 here this evening. So I'd like to welcome everyone here to our fourth night of our junior beef producer webinar series. Tonight we're going to cover show animals nutrition and we don't have a feed sales rep coming to talk. So this is not a sales presentation and I'm going to turn this over to Kurt Frailich, one of our extension agents in western North Dakota to introduce our topic tonight. But before we do that, just if you've got any questions tonight throughout the program, please put those questions into the chat or question and answer area. We do have a couple people monitoring those questions in chat area throughout the evening that we'll ask those questions on your behalf either during the presentation if we feel it's adequate at that time or when we get to the end. So start putting those questions in at any time and we'll keep track of those throughout the evening. So with that, I'm going to turn the program over to Mr. Kurt Frailich. Well, thank you, Brian. I really appreciate that and this is kind of an interesting junior beef webinar series that we've been doing. This is our fourth one of the series and tonight as you can see on the screen is show animal nutrition. I'm assuming that we have quite a few individuals that are on our program this evening that are probably some 4-H or junior members of showing some animals and maybe have some questions about getting their animal fed right and getting it right to the so it looks appropriately when they get to that target show that they have. With us this evening, I have invited Mr. Zach Carlson. Zach Carlson was a Minnesota native. He showed in 4-H when he was in his younger days in Minnesota. He went to school at North Dakota State. He received his bachelor's of science there and then went on down to the University of Nebraska and received his master's and his PhD. And one of the reasons that Mr. Carlson went for his further education and further work in this area is when he was showing animals, he kind of got a very intriguing question to himself of why am I doing this stuff? Why am I feeding certain things? Why does this all work in here? So with that, so Zach went on and we've got him coming on. So I'm going to turn the program over to Zach here. Thanks Kurt for that introduction and good evening everybody. It's certainly my pleasure to talk about, you know, show animal nutrition and kind of focus in right on our beef cattle. And this is, I'm really looking forward to tonight's presentation and then questions just because it's a little bit out of the my norm of what we normally talk about. So I'm pretty excited. And with that, I think we'll just kind of get right into it. So let me make sure I can advance slides here. So what do we need to know, right? There's lots of different angles and different approaches we can take to trying to understand more about what the feeds that we feed and what kind of target level of gains and everything like that that we need to achieve depending on, right, not only what class of animal we're talking breeding or marketing, but also right breeds and how those change in time of year, right? And if we're in prospect shows or if we're into the, you know, mid-summer jam of all the shows and you've got the show list. And so kind of where do we start and what's our best approach? And so really we'll start with a bunch of questions, right? So we'll answer a question with a bunch of questions, but we'll eventually get to some information here in just a little bit. So how much does your animal need to gain, right? That's really ultimately the question. And this doesn't matter if we're looking at market animals or if we're into our breeding heifers and everything like that, we need to kind of pick a target goal, right? And then and then work our way backwards. And so we'll get into that in just a little bit. The next question, right, is, okay, what feeds do I have available to me? Maybe you're somebody that has your own maybe operation or the capacity to mix your own feeds and create a total mix ration right there on site, or maybe that you don't have those tools or and you're looking more at some of those complete diets and getting kind of your feed comes as a as a TMR already bagged up and things like that. And there's certainly no right answer and and and all of those are are viable options. But but what feeds do you have available? And then what nutrients do you and does your animal need? So really talking then right breaking down. Not only is it important to understand what's on the back of your feed tag, but it's really important to understand if what's on the back of that feed tag is going to address your animal's nutrient requirements. And so we need to first define what those requirements are depending on again, class of animal that you have, your target gain, right? And then work our way into what feeds you have available and do those feeds then achieve your target gains. And so then of course, you know, how do I know what to feed and and and really looking again at asking that question in reference to where are you in you know, achieving your target and and maybe you know kind of what's your desired outcome for that animal for the specific shows that you're looking at. And then I think the biggest thing is, how can I adjust my animal to changes? That's really, I think the big key aspect to differences within our show industry versus maybe production applications is the fact that this animal is is very unique, very different, right? And and we treat them that way. But how how do those animals respond then to some of our diet changes that we make? Or how should we best adapt those animals to the changes that we're going to ask them to make, not only on a diet focus, right, but also on a prior leading into a show while you're at the show. And then kind of, and all those different things are added stress, we'll talk a lot about that today. And kind of how do we help that animal cope with some of the intended things that are going to happen, because they're a show animal. And so they're going to be exposed to a much different environment than some of our production animals. So first things first, I want to kick it off with how much of these animals gain, right? So this scenario you're looking at here is a market steer situation. So we have today, right, a market steer that weighs 950 pounds today. And so our target here is the North Dakota State Fair. And so we're going to project out, okay, how far away is that? You know, maybe we've got a county fair right there in the middle, you know, between this and so kind of, how are we going to pick our gain, right? And so, or what should we be gaining for those animals? And so we've got 128 days. Our target end weight, you know, is really the important aspect to this whole concept of target weight gain is you really need to know what your angle is based on that animal's genetics, right, based on its capacity to grow. Is that animal supposed to finish based on its breed and based on its genetics? Is that animal supposed to finish at 1250? Or maybe it's a bit larger of a framed animal coming from a larger framed herd. Maybe that animal's more destined to be at the 1350 or 1400. And so really kind of being able to best assess that, right, best guess as to what your kind of end goal is on that animal is really the trickiest part about this whole situation. Because other than that, in knowing what they weigh today, which we just need to utilize a scale to do that, right? And that's not always easy either if you don't have it. But if we know what they weigh today, we know what our target goal is, what we want them to be considered finished in this case, then it's math that I can get behind because I can do this simple math. And so really, it's just a function of, right, taking the difference of our target weight and our current weight, dividing it by our days. And we want this animal to gain around 2.4 pounds. Now, I would say, you know, a target gain for a market animal is going to vary a little bit and will not look exactly like animals in our production practices necessarily. Again, I go back to the fact we're adding a lot of stress to these animals. And by stress, I don't mean that they're constantly anxious or constantly nervous. Just, you