opinions on market show steer

beefmaster said:

I am feeding him alfalfa and grass hay and oats and corn,

Click to expand...

ohh thats not good, like they said you need to get him on a real feed if you want to do any good at the show. honor is good feed. thats what paffaproud uses and its good

but is that type of feed (corn oats...) good for raising market animals?

Not by itself no. They are key ingredients but are not a complete feed and that's what this calf and any calf for that matter needs.

Shorthorn Girl said:

but is that type of feed (corn oats...) good for raising market animals?

Click to expand...

good for commercial market animals...but a special show feed is ment for show cattle needs such as quick weight gain,nutrients to support a healthy immune system and to get a great hair coat.There is a whole lot of other things that a show steer feed will do for you. Also in the commercial world all they really care about is the weight of the cattle and sell them so they can break even at sales. They dont care about supporting a good hair coat and cover. Im  just offering advice because I have been there with the whole mixing corn and oats and beet pulp thing. Started off with my lambs..finally fed up with bad weight gain and muscling I decided to spend a little extra on a show feed. But comparing my FFA project books from the past I actually saved with a show feed then mixing. Not to mention it was a heck of a lot easier. Also the ingredients in the show feed helps keep ur animals on feed in the middle of the awful summer heat. So this past summer I used the mills "beef feed" for my dairy beef...well once agian they were doing very bad on the weight gain...so comes the last month before our fair and they were not going to make weight on their weight of gain..so I looked to see what the Purinia Honor Show Chow had to offer that would put weight on quick and found the grand T-Flyer that I could use with my current feed program!

Shorthorn Girl said:

but is that type of feed (corn oats...) good for raising market animals?

Click to expand...

  no because they want weight on market animals. i honestly dont see how this farmer makes a living off of that. but its a totally different story for show feeds, that is no where near good enough for either direction. are these cattle mineral diffecient? or sickly

Once again the BEST thing you can feed is a balanced finisher like ACCO,HI PRO, or a Purina product or something similar. If you won't or can't and have to feed whats available LOSE the oats. My humble opinion right now is forget the show feed you need to get both beefmasters and shorthorn girls steers fat. Flaked corn, DGG,Silage,Vitimans and minerals and fat and some kind of molasses or CCDS. If you can get these ingredients from your area PM me and I will find a ration for you. I work for Colo State Univ. at a research feedlot. I'm not any smarter than anyone else but I have access to a nutritionist.

MCC just gave you an example of a perfect ration fir weight gain with the silage, steam flaked corn, and mineral vitamin mix. This is what all the feedlots use and there is a reason. At this point I think you really need the weight and I agree with MCC on both of the steets need fat.

MCC, when you say DGG, are you referring to DDGS? If so, we use that along with cotton gin trash to feed both views and develop calves and bulls. Have to watch how much you use, but the neighbors use it wet and love it. Excellent protein and energy source.

showsteernc said:

MCC just gave you an example of a perfect ration fir weight gain with the silage, steam flaked corn, and mineral vitamin mix. This is what all the feedlots use and there is a reason. At this point I think you really need the weight and I agree with MCC on both of the steets need fat.

MCC, when you say DGG, are you referring to DDGS? If so, we use that along with cotton gin trash to feed both views and develop calves and bulls. Have to watch how much you use, but the neighbors use it wet and love it. Excellent protein and energy source.

Click to expand...

Sorry typo. Yes I meant DDG not DGG. Dried Distillers Grain. You do have to watch how much you feed thats why I offered to find them a ration. I personally like the wet distillers better but it starts to mold pretty quick and most small feeders can't feed it up quick enough.

I completely agree with everything that has been said...yes you can maintain cattle on corn, oats, and hay...but you cant do that and get good gains.  Another thing we dont know about your feed...are you feedinge rolled or flaked corn and oats, or are you feeding them whole.  Even if you use the T-Flyer to suplement this, the grains need to be ground, flaked, or rolled to break the seed covering.  This is why you notice a lot of corn and oats in the manure of animals that are fed whole corn or whole oats.  And all the nutrition is on the inside, or the "germ", of the seed.  Rolling, grinding, or flaking breaks that seed covering and allows the digestive system to actually digest and utilized the feed source.  Also you mention nothing about vitamin and mineral supplements?  The best corn and oats out there wont provide the vitamins and minerals needed which are essential to not only having good growth, but a healthy looking animal.  Vitamin and mineral deficiancies could also add to that pot gutted appearance.  When I am growing out a show calf I generally feed a pre mixed complete feed or have a mill make one for me, both work great, but in either case I expect my animals complete nutritional needs to be met by the feed, that way I only have to feed enough hay to provide a little roughage in the diet.  This means the animal consumes more of the feed that is going to give me high rates of quality gain, and doesnt fill themselves up on hay.  If you cant switch get the farmer to buy a complete feed, at least try to make sure he is feeding the right types of grains, try to get him to add something like SBM for a boost of protein, find a good complete vitamin and mineral to mix with it, and try to get him to let you mix some molasses or something to make the feed more palatable and hold it all together.  Then, LIMIT HIS HAY INTAKE and POUR THE FEED TO HIM.  I have dealt with a lot of cattle, I am by no means an expert, and I know that shorthorns can be a little smaller and later maturing than some.  But like everyone siad, this steers weight for his age and the amount of time he as been on feed is WAYYY behind.  Regardless of breed, genetics, color, anything, he is definately at a stage of playing catch up and he is gonna have to be pushed.  Wining a carcass class and excelling in the showring are 2 different ballgames, I could see this steer doing ok in carcass if he gets a little more cover, but he is in no way show ring ready and like others have said.  he wont get there unless his diet changes.

