Over the past five years, John has been working closely with the nutrition team in Kiernan Milling.

“Since I started working with David, I’ve definitely seen a major improvement in the performance of my animals,” he said. The farm operates mostly heifer and bullock systems, with a small proportion of bulls killed annually. His diets generally consist of meal, grass silage, straw, syrup and brewers. Likewise, when available, he also incorporates chocolate or fodder beet into his diets, however in recent years, due to price and availability, neither of these feeds have been included.

In this tight margin industry, it’s so important to maximise weight gain on your farm as efficiently and as economically as possible. That’s why on John’s farm, I incorporate whatever by-products are available and if they have a role to play and make economic sense, I incorporate them into his diets and balance them up nutritionally from my end with the meal.

This spring, we carried out a trial on the 68 cattle (43 bullocks/25 heifers) that were bought into the farm between 29 April and 2 May. Cattle comprised of numerous breeds including Hereford, Angus, Charolais, Limousin and Simmental crosses. Upon arrival, they were dosed for fluke and worms.

On day one of the trial (3 May) they were put on a starter diet for 10 days to slowly adapt the stomach from a grass-based diet to a starch-based diet to prevent any digestive upsets and setbacks. The starter diet consisted of 4.25kg of meal, 8kg of a brewers mix (this had been pitted in the summer with beet pulp at a ratio 6kg of brewers to 1kg of beet pulp), 3kg of syrup, 20kg of silage (22% dry matter, 12.4% crude protein and 64% DMD) and 0.75kg of straw per head per day.

From day 11, they were put on their full finishing diet, which consisted of 8.7kg of meal that was fully balanced to complement all the other components of the diet.

The meal has high levels of yeast and acid, but to prevent acidosis/laminitis and similar issues, drive on the performance in the animal’s stomach by helping the bugs within utilise the feed as efficiently as possible. Similarly, the meal contained high levels of phosphorus, copper and cobalt to improve thrive/growth and also high levels of zinc to prevent any feet problems. This was made up of 9kg of brewers mix, 2.4kg of syrup, 4kg of silage and 0.75kg of straw.

The first group of cattle were killed on day 69 as they became fit (mostly Angus and Hereford). Likewise, 12 to 16 cattle were drafted for slaughter over four more weighings. The final group of cattle were killed on day 103. The results are outlined in the tables below.