know, every day stress of even if they're very comfortable with you being around, it's still an added pressure and added stress to them. So there's a lot of factors that weigh into this. But I would say, you know, 2.4, 2.7, maybe upwards of 3 pounds is a very realistic goal for market animals that are bound for the show ring. And so here, again, is that's my target that I'm going to, that I want to target with this market steer. We'll come back to this when we look at nutrient requirements and how that can can be applied to that level of gain. But I'm going to transition then to now we have same slide, but breeding heifers down here at the bottom, you can see. So now we have a 900 pound breeding heifer right now, March 21. And breeding animals are much different, of course, than market animals, right? We all know that their function right is is to return to the herd, right? Of course, and become a breeding animal, right? And so with breeding heifers, we need to think differently about how we put gain on those animals in the diet that they consume. Simply from the standpoint of we're not trying to achieve necessarily a higher maximum gain level for these animals, because they are intended to come back into our breeding stock and maybe generate more show animals down the road, right? And so we need to be very cautious of kind of how we approach that and how those animals do gain. And so in this situation, we're going to pick North Dakota State Fair again, July 27. And that's the day I believe that the beef show is. And so we're picking that day, we've got 128 days, right? Same scenario. But instead of trying to target right a finished animal come state fair time, we're really targeting just a more mature size for that heifer. So 1,100 pounds. You can see down below I have what what is for expected mature size. And so that's kind of as a three year old animal, right? As she becomes becomes a cow and starts having calves, eventually, right? She's going to meet her max growth, right? She's going to end up stop growing, right? As an adult animal. And so we're estimating that the rest of our herd in this example is right around 1,300 pounds and her genetics are right within that. And so we're just going to assume, right? Her mature size is about 1,300. So again, this is very dependent upon the animals you're using, what herd they originate from. But regardless, it's math that I can do. So we're going to take that 200 pound difference that we need to go from today to state fair. And we need to target about 1.6 pounds per day. And so so that's very realistic for a lot of our breeding animals. Again, if if they weigh that 900 pounds right now, right? And so depending on your situation, and we can talk about that at the end of the presentation, those numbers might be different, right? These are not numbers that I'm encouraging you to use yourself. I'm encouraging you to figure out these numbers and calculate them yourself based on your target dates for your shows and really where you want to end up, right? Where you want that animal to to be really at its best and looking at. And so with that in mind and thinking along the breeding heifer aspects, I've got body condition scores here. Now there's no numbers, but we'll talk through it and we'll walk through it. And so last week, I know body conditions course were brought up. And this is really just a visual measurement of an animal's condition. And that's important from the aspect that the top left and top middle are condition scores three, and then the middle one is a condition score four. So oftentimes, we're never really going to be approaching that with our show animals, but actually never should we have that with our show animals, because rarely should we have that with our actual production animals to the top right is a score of five. So I put on the bottom from left to right six, seven and eight. Now those are going to more aligned with our show animals in the terms that we're usually putting a little bit more external condition on those animals, right, in terms of kind of helping with that phenotypic look that that the look that they give in the show ring. And so whether we're talking breeding animals, which in the sense of using these scores, you guys can see the bit of difference, right, when we especially when we look at that top left moving from a three all the way down into a six, seven and an eight, right, we can, we can see the clear visual differences with those. And so I would just emphasize that our breeding heifers should be a body condition score six. Realistically, probably some heifers end up becoming a body condition score seven. It's really important to think about just beyond the show. These animals, right, because they're breeding heifers, right, they're going to come back hopefully into your operation and start generating more show animals for you. And so in that situation, it's important to monitor body condition, because of how closely related body condition can be to how easily those animals can get pregnant. And that is the ultimate goal when the shows are all done and that animal gets to come back home, right, is that that animal will then there be there for you to generate more show livestock. And so it's it's important that we do monitor those breeding animals and focus on on having that condition that's desired within the show, but being cautious about those animals and not not going too fast with our gains are too strong with those breeding animals. Now, our market animals are going to, of course, be in a higher bracket related to that body condition score. So but but moving on in a sense, then I want to kind of go and take a look at growth requirements and really what these animals are needing for for growth. So I've got just a really nice diagram, I think that shows over the course of a young animals time. And so this red line is kind of muscle growth. And and really, and then the brown line would be our our kind of our fat growth. So we just got done talking about external condition on an animal, that external condition is all pretty much fat. And so and that animal is depositing fat in different places. When we have our our prospect steer or heifer, that maybe they weigh four, five, 600 pounds, those animals are over here on the left side of this graph. And so their growth is much more rapid than our larger animals are older animals. And so the diet that those animals need is going to be more focused on achieving a protein level. It's going to be a higher protein concentration in that diet, because there's there's a lot of need for that protein to increase growth. And then beyond that, we're going to of course need energy, and we'll get into those in in just a little bit. But I would say this blue dash line is probably right at the point of about an eight to 900 pound animal. So kind of that scenario that we had started with. And so that's kind of where we start to make the difference. And and and we'll get into that in just a little bit of where the diets start being more focused on energy and less on protein, though we still need to meet the requirements of that animal on a protein basis. The importance of it starts to get a little bit less as we move that into a eight, nine, a thousand pound animal. And so the the this really just does a good job, in my opinion, of showing that there's an increased need for protein, because we have an increased that animals growing rapidly and putting on muscle. And so we need to help provide the nutrients necessary to do that. And the large one of that of those is protein. Okay, lots of numbers here on this table. But don't worry, I'll kind of break it down and really focus on the darker areas here. So what I have here is nutrient requirements of a moderate gain. And so here what you can see is essentially, if an animal is trying to achieve, say, a three pound gain, right, a little bit above what that target was that we had earlier, we can see, you know, achieving that gain, right, from 600 pounds, seven or 800 pound, wherever our animal is right now. And in what the necessary nutrients are. So animals do not have a dry matter intake requirement. Now, this is an estimate for dry matter intake for that animal. And that's a function of, in the sense that the