Feeding Beef Cattle: Tips for a Healthy, Pasture-Based Diet

Enlarge Image Image Gallery Whether you’re a new farmer or experienced rancher, Heather Smith Thomas provides you with concise, helpful information about raising and feeding beef cattle. COVER: STOREY PUBLISHING

The following is an excerpt from Storey’s Guide to Raising Beef Cattle (Storey Publishing, 2009). This new edition to the best-selling classic provides health, handling, feeding and breeding advice to anyone raising beef cattle on their homestead or farm.

Forages (Roughages) and Pasture-Feeding

Forage (pasture, silage, hay) is the most natural feed for cattle. Ruminants do very well on forage but don’t grow quite as fast or get fat as quickly as when they are fed grain. Many young cattle are finished in feedlots on grain to save time and total feed. If grain-feeding can take an animal to slaughter readiness before going through another winter (on hay), it can be cheaper. But pasture is the most abundant and cheapest feed for other cattle.

Green pasture supplies cattle with all the necessary nutrition and energy. By grazing lush grassland, they take in adequate protein, energy, vitamins and minerals (unless soils are very low in certain important trace minerals). An exception may be early spring grass just starting to grow — making fast growth in which plants have high water content and lower percentage of actual nutrients by weight and volume. Quality of pasture depends on a number of factors, including:

• Type of plants grown
• Level of maturity of plants at harvest
• Adequate moisture during growth
• Soil fertility

Hay

If properly grown, cut at the right time (while plants still have high nutrient content, before mature and dry), properly cured and carefully stored to prevent weather damage, hay can be excellent feed for cattle, supplying all necessary nutrients. Legume hay has more protein than grass hay, and some grasses have more protein than others. Good grass hay that’s cut while green and growing can have a higher protein content than legume hay cut late. For optimal quality, hay should be cut before it is fully mature (before legume bloom stage and before heading out of grass seeds). If you cut hay when about 15 percent of the plants have bloomed, you get better volume and still have good quality. Good hay is green and leafy with small, fine stems.

Native grass hay has energy values comparable to legumes if harvested at the same stage of maturity, but about half the protein. Legumes such as alfalfa may have 50 to 60 percent total digestible nutrients (TDN), whereas mature grass hays have 45 to 50 percent TDN. Grass hay can be lower in phosphorus and is always lower in calcium than alfalfa, but a combination hay made up of alfalfa and grass is better for beef cows than straight alfalfa hay.