How to Put weight on a Green Steer

      <cowboy> We recently bought our steer for this coming year, he is an awesome looking calf but still very green. My question is this, what would yall recommend to put weight on him so he is ready for prospect shows? A fat supplement or just more feed? He weighs 530 pounds right now. He is large framed. Main x. Thank you for your help!

Feed and time.

Your goal should be to get him worked up to 3% percent of his body weight with a good grower/developer at this time. If you can get him eating good and keep him on track the rest will come. Start him on a good routine (feeding same times each day) and stick to it and he should be fine, just remember to increase the feed as he grows. If he is gaining 3 pounds a day or a hundred pounds a month you will want to increase his feed at around a pound and a half every 2 to 3 weeks.

I think VC is giving great advice.  I know you will hear some people say that you will need to move to a finisher fairly quickly.  My advice, from experience is to use a yeast product.  It's a cheap investment and I feel it really helps.  We use Diamond V yeast.  I think it's like $30 a bag and it will last almost a year for one steer.  A handful on top of each feeding.  It keeps the bugs in their gut working and I feel keeps their appetite up.  I had a friend who's final college project was a rate of gain test in a feedlot situation where the only variable was a yeast product in the feed.  Those steers were gaining over .5 pounds per day more than the control group on feed alone.  It convinced me and we have been using it for years.
We have 1000 pound steers eating 16 pounds a day of a 12% finisher (Bar Ale Sonoma finisher out of Williams California) along with about 2 pounds of rice bran per day.  Along with some pretty plain jane grassy hay and we were at almost a 5 lb per day gain. So we are only in the 2% of their body weight range. Our fair is not until September so we are a little ahead of the game. 

I agree with the Davidsonranch  on the yeast program, I got started on a product called MANNA E because of extreme bloating problems many years ago and it really made life a lot more fun .....It cost's a little more probably but is cheap compared to problems I had before ....

When is you final show or what is your goal weight for this calf? If he is larger framed and you think he will be too big you may want to work with a nutrionist to put on condition and reduce growth.

Find someone local that has experience you can trust and have them look at your calf in person. We have been fortunate over the years to have a feed mill that knows how to feed show calves. We change our ration according to target dates. Feed for state fair or feed for county. Where we are our state fair is a month and 2 weeks prior our county fair. So we have to keep one fresh if we go state.

Find a cheap pair of bathroom scales and start measuring your feed and monitor his consumption. Keep track so you can get an idea of how much he is eating and if he needs jacked up or down. There are some great threads on simple feed rations that will do the trick. The last 60 days or so we add little barley to harden the cover a bit. We do not use a ton of supplements. We did use Natural Fit and I ahve been impressed what it has done for giving that additional bulk to the calves.

Weighing your calf is also very important. if you don't have scales or the FFA./4-H doesn't have scales go to the local grain elevator and keep track of how your calf is gaining. Just put him on the scales periodically.

Hi everyone! I just wanted to give an update. currently we weigh 830lbs and growing. Our fair is in January and I am getting a little nervous about weight. Ive included a beginning pic, a picture 54 days after the first pic and the third is a week old. I see a big difference, hoping everyone else can see it to. My question is what can I do to keep improving and keep him on the right track? This is what he is eating

  6lbs HSC Developer
  7lbs HSC Finisher ( were moving him over)
  6oz depth charge
  6oz power fuel
  3lbs pre con
  Fresh grass cut hay (all he can eat)
  fresh water
2x a day***

What is the point of feeding growth additives with a developer? -- as opposed to just starting with a finisher and increasing the % of corn in the ration as needed.   

-XBAR- said:

What is the point of feeding growth additives with a developer? -- as opposed to just starting with a finisher and increasing the % of corn in the ration as needed. 

Click to expand...

Developer is a cooler ration, not as hot as finisher. We add the power fuel to yes put weight/ fat but it also helps lower body temp to gain weight as well as helping with stress levels. Corn is way to hot to feed down here in the summer time in my opinion. We are moving over to a finisher ration now that we are on our last 150 days till fair.