diet's going to have some concentration of energy, some concentration of protein. And so when we have those, we need the the if we let the animal eat as much as possible, right, the we need to kind of know then do though, does that diet based on how much protein and how much energy is in it, is that going to meet the animal's requirements. And so these are just rule of thumb numbers for dry matter in a diet. And so the reason I keep saying dry matter is essentially, we don't want to count water that's in the diet. So if we think of like corn silage, if you know, or even halage or any of those really wet feeds, that has a lot of water in it. Water doesn't provide energy or protein. We'll talk about the importance of water in just a little bit, but it doesn't bring in any energy or protein. So we need to remove that from the equation when we start to talk about protein and energy. So anyway, these numbers might seem low to you because we haven't added the moisture back from the diet. But in a lot of cases, if you're buying commercial feed, or you have just some, if you're feeding drier feeds to begin with, right, there's not a lot of water in them, these numbers will be pretty close to what you're used to or if you're weighing out your feeds. And so anyway, looking at TDN, which is total digestible nutrients, we'll talk about that in just a little bit. But that's the energy content of the diet. And you can see to achieve a three pound gain, we don't need to change the energy content of the diet, as the animal goes from 600 pounds at the top of the table, all the way down to 1200 pounds at the bottom. So what does change is the crude protein of the diet. And so here, it's, that's where it's really important to go back to that graph, right? Think about that chart I just showed, and that this lighter weight animal is going to need a lot more protein in its diet than these heavier weight animals. And so that changes, right, how we feed an animal, maybe after we've weaned them in the fall, to how we're going to be feeding an animal right now, to maybe where we're going to, what we need to be feeding them here this summer. And so that's where it's really important when we think about balancing rations or picking out what kinds of feeds we're going to be feeding them, we need to really know where the animal is and what it weighs so that we can best estimate its, its requirements. And we'll talk about calcium and phosphorus in just a bit, but it's really important, you can kind of see that the calcium level should be twice the level of phosphorus within the diet. And so we'll talk about that ratio in just a bit. All right, so here I've got the same layout for a graph, but it's low level of gain. So if we're wanting to target a lower level of gain. So for our breeding animals, right in our breeding example, about one and a half pounds, you can kind of see how these the this changes in a bit. So our last diet was like 71% TDN. This one you can see is a little bit lower in energy in that sense. And likewise, our protein levels are lower because they're not growing as fast. So they're not putting on as much muscle. So they don't need nearly the level of protein. So again, it depends on what animal and what your target gain is is going to drive a lot of what the diet needs to be or how best the diet fits the animals or nutrient requirements. Okay, so with that in mind, we're going to talk about the classes of nutrients. Waters, of course, the most important nutrient here. It doesn't matter what we're putting in the diet. If the animals aren't eating it because they're thirsty, then it doesn't really matter, right? We can have the best diet that fits all the criteria to meet all their demands. But if they're not, they don't have clean fresh water. It doesn't really matter. And so, of course, this is the most important nutrient, right? It helps keep the animals cool. And especially in hot temperatures, of course, we all enjoy that, right? It also helps carry nutrients around the body. So there's many, many, many functions that we're not going to talk about today that water does. What's really, though, important is using water and thinking about, excuse me, not using water, but making sure the water is fresh, clean, and then how we approach watering the animals during shows. And you can see I have used water filters. That's maybe one recommendation. We'll talk about this in just a bit, but there's also considerations to maybe you bring some of your own water from home, right? We all know if we live out in the, out in the country, if you have your own well, your water tastes a lot different than when you go into town and drink city water. And so, the function of that, those animals also recognize that. And so, we'll get into maybe some of the tools and things that we can do to keep animals drinking while during shows. But of course, keeping access to clean fresh water should be a daily chore and should be focused every single day on. And so, because certainly, as I said, fresh clean water can help animals gain more and help you achieve that target, along with just taking good, being good stewards of the animals and making sure that they're comfortable. So, how much water do they need? Well, kind of depends. Depends on the, on the time of year. Also depends on the size of the animal. So, if we look over here on the left, we've got animals that weigh 400 pounds up to 1,000 pounds. But we have animals that, right now, it's about, what, 20 some degrees where I'm at. And so, right around this level, you know, you can see what these animals require. And it's not a ton of water, right? These are all gallons, right? Think of how many milk jugs this is, right? In that sense. But be mindful that as we get into county fair season and as we get into state fair and other shows, as temperatures start to climb, we can really increase the amount of water that that animal needs on a daily basis. And so, this is why it's very, very, very important to emphasize on clean water and, and make sure they have fresh, clean water and access to it at all times. Have I emphasized that enough? Okay. So, protein moving on from water into protein. So, of course, we need protein to build muscle, hair, hooves and, and lots and lots and lots of tissues. And so, in order to do that, we need to meet that crude protein requirement, right? That, that we already talked a little bit about proteins made up of small building blocks, we call those amino acids. And they're, they're really important in the development of the animal when they're young, right? We talked about how the diets high and crude protein, the diet requirements are really high when the animals young because they're rapidly growing. We call this protein, right? The protein needs of the animal crude protein. So, I've already said that several times. But if you hear that phrase, that's just kind of the measurement of protein, it's really actually the measurement of nitrogen, but the measurement of protein in total within that diet. So, some common sources or feeds that are higher in protein, of course, Alpha Alpha Hay is a pretty high, high source of, of crude protein. It usually has 16 to 18% crude protein. Distiller's grains is right around 30%. So, those are some pretty common sources that you may run into depending on what region you live in. Soybean meal and cotton seed meal. Again, cotton seed meal, probably more for folks that live in the South. But those are going to be included as well as distillers grains and a lot of the commercial feeds to be one of the protein sources or maybe the primary protein source. So, I just kind of wanted to include those in here to give you an idea of kind of higher protein feeds that are pretty common in, you know, both the diets that are mixed at home or in commercial feeds. Okay, energy now. So, we've talked water, protein, now energy. Energy is the primary driver for growth. We need to meet the requirement for protein. But then, once we have met that, energy is kind of going to be the accelerator or decelerator on where we want to achieve or what we want to achieve for a gain. So, sources of energy, I think we all kind of know, right, they're going to be our grains in these diets. They're going to be our byproduct feeds. We