cows that you can get to do this, the smaller your calving window is.

This has two major advantages. One is your calving season is shorter which means you have less time in the field looking for calves, doctoring calves, and caring for mothers. The second thing this does, which is probably the biggest advantage, is that the calf crop will be more uniform. When it comes to marketing time, you will be better off by running ten #500 weight calves through the sale ring than by running a couple 500 pounders, a 400 pounder, four 350 pounders and so on.

The second efficiency factor here is knowing whether or not that heifer should even be in your herd. If she grows great but yet her reproductive tract is immature at breeding time, she will have trouble conceiving, or if she does conceive, there may be complications in calving. By utilizing a heifer development facility, they can more easily evaluate these things early on and give you recommendations on whether she may need to be culled. They will also look at temperament. Many of us are not around our cattle one on one everyday. So the first real contact you will have with this new heifer is when she is having her first calf. By culling for temperament early, you can help assure yourself that your herd is calm and easily worked with.

The other way the Ohio Heifer Development Program is efficient is that it allows you to artificially breed your replacement heifers to a proven calving ease bull. Many of us have lost heifers because that first calf is just too big for her to pass. Or we spend the majority of calving season with aching backs because we have to pull so many calves from first calf heifers. Using a proven calving ease bull will minimize this problem. And with the system the Ohio Heifer Development Program offers, you will have many bulls from many breeds to choose from at a discounted price due to the fact that they are buying in volume.

The last point I would like you to consider is this, over the past few months, we have experienced some great hardships as agricultural producers. No rain has caused for short hay and practically no pasture. If you want to keep the cows you have and hold onto to one, two, or three of those special heifers that you know will be great cows, but you don't have feed or space to keep them, consider this program.

The Ohio Heifer Development Program and Sale will be taking consignments through the month of October with heifers to be delivered to one of their three sites in November. Find more details on participating in the Ohio Heifer Development Program as well as heifer nomination information on the Ohio Cattlemen's Association web site or call Bill Doig at 614.873.6736.

In response, from now through December 7, 2007, the EQIP Program will offer producers the opportunity to apply for funding to re-establish damaged sacrifice pasture. Realizing that producers who are following a grazing management plan may have unstable sacrifice pastures, Ohio NRCS is planning this "special" EQIP program to assist livestock producers in reestablishing pasture vegetation in an effort to reduce the potential for soil erosion and water pollution. Preliminary details of the program include:

* Farmers are eligible for an incentive payment of $127.56/ac. for 10 percent of their grazing operation acres not to exceed 20 acres.

* All farmers, Statewide, meeting the EQIP "eligibilities" issues, currently in a grazing operation, and meeting the criteria of using a "sacrifice pasture" will be guaranteed a 2008 EQIP contract for this practice

* This special consideration is for conservation practice code (512) (Pasture and Hayland Seedings) only. No other conservation practices will be allowed to be tagged with this type of application. If a farmer so chooses to apply for additional grazing type practices his/her application will be moved into the General sign-up and must compete with other 2008 applicants.

* All applications will be "marked" as a "high priority" in ProTracts and funding for these applications will not effect county 2008 EQIP allocations. The NRCS State Office will a create a special pool to fund these type applications.

Sign-up for the regular 2008 EQIP Program is scheduled to end on November 2, 2007. Contact your local NRCS/SWCD office for details on either program.

Fall Cutting of Alfalfa - Mark Sulc, OSU Extension Forage Specialist

Many Ohio alfalfa producers will likely take another cutting this fall. The late spring freeze followed by dry weather reduced forage yields across Ohio, so producers are now very anxious to harvest any available forage. While fall regrowth is poor to nonexistent in southern Ohio, alfalfa regrowth in central and northern regions of Ohio is very good.

Unfortunately, cutting alfalfa in October can carry serious risk to the health of the stand, especially this year. Many stands were weakened by the late spring freeze earlier this year, and may not have fully recovered from that stress because of the poor growing conditions this past summer. Only now are those stands having the opportunity to recover energy reserves through the vigorous fall regrowth and favorable temperatures and sunshine we've been experiencing.

Cutting now will interrupt the process of storage of energy and proteins in alfalfa taproots. If cut now, regrowth during the remainder of the fall will utilize those taproot reserves, which will result in the plant having lower energy status going into the winter.

But many producers are in a critical situation with the short hay supplies. So how can we reduce the potential for damage from cutting alfalfa stands again this fall?

A LATE fall harvest is a safer alternative than cutting now in mid-October, BUT ONLY IF the soil is well drained. By LATE, I mean as close as possible to a killing frost of alfalfa, which happens when air temperatures reach 25 F for several hours. This often does not happen until sometime in November in Ohio.

I know that the weather is usually lousy in November for cutting forage, but waiting to get closer to the killing frost will prevent late fall regrowth that "burns up" energy reserves, and will reduce the risk of less vigorous stands next spring.

