Different strategies when feeding cattle

As I go around the country, I receive lots of different opinions on the best way to feed animals. There are farmers who will put in enough silage to do the cattle for three to four days. I even know a few that will put in enough for a whole week.

This all seems very handy and saves on the workload, but I wonder is it the best way to get the most out of the cattle?

When we all sit down to our Christmas dinner, everything is fresh and delicious. Then when we have to eat the leftovers the next day, it’s not quite as good. If it lasts to the third day, you are not really fussed whether you eat it or not. If you were still trying to eat it a week later, you surely wouldn’t be too keen.

For me, this starts to put everything in a bit of perspective. It would be nice to think that the silage would still be tasty after sitting out for a week, but in reality this is not the case.

Perhaps worst of all is the farmer who never cleans out the trough. How would you like if it your dinner this evening was put on top of the food you left behind the previous day?

System

I have got into the system of feeding cattle twice a day and this seems to work well. It means a little extra work, but I think I am gaining reward with better performance.

When some people come to visit my farm, they think that I am starving my cattle. This is because I always like to see the food cleared up before I give them any more.

A lot of farmers are of the opinion that ad-lib meal feeding is best for feeding beef cattle (especially with bull beef). This used to be the way that I fed my bulls, but now I try to just give them what they can eat in one feed.

It’s just like ourselves when we are offered some delicious desserts. We will gorge ourselves until we can eat no more and we feel sick. Then, if we go back in a few hours and it’s still sitting there, we might try a little bit more, but we certainly wouldn’t eat as much as before.

So it seems logical that we should think of the cattle the same way that we would ourselves.

Behaviour

I was listening recently to a young lady giving a talk on animal behaviour and there was one thing that stuck in my head. She said that we jump into pens of cattle to check the drinkers and then hop out on to the silage with dung on our boots. Well there you are – would we like to drop our dinner on the ground and then lift it and eat it? With feeding cattle, perhaps it would be wise to take a little time to think about what is really going on.