already talked about distillers grains and soybean meal. Hayes and silages are a really good source of energy for our Runa animals. And then, of course, we can add some oils and fats to help. But usually, we don't include much of those oils, much of those fats. We keep those at a much smaller inclusion rate relative to those other feeds listed there. I already said we measure this as total digestible nutrients. So, if you ever see the values TDN, that's the measure of energy within the diet, right? And those values usually range from a low energy would be like forties would be a really low energy diet, all the way up to eighties would be a really high energy. So, that's kind of the range that we're looking at. Common energy feeds, corn, barley, wheat, oats would be like our major grains that we use. A lot of commercial feeds will use corn and oats. So, if you're somebody that buys pallets of packaged feed, a lot of times the major grains in those are going to be corn and oats. Then, of course, oftentimes there's a lot of corn byproducts, maybe it's cold, and that's typically distillers grains. There's also wheat meds or beet pulp, right? Soy holes. So, there's lots of these byproduct feeds that we can utilize for energy sources, as well as oils, maybe it's a vegetable oil, maybe it's a specific vegetable oil, soybean oil, or something like that, that we can again use to help kind of bind the diet up together, right? And think about if you ever make cookies, right? Kind of all those wet ingredients that you use to kind of get all the flour and everything to stick together. We can kind of use, we can use some vegetable oil or maybe some molasses to help bind those and kind of keep the diet from being too dusty and everything like that. Because as much as you don't like the dust, the animals don't like the dust either when they go to eat that. So, we can use some of those and they also bring in energy. Minerals. All right. So, we definitely need minerals and we need lots of them and I don't have nearly enough time to talk about all the minerals and everything like that, but we need them to grow a lot of bone. And animals are growing a lot of bone when they're young, right? And so, we need minerals to help grow a lot of our tissues within our body, teeth, or blood, muscle, almost everything in the body needs a mineral to help it grow. You might hear of some minerals called trace minerals and those just mean that they're needed in smaller amounts. And so, I've listed just kind of the major ones within there. And then, we can't forget when we're talking about minerals that animals have a sodium requirement. And so, you need to make sure you're providing not just a mineral block, but a salt and preferably an iodized salt. And so, if you're somebody that uses these blocks, like I have on the screen, that's great. Just make sure that you're providing a salt block as well as a mineral block. And so, our macro minerals that we need in large part, I've only listed here calcium and phosphorus, but it's really important to balance that ratio out, especially with our market steers. We need to definitely ensure for all animals, but steers are susceptible to getting water belly. And that's basically calcified stones within their urinary tract. And so, it's really painful. The animal will go through a lot of discomfort. And so, we need to make sure that our diet's balanced with twice as much calcium as we have phosphorus. And distillers grains, if you're using that, or if it's included in your diet at all, brings in a fair amount of phosphorus relative to other feeds. Doesn't mean we shouldn't use it. Oftentimes, it's a great protein source, but it brings in some phosphorus. So, we just need to make sure we balance our calcium appropriately to meet those animals' needs. And calcium's a fairly, typically, we include that in the diet in the form of limestone. And it's fairly cost effective and doesn't cost a lot. So, it's really not too difficult for us to achieve that requirement, if we know what we're doing in that sense. Okay, vitamins now too. So, categories of vitamins are broken down into water soluble and fat soluble. Water soluble ones we don't even have to worry about. Those are generated within the animal's body or generated by the microbes in the animal's stomachs. And so, we don't have to worry about our vitamin B's. What we do need to think about though, is our fat soluble vitamins. Those are the ones we need to make sure we're providing an additional supply of in the diet. So, primarily A, D, and E. As you can see on the screen, vitamin K is produced in the in the room in by the microbes that are in there. And so, the animal can actually use that. And so, it's a pretty cool situation that the animal benefits from having those microbes. One of many benefits. But so, we're going to include in our mineral packs, right? We tend to call these things just a mineral pack. But they always, no, I shouldn't say always, they typically include a vitamin. But you need to read your labels to make sure. So, most of the time, they get generally called just a mineral pack, but they'll have vitamins in there. But you definitely need to make sure. And so, looking at that, we need to include those A, D, and E, make sure they're in the diet. Those are typically measured in international units, abbreviated as IU and the label. So, with that, we'll kind of move into looking at a feed label. And within this, you know, there's there's a lot going on here. So, I kind of want to just slowly take a step. Now, mind you, this is an example feed label. It's not a real one. And so, some of these numbers aren't really applicable to potentially your situation. But I think it does a really good job of providing you a lot of the kind of details of what you're actually looking at if you're looking at your feed tag. I really want to emphasize that if you're buying feeds that are medicated, right, that you focus in and know exactly what's in that feed. And this is really important from the standpoint of if there's a medication in that feed, just like if we need to take Tylenol or anything like that, it's going to be prescribed at a specific level and at a specific concentration within the diet. That means we need to feed it appropriately according to the label. And we'll talk about that in just a minute. But you can see here, so in the middle of our tag is our guaranteed analysis. And so that's going to include what the minimum and maximum thresholds are for our specific ingredients, right? Or more importantly, kind of what the complete feed that's in this bag is going to provide you, right? In this case, it says a crude protein, minimum of 50%, right? We just got done looking at some values that indicated, you know, an animal's total diet only needs to include maybe somewhere between eight up to 13 or 14%, depending on the animal's body size, crude protein. So obviously, this is like a concentrated feed that would more align with being a major component, maybe the major protein for the animal in that sense. But when we look at that and focus on this, what we have here is a little thing, kind of in parentheses there, you can see it says 19.7% equivalent crude protein from non protein nitrogen. Now last week, Dr. McCarthy brought up non protein nitrogen in that sense, I'm only going to touch on it briefly. Essentially, what it is is it's a protein source that doesn't originate from the plants. It's actually something we can synthetically make. And so typically, it's called urea or in the form of urea, but there's a couple different forms of it. And we can feed it to to animals because the microbes within the rumen, they need nitrogen from protein, much like the animals need nitrogen from protein. And so we can feed this non protein nitrogen source to help those microbes digest the feed that the animals going to benefit from, right? And so, but you need to make sure you're aware of the level of non protein nitrogen, because we can get into situations where that's a toxic level, if we're not monitoring and know what's on our feed tag, that can be can really cause some issues down the road, if we don't properly follow the instructions of that intended feed. Lastly, I want to state here is because this is a medicated