Ten things to know about backgrounding cattle 

Dale Blasi, Kansas State University beef cattle nutrition professor, told the audience at the recent HPJ Live in Wichita, Kansas, many producers are looking at how to most efficiently grow calves after they leave the farm or ranch.  

“Given today’s market excitement, there’s been a lot of sharp pencils and very hard looking at various means by which to most efficiently grow these calves,” he said. “We need to improve efficiency in all aspects of management, as well as nutrition.” 

Backgrounding calves has many variables and during that time the calves face many challenges. He believes there are about 10 necessities important to those who are caring for calves during the backgrounding stage. Those are, he said, in no particular order, are: 

• Nutritional requirements 
• Manage feed intake 
• Optimize forage utilization 
• Cost effective by-products 
• Routine bunk sample analysis 
• Grain processing 
• Minimize environmental stress 
• Feed additives 
• Growth implants 
• Evaluate animal performance and cost of gain on regular basis

Nutritional requirements

Cost of gain really comes into the equation when talking about improving nutritional efficiency. Cost of gain comprises everything incurred in the transformation of a lighter weight calf to a calf that’s at a market or feeder level size—about 500 to 700 pounds to more than 850 pounds, Blasi said. 

“The majority of the costs are nutritional related, which is why I focused on that,” he said. “But we also have to incur the costs involving labor, yardage, veterinary costs, transportation, as well as others, such as utilities and interest rate.” 

By itself, cost of gain varies anywhere from 65% to 70% of the total cost and is impacted by feed prices. 

“But really at the end of the day, looking at feed efficiency, how many pounds of feed can we convert for every pound of gain?” Blasi said. “And we’re going to have to really make that work when we’re looking at feeder calves going into a yard running around $3,000 to $3,200.” 

When calves cost that much to buy, then spending 150 to 170 days on feed, one should really take the time to do their homework. Weight growth targets are important to recognize, and those are often based on gender, weight, breed, and desired daily gain. 

“We’ve seen an incredible improvement in our genetics over the last 20 to 25 years since I’ve been with the university,” he said. 

Manage feed intake

Managing feed and dry matter intake is “perhaps the most accurate barometer” of a growing, healthy calf that’s performing. Blasi said if the calf is not growing, something’s wrong.  

By monitoring the dry matter intake, producers need to be able to monitor and score feed bunks after feeding. For example, over a 10-day period, a pen of calves should most of the time score a zero or 0.5, not more than 30 to 40% of the time. 

“You’ve got to really stay on top of that, especially if you’re using fermented feed. Weather events can cause sour feed in the bunk,” he said. “All those things we need to take into consideration as we grow these calves.” 

When it comes to forages, drought is always a consideration. At any given point in time, part of Kansas is in varying stages of drought.  

“It’s not a problem until you’re in the middle of it, trying to procure and then you’ve got to truck in feed,” he said. “You’re competing, especially down in southwest Kansas, with the growing dairy industry trying to find good, quality, dependable feed, you’re right up against others that want this very same thing.” 

Optimize forage utilization

Optimizing forage utilization becomes even more important with the cost of hay, forages and feedstuffs—especially when there’s drought or decreased rainfall causing problems. 

“In my ideal world today, I want to use as little of it as I possibly can, and yet still maintain rumen health,” he said. “But again, you have the lack of predictability of precipitation, and we do utilize long stem hay on arrival with our calves. That’s a very important bridge that we use with calves coming off the truck and getting them acquainted and settled down prior to what we do with our feeding.” 

Bunk space is important when feeding cattle, as is what’s in the feed. Proper processing of feed is crucial for the calves to get the most out of rations, he added. 

Cost effective by-products

Cost effective use of by-products can help stretch dollars, and Blasi said in Kansas there’s several processing plants with co-products available.  

“What’s really valuable about co-products?” he said. “When they go in there and they do ethanol, they take the starch out, right? That’s what they use to make the energy.” 

The resulting corn bran is full of protein, highly digestible and safer in the rumen for calves than straight starch, he said. 

A balanced ration is just important as the handling and mixing of the ration.  

“If you don’t properly mix, you can lose about 8% of daily gain, or about 5% in feed efficiency,” he said. “A lot of the feed additives that you use, that you incorporate in your diet to improve efficiency, you can negate those effects if you’re not doing a good job of preparing the feed.” 

Minimize environmental stress

Environmental stress can influence calf performance too. Blasi likened it to the phrase “trimming the sails,” Ranchers hear about genetic potential, but there are also environmental influences. 

“If you took all the negative environmental impacts on a plant or an animal, they’re going to perform much greater (if they’re not there),” he said. “You’re improving more opportunity for animal performance to realize its true genetic potential.” 

Shade is one example of improving environmental stress and growing cattle. Studies Blasi has performed at K-State have shown decreases in water consumption, even with limit feeding. Even changing feeding times to periods of cooler weather, night versus morning can influence feed efficiency.  

“An animal consumes a diet. It’s being digested in the rumen, and then it goes into the small intestine. There’s heat produced, and that’s what those animals are trying to get rid of when there’s stressful conditions,” Blasi said. “In the summer, you want to feed them at night, because it’s cooler at night, they don’t have the stress. Wintertime, the same way. It’s getting cold at night, and they’re producing more heat.” 

Growth implants

As for growth supplements and implants, Blasi said ionophores are responsible from anywhere to 3 to 13% improvement in feed efficiency. 

“Direct but microbial variable responses may be easier to make an argument for their use,” he said, particularly when cattle prices are high and can provide a return on investment. “Sometimes you get a good lick and sometimes we just don’t see a penny, but it’s there.” 

Growth implants, when possible, should be taken advantage of. Blasi said to read the rules though.  

“Just know that if you retain ownership of calves from the backgrounding into the feed yard, you’re greatly restricted on what you can do,” he said. “Put your calves on the open market, and there’s another person that takes them, as I understand it, that person has full latitude to do whatever. They don’t have prior knowledge of those calves.” 

According to Blasi, numerous studies have shown improvements in daily gain and feed efficiency from 6 to 8%, respectively, with growth implants.  

“Carryover effects can be variable. Seems to be dependent upon marbling and carcass trait selection,” he said. 

Evaluation

Evaluating animal performance and cost of gain on a regular basis is necessary. 

“Scales are essential. You need to routinely monitor animal performance,” he said. “You need to know your calves.” 

Kylene Scott can be reached at 620-227-1804 or [email protected].