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Weighing cattle at housing time should be part and parcel of herd management. The weigh scales do not lie and will tell you how well animals are fed, managed and herd genetics.
A housing weight gives a good indicator of performance at grass and helps you decide which animals to kill out of the shed, sell live or put back to grass.
It will also show up your best milking cows if calves are weighed at weaning time. Another advantage is that weighing will indicate how far off target breeding weight your replacement heifers are.
Feeding
Weighing at housing time gives a baseline for winter feeding. Monitor weight gains by weighing every 60 to 70 days indoors.
Well-bred weanlings on good-quality silage-only diet will likely gain 0.3kg to 0.4kg/day. Weight gain should be closer to 0.6kg to 0.8kg/day if 2kg/day of meal is fed with silage.
Finishing steers and heifers should be gaining 1kg to 1.3kg/day over the outlined time period on good-quality forage and a high concentrate diet. Bulls should be gaining between 1.5kg and 2.5kg/day.
Monitor
Regular weighing will show if animals are on track and covering the cost of winter feed. If animals are falling well short of target weight gain, flagging this up early gives time to take action.
Cattle may be overstocked in pens or suffering from a parasite burden. Weight gains will recover if the appropriate action is taken in time.
That means finishing dates are not delayed, stores for sale in spring have adequate liveweight and maiden heifers are heavy enough to breed.
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