feed that there is a withdrawal period before that animal can be slaughtered, right? So this is a situation with our market steers or market heifers. We really need to know what's on this label from the top all the way down to the bottom. But we really need to make sure we're following this. So that way, we don't have any residual drugs or antibiotics or whatever might be in our diet, or in our feeds, that that we don't have any of that residual antibiotic in the animal when they go to harvest, if there's a withdrawal, and that will be stated there in that precautionary statement, or among other statements of precaution will be listed there. And so those are some of the areas to highlight, but the whole feed tag is really important from the standpoint of knowing what you have and knowing what you're feeding. And so that way, if there was ever a situation that something happened, the animals got into the bag of feed, you can at least inform a veterinarian or somebody of what happened and how to best move forward in that situation. But we need to follow these feed labels as stated. Okay, I want to work around some of our kind of maybe just some some broad classification or recommendations for these things, and then try to get to leave some time for questions here. So we really need to weigh our animals and weigh our feeds. So it can be really easy to do, or it can be difficult. If you have a scale, it can be really easy. But for the animals, for the animals, so I standpoint, I'd encourage you if you have a neighbor or a friend that does have a scale and you don't take your animal over there periodically, maybe monthly, it doesn't have to be all that often. And just get that animal used to it, not only trailering, right, and traveling a little bit, but kind of just just being handled in that way. And at the same time, it allows you to kind of track your progress. And if you're meeting your target weight concepts, and your goals. And so with that, though, thinking about we need to weigh our feeds, now those aren't the same scales, right? What we are weigh our animals on, except for calves, maybe right, baby calves, isn't going to be the same scale, we're going to weigh our feeds on. But it's really important, even if you're buying commercial feed, to weigh your feed, it's especially important if you're mixing your own feed, because how do you know how much you're using, right, or how can we come up with a great plan for a diet? If you don't know how much, right, we need to feed if we come up with 55% corn, well, it's got to be 55% of some weight, right? And so you need to know exactly what that is. And so, but even if you're buying commercial feed, and it's all a complete package, you still need to know how much to provide on a daily basis, or you need to know when the animals aren't consuming, you know, the level that you had, or trying to get them right to a level of intake, you kind of need to know when you're at that, at that level. And so it can be as simple as a bathroom scale, make sure you check with your parents about that, don't just go and snag it, but or it can be, you know, a hanging scale that's right next to the feed sacks, right, really easy to hook a bucket up to a hanging feed sack, and right, it gives you a really good idea. It doesn't have to be complicated, and can really help you. And nor does it have to be expensive to do either. And so of course, weighing animals can be is very expensive in the in terms of having a livestock scale. But again, find a neighbor, find somebody that that you can just go periodically and and see if you're on target rather than getting to the show and finding out what you might have already thought, you know, as geez my animals, just not gaining, I don't think what they should, you can make some ration adjustments prior to the prior to the show prior to to putting them on the scale there at the show. Okay, so always remember provide fresh, clean water and that and check that daily. If you're grinding your own feed, do not grind it too fine, it does not need to look like flour, it should be much, it should not look even close to flour, and that will help the animal stay on feed and and not provide, you know, give animals if there's a lot of fines in that feed, and it tends to end up causing some digestive upsets in that animal. And then basically, they go on a roller coaster for how much feed they're eating one day, they'll eat a lot, then they'll eat hardly any the next day, because they got a stomach ache, then they'll be hungry starved the next day, and you get into this really bad roller coaster pattern. And what you end up with as an animal that did not achieve its desired gain. So keep fresh feed in the bunks and remove any old feed out of the bunks. So I would say if it's been two days, and there's still some feed on the edges of the bunk, make sure you remove that stuff. So if it's, it's where where becomes really bad as if there's anything that gets wet, or gets rained on or snowed on, right, in any situation that starts to mold. And when it molds, the animals will possibly consume it if if you don't clean it up, and that will just affect your your overall average daily gain. So those animals just won't gain what you're hoping to. And so make sure you're keeping fresh feed available to them and removing the old stuff, provide minerals and vitamins at all times. So if it's included in your diet, that's great. If it's not included in your diet, and you're providing it free choice, I encourage you to track how much they're actually consuming. Most mineral and vitamin packages are targeting two to four ounces of intake per day. I would encourage you to look, are they actually consuming that? Because as we already talked about the importance of vitamins and minerals and growth, you want to make sure the animals are actually getting that. And so if you have free choice, right, we have it as a pile, right, of loose mineral, we say, in the pen, we want to make sure they're actually consuming it. So take that hanging scale, right, that you're weighing your feet on now, and weigh that bucket of mineral and see how much is disappearing on a week or two week basis. And depending on how many animals you got in the pen, and make sure they're kind of targeting that that eighth of a pound to a quarter of a pound intake, that that they're supposed to be, just to make sure they're getting enough minerals and vitamins. Consistency in my whole discussion, if there's one thing you take away from today, consistency is key. These animals are going through a lot, they're being stressed in a lot of different ways, even if they don't look stressed. And so it's really important that you be consistent with them. That includes the timing of feeding every single day, keep within the hour every single day, if you feed at 7am and 7pm, try to stay within that hour every single day, that can be difficult with busy lives and everything going on. But it's really important that those animals aren't a routine that's very consistent. That can do a lot more than than the fanciest rations that we can develop is just being consistent. Adapt cattle to new diets slowly, make those changes over the course of a week. And I would encourage you to make them over two weeks. There's no rush in this situation. And the animals that have time to adapt will be much better off moving through into that new diet and will not, you will not see any decreases in feed intake or animals just not wanting to consume feed or anything like that. If you gradually increase the inclusion of the new diet and gradually decrease the inclusion of the old diet. Feed twice a day if you can. It really is best that way, because a lot of times our animals will, um, there's, there's obviously somebody that thinks they're, you know, the king of the pen and they're going to dominate the bunk, right? And, and as best as possible, even if all your animals seem to get along together. And when they do that, if you only feed once a day, that bully or that, that king of the pen, he's going to, or she's going to block, right, is or take as much bunk space as she can, right? If you're feeding in some kind of bunk and, and they're going to want to eat as much as they possibly can and, and they're going