 Hi there, I'm Zach Carlson. I'm the extension beef cow specialist here at North Dakota State University My office is located in Fargo and today we're going to talk a little bit more about Rations and nutritional management for backgrounding specifically looking at starting rations This webinar is part of a series of videos That that are talking about backgrounding and I encourage you to take a look at our other videos to get gained different perspectives on backgrounding So I think when we look at the areas of focus with these newly weaned calves The first one is is really location of the bunks and waters when we think about calves kind of figuring things out within a pen Really, you know that we know they they circle that pen and so placing these bunks and waters in the fence line It's really going to provide a Better way for those calves to identify that source In addition to that we need to make sure we're providing 12 inches or more of bunk space per head And that'll allow calves to be able to get access at feed when feed is delivered Okay, the second area then is really Focusing heavily on intakes and moving calves up on intake as you think about it We're replacing milk and grass with it from a newly weaned calf with an energy dense diet And and so when we think about that we really need to make sure those calves are Working their way up as a percent of their body weight on intake because at first it's going to be quite low as they start to figure things out and In with that we need to also be mindful of introducing new feeds to calves and Having them build up their intake and their appetite made before we introduce some of those feeds So typically the the thought here is with fermented feeds such as halage and silage is that we introduce those Slowly in this first starter period and kind of work our way into that. So as a way Kind of to to combat that as well providing familiar feeds if calves had access to some of these feeds Before they were weaned and so utilizing Crete feed may be in a system like this in addition to keep intakes increasing And we need to think about cleaning those bunks daily for this starter period And so that remove any of that old feed so that we're not we're not the offsetting appetite or intakes by molding or spoiled feeds and then we need to provide shelter when possible To protect these calves against some of the harsh environment that that really just means if we can provide a windbreak of Swords being able to provide that especially when we think about North Dakota winners and what they can bring on Also need to be mindful when there's moisture available in these pen settings How we're controlling for that and making sure calves have an area a dry spot to rest So if we think about what a starter ration or getting calves up on feed really looks like it's it's really Needs to be concentrated on that 14 to 28 days that that early period, you know And that diet really should be somewhere between 50 and 70 percent concentrate Now it can look different than what the calves are going to go on to after the starting ration For instance if we're thinking about a high forage ration, you know And kind of a lower growth system to get these calves to grass then This starter ration should really be around that 50 percent concentrate So still more than what that that grower ration is going to look like But that's because we're talking about low intakes get and so every bite counts if we think about the every mouthful counts for these calves And so providing high energy density In this diet will be best to get these calves going and so but if we're transitioning these calves to make say a higher Concentrate ration giving them to the feedlot then we can we can move that starter ration to 70 percent concentrate When we think about crew protein content of the diet really needs to be at least 14 percent if co-products by products of Are coming into the system then we really need to have you know For more than 14 percent is perfectly fine But but really at least 14 percent to meet that animals Protein requirements and we need to limit the amount of urea in the diet in the starter ration to half percent or less on a dry matter basis and so really need to keep in mind that the protein and we'll talk a little bit more about this needs to Be coming from plant sources and actually you know some of it being bypassed and we'll talk we'll talk on that and just just a few slides Again consider if your if your system utilizes creep Using feeds similar to that creep or maybe even that creep to get these calves started So something again familiar that they that they recognize and King can consume You know and get and get those intakes up We want to keep moisture to you know probably somewhere around 20 to 30 percent in the diet so we don't want the diet too dry is as feeds can fall out you know in a Total mixed ration, but we also need to provide enough to keep that ration conditioned so Somewhere in that 20 30 percent as well as when we think about every bite or every mouthful that that calf takes We want it to be really uniform And so when we think about that and if we're going to incorporate some forges into that we need to really think about grinding and that and Especially getting that diet mixed so that those calves can can every mouthful is a uniform high energy density And so we can we can get those calves intakes going So I've been talking already a lot about feed intakes and and what we should look at and so What I have basically on the left-hand side is calf weight So five five hundred pounds all the way to 650 and so somewhere within that range you know on the bottom is really the the beginning of the starter ration kind of progressing through those first 14 days and What I have listed here is pounds a target pounds of intake on a dry matter basis So we'll operate removing that dry matter so we can or the moisture so we can focus purely on on the nutrient content And what we're providing so in that first day We our goal should be to get calves to be consuming about a percent of their body weight And then as we kind of progress in that first week, you know by the end of the week We really hope hope we're at about a percent and a half You can kind of see how that plays out depending on the the class and size of the animal here And then of course in that fur and then in that second week We're really moving to 1.8 percent or there about somewhere between one and a half and two percent And so by the end of the starter ration and that starting period We really want to be if that's 14 days want to be at two percent You know and then moving our way