This spring I observed large variations among alfalfa stands in the damage caused by the late spring frost and the ability of those stands to recover. The stands that were healthy and strong suffered much less damage and recovered more quickly from the late freeze than the stands that were weak. Previous cutting during the critical period of fall growth and the resultant low energy status of the alfalfa in the spring was a factor in reducing its ability to recover from that late freeze.

A fall harvest after a killing frost is relatively safe IF the soil is well drained and there is no history or risk of heaving on that particular soil. Without residue cover, the temperature of the soil will fluctuate much more, so the potential for heaving injury is greater. This happened in a study at Wooster, when a November 1st cutting resulted in heaving of about 50% of the plants. Where no fall cutting was made, less than 10% of the plants heaved.

Producers often feel that cutting in October has not damaged their alfalfa stands in the past. But how many leave sections that were not cut in the fall to be able to objectively evaluate whether the fall cutting indeed did not reduce yield the following year?

I am often asked whether leaving a large amount of fall growth can harm the alfalfa stand in the winter. The fear is that the alfalfa will smother itself out. I have let pure stands of alfalfa go into the winter with a lot of growth, even more than we see this fall, and I have never experienced a problem or seen the crop "smother out."

Fall management of alfalfa is one of the few controllable factors that will potentially influence the health of your alfalfa stand next spring. It could play a determining role in how much yield you get next year, as it did this spring after the late freeze. If you don't need the forage, walk away from it and let it insulate your stand this winter. It won't smother out because of excessive alfalfa growth.

If you do need the forage now and to get through this winter, then taking a cutting in early November or after a killing frost will reduce the risk of injury to the stand. But try to limit late cutting of alfalfa to well-drained soils with good pH and fertility status. Also leave a 6-inch stubble.

Finally, if you do cut alfalfa this fall, leave some strips or areas that you do not cut within the same field. You might learn something interesting next spring about fall cutting on your farm by having those side-by-side comparisons.

Alfalfa Stand Evaluation - Paul Craig, Dauphin County Extension, Penn State University

All hay producers recognize the fact that as an alfalfa stand ages, it eventually thins out. There are many factors that cause stand thinning. These include diseases, insect and weed pressure, poor fertility and poor harvest management. The big question is not why the stand is failing but rather is the existing older stand thick enough to keep for another season?

How thick a stand is directly affects both the yield and quality of the cutting; however economics of existing forage supplies and costs of reseeding compound the decision on individual farms. Unfortunately, at some point, a decision must be made. The current alfalfa stand evaluation tool is based on work done at The University of Wisconsin by Dr. Dan Undersander and evaluated in Pennsylvania by Dr. Marvin Hall at Penn State.

These forage agronomists recommend looking at alfalfa stands in the fall for the best method for stand assessment. They note that a second appraisal is helpful in the spring after the stand breaks dormancy. Fall evaluations help to identify troubled stands that may be prone to winter injury. This can allow for tillage or fall applied herbicides for optimum rotation affects. Spring evaluations reveal winter injury damage.

Wisconsin research notes that stem counts are more accurate for estimating yield potentials than crown counts. A stand may have density of 5 to 8 crowns but individual crowns may have few, poorly growing shoots. Research indicates that total stem counts per square foot is a better method. Their conclusions are that stands with more than 55 stems per square foot will have maximum yields; stands with fewer than 40 stems per square foot were not profitable and needed to be replaced; and densities between 40 and 55 will need additional considerations.

In addition to counting stems, agronomists recommend evaluating the condition of crowns and roots stand at the same time. By considering the crown and root health, an estimate of the long range yield potential can be part of the final decision. Healthy crowns and roots are large, symmetrical or balanced in shape, have many roots and shoots, are resistant to bark peeling and have creamy bright internal coloration. Crowns and roots with few roots, a soft feel and/or darken spots are damaged and prone to decline. Healthy stands have less than 30% injured crowns.

To evaluate your alfalfa stands this fall, make a simple 12 inch x 12 inch frame of wire or small PVC pipe. Select 3 or 4 areas of the field, toss the frame and then count alfalfa stems in this area. An alfalfa height of about 6 inches helps. Keep track of your results and then average the counts across the field. The most reliable estimate will result from multiple tosses. Then dig a few crowns from the nearby area and look for signs of weak crowns.

Stands with stem densities of greater than 55 per square foot can still be high yielding with some crown damage. However, many stands with densities in the lower 40's/square foot may also have a high yield potential if those stems are growing on healthy vigor crowns. There is no magical number to make this decision error free. Nevertheless, taking the time to walk (or 4-wheel) over your stands this fall may help you identify potentially poorer stands in time to modify cropping plans for 2008.

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BEEF Cattle is a weekly publication of Ohio State University Extension in Fairfield County and the OSU Beef Team. Contributors include members of the Beef Team and other beef cattle specialists and economists from across the U.S.

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