to maybe short one of the other calves in that way, or they're going to make the other calves wait feeding twice a day, once in the morning, once at nights, gives better access for all animals to that feed and allows for those animals that can't get right up to the bunk right away, gives them another opportunity to have feed in the afternoon. Um, and so it's, it's while it might, it creates more of a chore, right? Feeding twice a day is, is, um, better than once a day. Okay. If you're going to hold cattle and we're going to look at target gains, um, right? And you're going to be a, uh-oh, you know, you got to your, your finishing period too quickly or your, your quick, you know, they're doing, um, better than you anticipated on the diet that you're feeding. I really encourage you to get somebody that has nutritional experience involved because animals can really fall apart quickly if we don't put together the appropriate rash and when we're trying to hold the animal, right? So what I mean here is if an animal really gets to its finish wait a month early and, and now you need to kind of figure out what to do, get somebody that's been in that situation and has an education that can help you with that or know the right people, um, that can get involved with it. And so that's important because once we're trying to hold animals, we do not want to limit a nutrient potentially or restrict them from anything necessarily. We're just trying to, to readjust, right? And kind of maintain them in a way, but it's really easy to be wrong in that situation and start limiting them on a specific nutrient and then the animals can really fall apart. And then by the time you notice it, it's going to be show time. So recalculate your target weights, right? Figure out what they're weighing now and then what, where you need to be. And, and that'll help with looking at the diet and then focus on varying the forage inclusion of the, of the diet. And so increasing the forage and decreasing the grain portion of the diet, that's going to be the best option. But depending on what your target gain is or how, how much you want to hold them, is going to depend, that's going to drive how much forage you're, you're bringing into the diet. Okay. Feeding before the show, one to two weeks and more appropriately, probably two weeks before the show, tie your animals up during feeding, right? Put halters on them, bring them up, tie them up, get them used to consuming feed out of a feed pan, the feed pan that they're going to be using at the show. And so do this two weeks before, and this will help them adjust to that new stress of moving the animal, right? Transporting the animal to that new environment, which is the show, even if they've been there before, it's still a new environment. It's not home for them, just like it's not home for you. And, and so another key point here is water them with the bucket. So feed them and then water them with the same bucket that you're going to use at the show. Again, we're trying to create a situation where not everything that they're exposed to at the show is a new thing or a new stressor I'll call them in this situation. So if we can, we're always better off to adapt these animals gradually and slowly and get them used to things as much at home as possible before going to the show. I would encourage you the last day before traveling to the show, even if it's not that far away, maybe it's your county fair, I would encourage you to only feed two thirds of what you normally feed that animal. Excuse me. And that's because when we, when an animal eats their full feed, there's a lot of metabolic function that's going on that incurs stress to the animal. Now, again, stress doesn't always look like an animal that's anxious or nervous or, or something like that, but there's a lot of metabolic physical stress going on within that animal. If we can reduce some of that stress by, by reducing the amount of feed that will hopefully help them adjust to all the environmental stress and all the new stuff that they're going to be exposed to. So it's a great way to just kind of keep them a hopefully a little calmer going into the traveling and getting to the show prior to the show. Okay. When we're at the show, don't necessarily focus on trying to get that animal feeding right away, just give them a space to lay down and relax. They need to kind of figure out the new situation that's going on for the next couple days, right? Cause they don't really know what's going on, even if they've gone to shows in the past, just let them rest for a bit at the, when you do go to feed them, and it should be again, right at the same time that you feed them and at home, right, be consistent with the feeding times, provide about that two, that same two thirds of the normal amount of feed to those animals and that first feeding. Again, we're just trying to not increase all the metabolic stress that comes with digesting feed and, and allow them to hopefully maintain a little bit calmer status and that, and that adjustment period at the show. You can increase the amount of good quality hay that you provide at the show relative to what they normally get at home. But it has to be good quality hay and, and that's important because it's going to help with just room and function, the stomach functions. It's going to help with a little bit of digestion. It's going to make them just feel a little calmer. It's going to help them out. And so that, that's, that's quite all right to, to provide that during the shows more so than maybe what you're providing at home. All right, I'm almost done here. So calves that don't want to drink at a show, which I think if you've shown before, you've probably experienced this, right? The animal just doesn't like whatever's in the water at that show. And so with this situation, I think looking at just bringing a water filter, again, keeping it simple, but something that might filter out the chlorine that's in the city water, or, or something like that can help a lot. Now, I also know people can or do haul water from home. And so if you have the capabilities to do that, that's definitely a great idea to at least blend with the city water or whatever water sources at the show to help again, familiarize them to the new situation, provide them with a little something from home to be mixed with something at, or even in the best situation, use a water filter and bring some water from home. Again, it's really important that they drink because drinking helps them eat, eating helps them stay calm, right? And so it's kind of a, it's a, it's a whole system that we want to keep in place, even though we're creating a lot of stress by transporting them to a show. You can always use some type of stimulant, whether that's molasses, salt, sugar, electrolytes, maybe it's a sports drink, right? In, in that water to try to kind of entice them to drink that. I'd encourage you, if you're going to do that, you do that at home as well. And again, while you're feeding them through or watering them through a bucket right at the time of feeding or right around that time of feeding, you can use some of this, these things, if you think that's going to help them at the showtime or stay on water. And of course, you'll figure that out right after the first show. If they go for more than a day without water, you can try as, as kind of a, of just, you know, kind of using all your tools in the toolbox, you can put salt on top of their feed right on top, try to get them to eat that right away. And so, so a handful of salt will, can stimulate right. And if, if we had that much salt, we, right, we'd be really, really, really thirsty. And so, you can kind of try to get them to, to kind of get thirsty in that situation, to get them through that, that initial, what struggle for them for drinking that water. Okay. So remember feed that's not cleaned up after 30 minutes in a show should be removed, right? So just pull that feed pan if they're not, you know, active within that feed pan at that point in time, clean the feed pan between every feeding, right? No moldy feed, no, no, manure or anything like that in there. And then use, feed the diet before you provide any hay on a daily basis at these shows. You want them to really get