through as a two and a half percent and kind of Working through that and so it's really critical to be focusing on this as we think about maybe what the diet is But particularly getting cattle to consume that diet. So I wanted the this is Kind of a system that Kansas State utilizes that I that I think really is a an effective way to introduce cattle to You know into a starter system and and looking at how we transition those calves in that first week So if we look at the first seven days and really kind of how to utilize a system What Kansas State has put together is? essentially You have whatever diet grower starter diet that you're going to utilize And and that can that can even be commercial feeds Fit into that fall into that category if that's something you utilize and then we have essentially, you know something familiar to those calves so premium grass hay so You know and essentially what we're looking at right and that first day is providing that 1% of body weight but we're going to split it between the diet we're moving into and and then the the long stem premium grass hay And so really in the first three days you can see we we'll hold constant grass throughout this whole seven day period At a half percent body weight and then we'll slowly incrementally increase the grower starter ration through those seven days But over on the right hand side the feed order really in those first three days having The ability to to essentially put the put what they're most familiar with on top That grass hay in that first three days in the diet on the bottom right and then and then basically make that switch on that on midway through the week And uh flip it and now start providing the concentrate On on top of the hay in the bunk and so working through that until we get to about day seven Again trying to work towards that 1.8% body weight or so So I really do think this is an effective system to get calves to the bunk and and and working On on these intakes and and getting them going This is some data from kansas state that I think does a great job of kind of demonstrating in that first seven days Uh calf intakes based on what they're familiar with in the system So that brown solid line is is calves raised in a dry lot setting And they they were provided a creep feed At about two and a half percent of their body weight And then uh the pasture the dashed brown line was simply calves Coming right off pasture native pasture and so Not provided any creep and then that purple dash line is a Combination so calves that were out on native pasture But had access to the creep feed that the calves in the dry lot were getting At about 1% of their body weight so Really what I think you know observationally looking at this information you can really see The the amount of calves as a percent On the y-axis elevated in terms of Cavs at the bunk for both the the treatments receiving creep feed so you can kind of see what that creep feed looks like on the right hand side there, but But um at any rate, you know providing something Gave those calves of familiarity within that first week and getting those calves through To the bunk and and consuming that diet so Kind of moving towards what should we be focusing on or what's your goal? In terms of the entire backgrounding phase, you know I think obviously your reasoning and and what you have your system is in place already, you know Whether you you're anticipating trying to get a pound to a pound and a half gain All the way up to you know, maybe three pounds is going to change depending on you know Are you are you trying to get your these calves to the next grazing season? Are you trying to add value through a bit of preconditioning in a short, you know backgrounding period? You know, is it developing replacement females or? You know simply marketing grains through these animals and and trying to maximize that gain or You know moving calves into a finishing ration of sorts through this backgrounding period So if we kind of look at maybe what would be considered expected gains in an ideal situation or ideal conditions this is information and the nutrient Requirements of beef cattle in the 2016 But basically what we have is is a depiction of four different rations You know really providing both, you know differences in TDN and in Net energy and if we look at really what that means on an energy system Kind of and looking at gains. That's really just some ballpark numbers to have whether you look at TDN or energy But kind of depending on the gain goals and what you have kind of gearing your diet to look You know something along these lines to have anticipated gains of of their over on the right hand side So if we kind of take that and and and move it a little bit forward with looking at Then energy and protein requirements relative to calf size. So on the left hand side here, we have calf size moving from 400 pounds down to eight and really, you know dry matter intake being listed there and and You know kind of as those calves move based on that body weight, right that initial Kind of goal, you know of that two and a half percent or something along those lines if we look at that But then broken down I have kind of the NEG TDN and crew protein Of a pound and a half gain or two and a half pounds again So you can kind of see the difference there in terms of that NEG that energy Or or the TDN really hasn't changed that much, right? We're providing kind of that that that energy requirement based on that calf size And that really doesn't change all that much in the in the between those animals and really what the driver there is is actually the protein content, right real good demonstration there of you know You know low level of gain and what that crew protein diet should look like in the backgrounding phase as we move through different sizes of animals and so So as we think about, you know picking an end point and figuring out what our average daily gain should be I think it's I think it's important to consider the equation value of gain and calculating that And so how we would do that is say we're buying a calf to background in November Now if you're retaining your calves from your cow calf enterprise, I think you should still You know go through the the calculation at least on paper and looking at if you were to sell that calf And buy it back into your backgrounding system to see if your backgrounding enterprise Is really worth it. You you know and so Evaluating your your calf enterprise separate from your backgrounding enterprise at least on paper and so But if we do consider this a 550 weight calf at 155 100 weight would would cost us $852. Okay, so