Steer Planet - Show Steers and Club Calves Forum

Ttt

Used it last year and decided not to use again this year.  It worked okay on our market steer last year and a couple of heifers that needed some finish but there were a few things I didn't like.  One was the amount of molasses.  During the winter months the bags turned to concrete.  Two, I hated the price.  Three, the calves never seemed to fall in love with the feed.  We are now using a local mills mixture that uses Purina's 4Tfyer as the main ingredient with soybean oil replacing almost all the molasses.  So far I like the new mixture better than finishing touch and other Purina products they offer (Impact, Fitters Edge) because the calves are staying on feed better and gaining good weight.  I want to make sure I am clear that I have no problems using Purina products but it seems like a good mill can mix a feed up for you that will be just as good (if not better) and save you $2 - $3 a bag.  Just my opinion.

We switched over to the Purina feeds a handful of years ago because our local feed store doesn't have the custom mix business to keep the mill up and running well.  Our custom mixes tended to be extremely variable within each batch,  molasses distribution mostly.  We've had good luck with it, however we've sometimes run into issues with freshness, especially on the Finishing Touch, and therefore sometimes throwing heifers off feed.  We use it the same as rjb for the most part.  We will switch back and forth between it and Fitter's Edge when more condition is needed or we want to hold one/freshen one up.

We have not used the Finishing Touch finisher because we raise heifers. Our heifers love the Fitters Edge!!!