Slowing down a steer

[SKF]

How do you feed a steer that your trying to slow down? My daughter has a steer for next year that just seems to gain weight looking at food. The problem his we need to keep his weight down until the first weigh in which is not until Aug. I don't want to ruin him and then have him not grow. Right now he weighs 736, I feed him 5lbs of showmaster grower and a scoop of oats 2x's a day plus all the hay he wants. He is turned out on grass all day. Thanks!

 

[chambero]

Use a higher fiber diet.  You can add things like beet pulp, cottonseed hulls, etc.  A lot of the big feed makers are starting to make high fiber rations.  A lot of the calves from lines that tend to get fat easy are grown pretty slow these days anyway. 

I always believed in getting them there first before worrying about holding.  I'm glad we don't have to mess with these early weigh ins.

As an example, we had a May calf one year that was heavy that we "held" for our spring shows in Texas.  His diet his whole life till right at the end was 3 scoops of finisher + 1 scoop of beet pulp (3 lb scoops) twice a day.  We still had to pull him hard in the end, but my sister won Champion Maine steer in Houston with him.

 

[Jill]

We don't like holding steers, I would rather push than hold, we usually try to start out with a younger one,  but we had a heifer like that last year, for the last 4 months of her show career she got 1 scoop of feed and 1 scoop of beet pulp, she just looked at feed and got fat.

 

[SKF]

Last year we started with younger calves and then we had weight problems because we could not get them to gain enough at the end. I hate holding a calf but our fair has a min. 2lb a day gain from 1st weigh in to last weigh-in so if you weigh in to heavy you knock yourself out of the competitive weight range. I wish they would get rid of that rule then I would not worry about it at this stage.