I know that I am going to look bad here, but here you have a young person trying to learn and from all of these suggestions, the person is just getting more & more confused. Most of you that are giving the info haven't stopped long enough to even compare the nutritional values of the ingredients that you are recommending, or recommending that she drop. For instance, how can feeding silage,( 70% H2o or wet distillers help the calf take in as much dry matter possible. There have been threads that discuss whole corn verses steam rolled corn on here B4 that say there is no difference in gain or conversion, only  that steam rolled corn will mold quicker. Sure the big feed lots use steam rolled B/C they can afford to roll it themselves and keep it fresh. My guess is that the person helping them has a lot of personal and practical experience in feeding cattle and has seen and done the last new craze more than once. You all have to remember that all of these show rations/feeds are almost hyped up as big as the class of 2011 new promotional bulls will be the 2 weeks following the National Western. Again there's nothing wrong with what the girls are feeding. They just need to make sure that the diet is balanced and fine tune their animals husbandry abilities. You can look @ the calves & see that they are in good health. If I were you girls, I would print this thread out and then go have a friendly discussion with your mentor. It would seem like an excellent way to open a door to a great learning experience for all of you. JMO and I love everyone's enthusiasm on the topic, but think again that you are just adding confusion for the girls trying to learn.

CAB said:

I know that I am going to look bad here, but here you have a young person trying to learn and from all of these suggestions, the person is just getting more & more confused. Most of you that are giving the info haven't stopped long enough to even compare the nutritional values of the ingredients that you are recommending, or recommending that she drop. For instance, how can feeding silage,( 70% H2o or wet distillers help the calf take in as much dry matter possible. There have been threads that discuss whole corn verses steam rolled corn on here B4 that say there is no difference in gain or conversion, only  that steam rolled corn will mold quicker. Sure the big feed lots use steam rolled B/C they can afford to roll it themselves and keep it fresh. My guess is that the person helping them has a lot of personal and practical experience in feeding cattle and has seen and done the last new craze more than once. You all have to remember that all of these show rations/feeds are almost hyped up as big as the class of 2011 new promotional bulls will be the 2 weeks following the National Western. Again there's nothing wrong with what the girls are feeding. They just need to make sure that the diet is balanced and fine tune their animals husbandry abilities. You can look @ the calves & see that they are in good health. If I were you girls, I would print this thread out and then go have a friendly discussion with your mentor. It would seem like an excellent way to open a door to a great learning experience for all of you. JMO and I love everyone's enthusiasm on the topic, but think again that you are just adding confusion for the girls trying to learn.

Click to expand...

I dont think anyone has told her that corn and oats are a bad part of any diet, but like you said it has to be balanced...we have all recomended a complete feed, like the show feeds, because they are pre-balanced to meet the needs of animals at this stage of development and growth.  There are plenty of us that recomended these feeds, that actually mix and balance our own rations but we recomended these complete feeds because she is young and inexperienced.  If she doesnt even know what she should be feeding, I would say chances are pretty strong that she doesnt know how to balance a diet for the animal.  And truly balancing a diet to actually meet the animals needs is far more complicated than most people think...You cant just go mix a little of this and a little of that  and assume you have everything.  I know college graduates with degrees in Ruminant Nutrtition that have difficulty truly balancing diets...its not an easy science.  So for young, inexperienced showmen, I think complete feeds are the safest way to go, and they are not that expensive, and most of them are not a "fad feed" most of the coomplete feeds have been around a while andstay the same...I think what you are saying is a fad are the supplements that so many add, and nobody really recomended those to her, because again, you have to know what you are doing to use them properly.

As far as the silage, steam rolled vs whole issue...70% would be an awfully high moisture content for silage, and your correct Silage and wet distillers grains will not increase intake, but at the same time they do not need as much of these, because the silage and distillers grain are already under going anaerobic fermentation which is the process cattle use to digest grains and forages, thus the process is already started for them so they convert the feed much more efficiently and quickly getting more nutritional value from it without having to take in as much feed, however I would tend to agree I wouldnt recomend either of these for growing calves, but that is  my preference.  As far as the rolled vs. whole corn goes, I havent seen the threads you mentioned but would have to totally disagree. While the nutritional content of both is the same, they arent able to digest it as well in whole corn, or whole any grain for that matter, because the digestive tract cant break down the outer covering of the seed which prevents them from getting to the part that actually has nutritional value.  If fed whole grains the only part that gets borken down is the grain that they grind with their teeth and cattle are not efficient at this, thus you see so much whole corn in manure. they cant break it down so it passes right through, rolling, cracking or grinding breaks that shell and allows the digestive tract to acutally digest the grain.  And as far as big feedyards steamrolling, trust me they wouldnt do it if it didnt have some proven value, They are looking to cut costs as many ways as possible...Making silage and rolling corn adds more labor and cost and is very time consuming...but feedyards still do it because it has proven to increase feed efficiancy and rate of gain to a point to make it worht the extra time and costs.

We did a trial about a year ago for a very large feedlot corporation that has feeding capacity of over 800,000 head. They wanted to know if it was cost effective to feed whole corn instead of steam rolling it. The results of the trial showed the more whole corn we fed the less the daily gain was. The changes were not even from ration to ration they kept spiking more and more each time more whole corn was added. They decided the cost of steam flaking more than made up for the cost of flaking.

thanks for all of the comments and helpful information, keep them coming