all their energy and all the protein right through the diet you're providing before they fill up on hay. And so same goes for weight to water them until they've eaten. You don't want them to fill up, so to speak, right on hay or water before they've gotten their energy dense diet or their protein dense diet, simply because then they'll, they'll, right, they'll start to kind of not stay within their normal routine, right? And that's really key in this whole situation, right, is consistency. And then keep feeding at that same schedule as home. Okay, so I'm, I'm done now. Last thing I wanted to leave you all with is where can you go for more information? I encourage you all, and I know we've got many different states here, look at talk with your extension agents or your extension services within your state and, and, and they can help you, you know, whether it's, it's balancing a ration or maybe they know who to get you connected with, who to get you connected with to, to be successful in that. Once you establish you, you want to balance some rations, you want to start taking some of the measures we talked about today. Egg educators are a great tool as well. If they don't know, they're going to know somebody that does. And so, again, start that conversation with those people that can get you connected with, with those that have experience with show animal nutrition and everything that comes with it. Some of that nutrient requirements that we talked about today came from the University of Arkansas. Right there, I have listed part three nutrient requirement tables. They have a great resource there. So if that was interesting to you or you need to use those right to try to formulate some of your diets and stuff like that, feel free to look that resource up. They're, they're a great tool. Oklahoma State University has a very similar downloadable publication and that's nutrient requirements of beef cattle. So you can see the pub numbers there listed. But other than that, there's my contact info. And certainly if, if you have any questions now or, or down the road, feel free to, to, yeah, give me a call or happy to answer questions now. Okay, Noah or Zach, we got first question for you coming from Noah. If my breeding heifer needs to gain 1.6 pounds a day, how much should they eat because you, they usually exercise and I just I'm out. Yeah, so this is, it gets, it's complicated. There's about 10 questions I have for you within that situation. And, and so it's kind of where are they now, you know, what's the, what's the protein and the energy level of your diets? Maybe you need to start there and try to figure out what protein and energy do they need? Because again, I said it isn't entirely that they have to, you need to be feeding them a certain amount. It's, it's really all about the concentration of the protein and the concentration of the energy in the diet. We'll, we'll dictate then how much you need to make sure they are eating. And so that's really kind of where you got to start with. I will say that lower gains like 1.5, 1.6, those, those energy levels to get those lower gains are going to be lower, right? So again, the example I used that was like a 55 TDN, but that doesn't necessarily mean that's going to fit where you are, especially when we talk about exercising, right? And we're going to increase a lot of those numbers we talked about today in those tables are values that we've derived from research that we've done. I can guarantee that research was not done with show animals. So I think it came up last week as a question of, of, you know, what are the energy requirements of a show animal different or the same as, as our production animals? And I think our energy requirements for show animals are higher because of all the activity we're asking them to do. Maybe it's exercise, but you know, maybe it's, it's being a little heavier, right? Have a little more condition at that time. That requires energy just to maintain that animal there. So I can't quite answer your question, but certainly shoot me an email or give me a phone call at some point in time. And we can talk more about the specifics of that of your question. Okay, Zach, we got another question here popped up in the Q&A portion from John. What would you expect to be the mineral composition of a mature lactating cow going into the breeding season? So this question kind of reflects back to last week, but I think you can answer this. Yeah, so mineral composition of mature consumption. Okay, so mineral consumption of a mature lactating cow. Okay, so a big driver, what would be expected to be mineral? It's going to depend on what's in the mineral. So if the mineral is, uses, so we have flow agents or carriers within the mineral, right, that are going to bring all the small minerals, the trace minerals, there's going to be one large component of that mineral. If it's a loose mineral or even if it's a block, oftentimes is limestone is the carrier. And so if it's limestone, the, the odds of the animals consuming more and more of it is, is potentially less limestone just kind of has a bitter, uh, nest to it. If the carriers distillers grains, the animals might consume that because they, they've got that flavor for distillers, so they're going to consume more and more of it. Needless to say, uh, the back half of your question, mature lactating cows are going to consume more of your mineral than they will when they are a dry cow for the most part. And so your consumption might vary just simply from the fact that that animal is a lactating animal now, because our intakes increase with the production of milk and everything like that. But some of your minerals are, are geared for two ounce mineral and some are geared for four ounce consumption. It's going to vary not only by animal, but stage of production and what your minerals made up of. Because some, some they don't tell me this, right? But some we know are made up of some things that have a more, uh, bitter taste to them. And some have a more desired taste. I don't know what the desire is, but animals will consume more of that. So it is going to depend on what mineral you're providing to. Okay, no other questions right now. If you got a question, you can type it into the chat area or the question and answer area. For those of you looking for previous presentations, we have those listed in the chat as well. You can go to the link there in YouTube and that will take you to our previous three webinars and at the end of this one, we will also include this one in that same area. So, so Brian, this is Kurt and I have a question for Zach. We, Zach and I kind of talked about this a little bit earlier today. What about supplements or feed additives? What are your thoughts to some of those Zach? Yeah, so that's a whole can of worms, right? Feed additives, especially within our show industry can have some really big ranging, right? We can be talking about additives that go in our mineral packages that are kind of different minerals that we're providing all the way to probiotics, prebiotics and there's a hundred, hundreds, hundreds of feed additives. So we need to kind of narrow down specifically maybe what more aligns with the ones of interest. And so one of those would be that I believe has some value within the show industry would be some of our stress supplements. So those often are in the form of a yeast based product. I'm not going to name brand names or anything like that, but there's a lot that kind of they even use them in their titles, right, that are stress supplements. Now, I think in a production setting, I don't know if those really pay themselves back to those animals. But I think in a show situation where we're talking about again, stress doesn't mean the animals like anxious one, you know, just wound up all the time. We certainly have those animals in the show industry and we all all can relate to that. But there's there's just kind of low level stressors of daily function, even if it's combing the animal, right? And, and so there's a lot of these things that kind of build upon themselves. So I think back to feed additives, stress supplements. Again, there's there's lots of those different things, but kind of a of a function of gut health and things like that. I