in November if we're going to put 200 pounds on that calf we'll sell them in march And that and so we'll we'll we'll kind of target a gain of 1.6 pounds sort of there about So the calf we're selling in march now these market values that i'm using are really just rounded numbers that are pretty close to averages for these months So if we sell that 750 weight calf at 145 100 weight That gets us about $1087 so value of gain calculation is simply taking The the sale price accounting for the weight to the calf minus the purchase price So $235 is is really what the margin there is For the backgrounding operation now we take that divided by the gain We put on that calf and that's our value of gain equation You can match this up with a cost of gain and figure out What your true margin is between the cost of gain and the value of that gain and so It's a it's a really useful tool that I think we can implement even when it comes to making decisions on on what Feed stuffs we go with and and what inputs we we place on these calves and how that affects the the margin and looking at The value of that gain based upon our our selection of of the energy and protein in the diet So really um what I wanted to show here is when it comes down Time to select some feeds. We've talked about keeping this starter ration and keeping the the diet that these calves start on Pretty high in energy and energy density. And so if we look at corn there at the top You know crude protein negs or TDN, whichever one you want to kind of focus on You can kind of see some of the the value and some of these feeds available here in North Dakota And uh, something I want to point out that I've said already is that you can look down here at the bottom And look at alfalfa hay and see, you know, the neg of that alfalfa hay Is is about a 0.24 per megacals per pound. And so you can kind of see how When we talk about really, um, you know providing higher concentrate rations, right 50 to 70 concentrate Really the the result there is being if you look across these other feeds and co-products and whatnot You can see that the the energy value difference there between and so keeping that in mind is as we start looking at selections of of Of some of these components as well as, you know The protein that may become from say distillers grains, uh, both an energy and a protein Feed and so it's really kind of fits it's in a niche of its own providing both both protein and energy in these diets and so it kind of makes that unique and and that's Kind of to to move into then looking at total mixed rations and kind of the benefit of that This is an older study out of South Dakota state, but they basically took 72 heifers Split them and then Fed them over 133 days The focus here you can see the diet was the same between Um, the the real difference though was was actually, you know mixing that diet together or providing the ingredients as as individual ingredients into the bunk and so Really looking at a total mixed ration and what the benefits were and so you can see there with the mixed ration over the 133 days those heifers actually had a significant improvement in average daily gain and so this actually equated to a 10 10% more gain over that 133 days, which led to 23 pounds And so it's when you think about it in that in that regards, um, you know a feed mix wagon In the number ahead you're dealing with, you know start penciling in Uh, you know whether that investment may be worth it in overall because we didn't change the diet here It's just how we blended mix that diet and delivered it And so overall those those heifers in the mix group that tmr Actually consumed 61 pounds less of feed as well in the total So again cost savings here when it comes to what it cost you to feed those animals and the gain that you Resulted from our important things to consider even You know if you think you're you're a small enough operation where this couldn't pay off I encourage you to to take a look at this and and look at the benefits of providing a total mixed ration if If keeping calves retaining calves and feeding them is is something you're interested in doing Okay, so talking about energy content of these uh starter rations There's a there's a really good study done back in the 90s fluhardy and lurch Looking this was a 28 day starter Trial using 60 steers. So these these calves weighed at the beginning 467 pounds. So on the left here at the graph is the dry matter intake of those animals over that 28 day period And so you can see the diet listed across Simply put, you know moving from a 52 neg diet up to a 59 neg simply by displacing corn silage with corn And so the protein source there being soybean meal and blood meal Of course blood meal wouldn't wouldn't be something we'd find common anymore, of course, but but nonetheless, you know providing a protein a concentrate and then corn silage, of course being that blend of both forage and concentrate Accounting for the corn that's delivered there at any rate what they saw with the this 28 day trial was that as you increased Energy content the purple line being that 59 neg diet And then the the green line being next at 57 neg So basically as you increased the energy content of of the starter rations They saw an improvement in dry matter intake in week three and week four So, you know, you can kind of that kind of comes through on on average daily gain there Over, you know as you increase energy content Of these starter rations. And so although, you know The numerical differences there and feed efficiency. It took a little bit more feed To put on a pound of gain at those higher energy levels that but Most likely that's just probably a difference in in gut fill on those but you can kind of see as you move through They the results there, you know in terms of increasing energy content and the incidence of morbidity and sick calves Really it wasn't there as they increase the energy content. So so if we transition then and look at protein sources I think it's important to to note that not all protein is the same So when we think of crude protein, we can see those values there for the respective feeds You see re urea is at 281 Relative to some of the other feeds alfalfa hay distillers grains and that really is is But but that protein that crude protein isn't all The same in terms of how it's degraded within the rumen. So there's a fraction of that protein that will be degraded and that is Noted as rumen degradable protein there in that middle column And then there's the fraction that is often called bypass protein And which avoids rumen degradation. And so rumen undegraded protein As you