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| Nutrition | NUTRITION
7P Ranch develops breeding stock on forage based rations. We have put up grass silage for the past ten years. This silage is mixed primarily with corn, corn gluten, mineral and ionophores. We learned about silage from our dairy friends.
900 acres are planted with winter grasses-Rye (Elbon/Maton) and Rye grass (Tam 90). The Coastal Bermuda pastures are overseeded with the mixture in mid to late October and start grazing (this depends on the weather) in late January. By late April we have more forage than cows, so we cut this for silage and refertilize, then cut again in late May or early June. At this time we have a Coastal Bermuda/Rye grass mix to put in silage. In our county, we normally have rain from mid April to June and it is hard to put this overgrowth in hay. Another advantage of silage is that with feeding, the waste is much less than with hay.
The scenario described was a pipe dream with our horrible drought the last three years. We fertilized and watched and waited and nothing grew. We tell our South and West Texas rancher friends that since we are grass farmers, we really lose in drought. We put out $100/acre on fertilizer and then sell our cattle while the West and South Texas ranchers just sell their cattle.
The drought has had some bright spots. It gave us an opportunity to see how beneficial our program works on these cattle. The last several years we have fed our cattle to gain the carcass data that is essential to the purebred breeder who is offering bulls to the commercial man. We have fed with Dr. David Hutcheson, consultant with Tri County Feed Yards in Hereford, TX. We sell him half interest in our cattle that are sent to the feedlot. We do the Vac 45 Background program and get the carcass data back on each animal.
This gives us an opportunity to complete the picture for our bull buyer (BW, WW, YW, scrotal circumference at one year of age, frame score with daily gain on forage alone for a year, as well as, carcass data for the bulls we use).
We offer commercial cows, Brahman/Angus, Brahman/Hereford (purchased as young heifers), Brahman/Simmental, purebred red and black Simmental and full blood with full and percentage Fleckvieh.
| | June 21, 2004 | It has been a cool spring with late and lots of moisture. The coastal Bermuda grass is slow but the TAM 90 was very spotty because we broadcast it in October with fertilizer – one rain and then it turned hot and dry so we, like most in our area, lost the TAM 90 rye grass. With the Maton rye, we drilled with no-till drill and it all made. We cut our grass silage in April where we had excess growth. (We pack ours in a 100 ft x 50 ft x 8 ft concrete slab, heavy on the packing – the innoculant is sprayed on the rye grass and TAM 90 as it is cut.)
We have found that the Maton cereal rye stays “leafy” a little longer and becomes dry and “stemy” around the first week of May here and Elbon matures slightly earlier.
We feel if you do not graze your Maton rye pretty close or cut it for silage then you probably should cut it for hay and hope you get it up before rain, because when you turn cattle into these fields there is a great loss of feed that is “stomped” into the ground. This needs to be gotten off in order to let the coastal come on.
Now we are ready to wean our September and October calves. The whole herd is bled on April 21 for our brucellosis free herd certification. This has been done annually since 1975. At this time we gave all the cows and calves, to be weaned in mid May, Cattlemasters 4+LV5 moderate live virus and killed virus. All the calves both fall and spring over 3 months of age are given 7way clostridium vaccines and again at weaning. The larger calves were dehorned and castrated so they will be healed by weaning. (They have enough stress with weaning)
The real pearls of wisdom I could share with you are not our success stories (which are few) but are the things we did wrong. This past winter we were feeding corn, corn gluten, mixed with our grass silage and we suddenly had 8 downer cows in one day. They did respond to the Ca-Mag IV Rx, but the next day there were others. On checking our feed rations, a new man was feeding and he had doubled the corn gluten by mistake – thus increasing the sulphur and decreasing the copper and the calcium. Increasing the sulphur also decreases copper to which continental cattle are more sensitive. So corn gluten is good feed when fed correctly.
The calves will be weaned carefully with watering and decreasing the dust. Good feed and water with our vaccination program should have them up and running. Last year we started this program of weaning by mixing alfalfa hay with corn and tried to get them eating as soon as possible. They gained more than 1- ˝ lb/day from weaning + 45 days; whereas before we had some real wrecks without special care.
We will drill a little pearl millet in two acres. This has been awfully good or awfully bad depending on the weather. This has been cut for hay in doe stage and it tests about 22 – 24% protein. This was fed to cow/calf pairs last winter. The jury is out on this in our area. We have done this for about 15 years with the above mentioned results.
Our coastal is great until July and then it decreases in quality and primarily handles dry cows. We have some Tifton 85 bermuda hay. Dr. Roquette et al, from the Texas A&MU Extension Station in Overton did some great work comparing coastal gains
to Tifton 85 bermuda with stocker calves. They gained nearly 2 lbs/day in the summer-rare in our country.
We will be selecting our Simmental Bulls and Females for our upcoming Annual Production Sale on October 30. These will be selected in July. Watch for our web site. We are going to keep it current.
Thanks, Joe
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