think those have value in our show industry to help our animals adjust, right, to, to these new environments, right? So if we think about the time you're bringing the animals up two weeks before the show, maybe incorporating some of those components, again, talk to people that use those and find out their opinions. And, and, but I do think those, those have a place in our show stock because of because of the added stress and everything that we're putting in those on those animals, because we're investing a lot of time, a lot of resources into these animals. And so we hate to see that be wasted, you know, through just kind of the the stressors that occur when the animals transported, you know, a couple states away and stuff like that. Okay, Zach. Thank you, Zach. Go ahead, Brian. We got a couple more questions that popped up here in the Q&A. The first one's coming from Olivia. What's the easiest way to figure out how to feed for an average daily gain? Okay, Olivia, so easiest way to figure it out. So you need to work through that. What are you trying? What's your goal? Gain. So if we're in a market animal and we pick just two and a half pounds, okay, then you got to look at the requirements in some capacity for that animal to gain that, how much energy and how much protein, because the animal doesn't need specifically, you know, five pounds of corn, it just needs a level of energy and a level of protein. And we can do that through all different combinations of feeds. So once you figure out how much you want your animal to gain and what the diet needs to have to achieve that, then you can look at what you're feeding and if that's meeting the level. So the easiest, that to me is the easiest way to figure out how to feed for that average daily gain is just simply look at what you have available to you for feeds, what the animal needs, if it's 12% crude protein in a 65% TDN diet, okay, if that's what we decide is going to get us our two and a half pounds, let's just say, then we need to make sure our feed tag or our feed components, if we have our own diets, add up the TDN values of all those ingredients or look at the feed tag and look at the minimum guaranteed analysis and make sure that that protein, if it's a complete feed, right, it's meant to be the only thing the animal eats, we need to make sure it, we see on that tag that those levels and say if it's a 12 and a half percent protein, then we know, you know, we're meeting those requirements of that animal, when the animal has access to whatever the feed tag says for a targeted intake of that feed. So you just have to start kind of looking at what does the animal need to get the gain that you want, what do you have available for feeds and then it's really just kind of looking at the adding those energy values up, adding those protein values up to get you to your, to see if you're meeting the needs of the animal. Okay, next question comes from Wendy and a little off target, but she is planning to go to school for feed nutrition, what classes do you recommend? Well, I'm going to recommend you come to North Dakota State University, but apart from that, you know, it's really a lot of animal science courses or majors are going to provide you with all the levels of feeds and feeding in there. So maybe one thing, you know, to look at apart from this is some of those introductory level textbooks. Those are often easy reads as you prepare for college and might give you a little additional information that helps you wrap your head around it because nutrition is simply a lot of chemistry and biochemistry to try to better understand everything we talked about today. Okay, not a question, but Parker would like to see that weight chart again, all right, for weight gain. And Travis is wondering if you have a poll to launch. Did we do a poll this time? Kurt, did you get a poll done? No, I'm sorry, I did not. Was unable to didn't get that job done today. All right, Parker, so if we're looking at this moderate gain, again, maybe kind of to go back to Olivia, we can add up, you know, for providing 10 pounds of corn and corn has 9% crude protein, right? 10 pounds of corn at 9% crude protein is going to provide us with 9% crude protein concentration of the diet, right? So we can start to kind of build our diet together based on how much we're feeding. But this is really important to focus on the weight. We need to know if it's 10 pounds of corn or if it's eight pounds of corn, kind of as we think about what that animal is actually getting from our diet, we can we can sit and do the math. So I guess, Olivia, look back into, there's a, we have a publication here at NDSU called the alternative feeds list. So if you search that NDSU extension alternative feeds, that'll give you a list of the concentrations of proteins and energy that are in different kinds of feeds. So that will help you get started. If you have your own feeds, and you're not looking at a feed tag, that can help you get started figuring out how much protein is actually in in your diets. Okay, we got one, another question in the Q&A and I'm going to give a warning, we might have time for one to two more questions if anyone wants to throw those in. But Megan's got one here. Are there any supplements that you have found particularly beneficial for the winter months? What about diatomaceous earth? So I guess kind of that question, I'm trying to think about what you're trying to achieve by using the supplement during the winter. I guess that's kind of where I would start, Megan, just trying to, you know, think about if you're talking supplemental feed, or if you're, I have not heard of diatomaceous earth or know what that exactly is. So I'd have to look at that. Again, email me. I can follow up with that and look at that. But I'm not entirely sure what the purpose of the supplement would be over the winter months. And so I need kind of need a little bit more information there to help help answer that question. Okay, we've got a question on the where the recordings can be found. And if you go up in earlier in the chat, Jeff had posted where the previous presentations can be viewed. So if you scroll up in that webinar chat area, you can find the link to those previous presentations. And Jeff just reposted it so you don't need to scroll back up there. So, okay, Travis put in here diatomaceous earth promotes weight gain, helps support their immune and digestive systems. And because diatomaceous earth is a form of silica, it is known to give cattle strong hopes, healthier and shinier coats, the best results are when the cattle are consistently eating the diatomaceous earth feed mixture. I want to add to this discussion that before you get into looking at supplements to enhance your animal's growth and performance, it's really important to get your basic nutrition down and get it down right. So it's it's, these supplements are not going to have near the effect on the animal as a balanced rash and will. And so I would encourage you all to focus on your making sure you're meeting the animal's requirements with the diets that you're providing. Before you get into looking at all the the supplements available, because like I said, it's there's a laundry list of available products and and everything like that. And so certainly, you know, as it relates to our discussion today and things like that, it's really important to be have a good, good health, a nutrition program before we get into supplements. Okay, well, I don't see any mother questions popping up in the Q&A and the webinar chat. And we're a little past quarter to eight. So I think it's a good time to sign off for the evening. I want to thank Zach and Kurt for pulling this together. Join us next week, Tuesday evening for our last webinar series for this winter on for the Junior Beef producers webinar series. Next week, we're going to talk about grazing options. So come back join us next week. Hopefully we're going to start seeing some springtime real soon, especially for those individuals in the North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota area. So thank you again, Zach and Kurt, and thank you everyone for attending tonight. Thank you, Brian, for hosting this and helping guide us through the evening. See you, everybody.