can see urea is 100 percent rumen degradable protein as it is a primary source of nitrogen or or is a source of nitrogen for the microbial population only and so When we look at say alfalfa hay that has a fairly high level of rumen degradable protein Let's still provide some level of rumen undegradable protein Distiller's grains has the opposite degradation. So that's a primarily The protein is primarily bypass protein And so that makes it a little bit unique relative some of the other feeds and where Most of that protein can actually go towards the animal's growth requirements and the animal can use that protein So this slide depicts really a great representation of the value that I've been just talking about with the value of distiller's grains So it was a pooled analysis of four growing studies that done in Nebraska and The base of the diet was grass hay and sorghum silage. So forage based diet And they looked at you know, kind of Having similar performance between dry rolled corn and distillers and really what those inclusion levels look like So you can see dry rolled corn at 36 of that diet versus 23 for the wet distillers grains And overall really pretty similar Performance same dry matter intake average day of the game Maybe a little bump towards the distillers grains and a little improvement in feed efficiency for that as well But but nonetheless pretty similar performance But that distillers grains only needed to be included at you know, 13% less of the diet to get similar performance. So really I think this does a great job of Showing the the energy value that we can get from providing the the high protein but also highly digestible distillers grains Relative to dry rolled corn and so when you think about pricing distillers grains and dry rolled corn, you know comparing those they often Distillers is priced as a Kind of on a percent of of what the the price of corn is There's really a lot of movement in in being able to go, you know, 120 percent 130 percent the value of the dry rolled corn because we can see that value Through through feeding less distillers grains feeding in situations. So Kind of wanted to look then at you know differences. There's a really good study Looking at you know difference between room integratability is essentially in growing ration. So the first diet there being a 100 percent room integratable protein, right urea and and these were in High corn silage growing diets. So 79 percent of the diet was was corn silage. And so we look at basically Yeah Highly degradable versus soybean meal would be mostly room integratable protein around 70 percent With 30 percent being room and undegraded and then kind of the inverse there being for distillers grains having about 30 percent 36 percent room in degradable protein and about 63 percent Room and undegradable protein and so looking at these diets there. They're pretty similar and crude protein overall But again different sources of that protein and what what the end result being here and just demonstrating that You know as we provide a source of room and undegradable protein we see that improvement over the The urea treatment that that 100 percent room and degradable Source and so we can see the the bump in average daily gain and the improvement in feed efficiency when we're providing some protein That the animal has direct access to that being that bypass protein So if we transition now and look at ionophores and talk about those a little bit When we look at ionophores and growing rations, we can improve average daily gain That 5 to 15 percent and improve feed efficiency by 8 to 12 percent And this is simply a function of altering the microbial population in the room and due to the nature of ion for being an antibiotic and Actually increasing the amount of energy available through basically the selection of what microbes are fermenting those feeds and so This really overall has a result with the improved performance on about a one and a half percent improvement on your break evens and So if we look the survey zoetis put out this year national stocker survey Those that feed ionophores is over half. And so there's still Some that that not to use it in but I encourage, you know Um For you to look at your own operation and consider the improvements that you may see through the use of an ionophore Some data to look at ionophores. Um here done by lambloom and others is uh, you know, it's some old data but looking at five and a half weight calves and simply, you know getting Looking at a controlled diet without ion force and then both both vetech and remensin being ionophores there And what they saw was in in a diet that was, you know, primarily barley In grass hay with a little bit of alfalfa In a protein supplement there that they saw an improvement in 11 and a half percent from the control with both vetech inclusion and 15 and a half Excuse me 15 percent improvement with remensin. And so both again improving that feed efficiency mark and in overall average daily gain Kind of just demonstrating that improvement I want to transition and wrap up here with looking at a little bit of, you know, corn processing and grower rations. And so if we think about Kind of keeping, you know, processing that corn rolled corn in a in a diet and and is it worth, you know, kind of that That cost associated with it in the in the labor When we talk about growing rations, particularly in growing rations with some corn byproducts in them So in this case, this study was done here out in Carrington looking at a 25 percent corn 27 percent distilled grains 26 percent silage and some wheat straw and essentially those calves that Kind of again, NEG diets very similar at that 50 NEG over the course of 60 days though they were Six and a half weights looking at the results here now the was really No difference at all actually in in and calf performance between those so in this case when we're talking about diets with some Distilled grains but but corn byproducts in there and you know inclusion levels in a forage based diet here background and ration That there doesn't appear to be and this is backed by several other Studies across different universities doesn't seem to be an improvement in performance in these grower rations by processing that corn So something to consider in your operation I want to thank you all for tuning into this video and encourage you to take a look at our other videos within this series Focusing on backgrounding if you have any questions or would like to further discuss backgrounding or any topic related to beef cattle in North Dakota Feel free to shoot me an email or give me a call. Thank you