Corrected newbie question -- Hay or Grain?

[CESpeed]

I originally asked about what type of cattle makes the best meat and after reading the responses I got, I'm beginning to accept that it isn't the breed thsat matters but what the feed is, so I want to ask the question: what is the best feed for cattle to produce tender, tasty meat? If you believe grain is the best choice, what is the best grain? If hay is the best choice, what type of hay?

THANK YOU!

 

[goodhors]

I don't know that there is a "best" choice in feeds to produce good meat. Much will depend on your location, what is available to give your animals, and what kind of budget you have before the cost is out weighing the money you make selling them. Buying brand=name grain is lots more expensive than getting a grain recipe mixed at the local elevator, or feeding your own farm grains.

Another item not mentioned is pasture, to allow animals to move freely, developing muscle, exercising, to produce a good carcass with that feed. Small feed lot or paddocked cattle don't get the exercise of pasture travel to distribute fat thru the meat for good marbling.

I want to have as little invested into the animal as possible, while still keeping it in a healthy setting that gets it exercised, to produce excellent meat. Some steps you can't skip (for our preferred meat flavor and taste) like corn feeding. However the animal gets a mixed diet, not just corn or grain to eat. Pasture for grazing can add calories cheaply, we already have the land and grass, cattle are DESIGNED to eat grass and use it efficiently.

I go with buying good hay, smells clean, has nice color, knowing that alfalfa is richer feed than the grass hays. We try to get a mixed hay, light on alfalfa, usually a cheaper purchase than the straight alfalfa. Again, saving money. We do small bales, no machinery that can handle big bales to feed them with. I don't think any kind hay really influences flavor, tenderness, in the meat animal. More is going to be due to just getting good food products into the animal and the exercise again being the big influence.

I do track what the cattle cost in actual dollars, to see what it cost to produce freezer meat. If you don't mind your expenses to keep the costs down, that animal will end up costing a LOT more than you can buy freezer meat for! I see that with the 4-H kids raising steers. What they have invested in feeds is beyond what money the sale will give them back. Kid PAID to feed someone else's family!! Farmers like that go out of business quick!!

 

[WildRoseBeef]

As goodhors mentioned, it all depends on location, what is available, how much you're willing to spend, and even past experiences.

Where I live, barley is fed more often than corn. Corn doesn't grow well up here, especially during cool summers and mildly warm autumns when the corn doesn't have much time to grow. Barley has been the main source of feed (home-grown, of course, we never bought sacks of it from a feed store) to feed our stocker steers when we had bought them to background them before selling to the feedlot. During the winter we would feed alfalfa-brome-timothy mix hay, which was also home-grown, along with barley silage that we grew and harvested ourselves. When we had a steer to fatten, we would fatten him on barley and let him have ad libitum access to legume-grass mix hay.

We wouldn't just be limiting our stockers to grain, silage and hay. Oh no, we'd kick them out onto pasture for 3 to 4 months and not have to worry about feeding them grain or hay during this period. Those stockers would get fat on grass, and the ones that were a little thinner over the winter filled out a bit more on pasture.

There ain't nothing wrong with grass-finishing a steer for beef. The thing that a body has to be careful of is to make sure the grass that the steer is being finished on is high-quality, not the low-quality crap that's better off being grazed by a dry bred beef cow.

So the most important thing when finishing a steer is quality over quantity. The forage or pasture MUST be high-quality in order to get the kind of meat you want.

 

[jhm47]

First of all, I want everyone to know that this is my opinion/taste. Others will have different tastes and preferences. That is fine.

Over my 55+ years, I've eaten corn fed, oat fed, barley fed, and grass/hay fed beef. In my opinion, the grain feds were definitely the best. Really didn't matter much which grain it was. The grain feds were tender, marbled much better, and had a nice white fat. The grass fed was tougher, had a yellow fat, and just wasn't as palatable. Of course, it may have been due to the type of grass we have here, and other types of grasses might be better. We have mostly Brome grass here.

Another thing to consider is that by adding even a small amount of grain, your animal will have a much more nutrient dense diet. This is especially important for newly weaned calves. A totally grass diet just doesn't provide enough nutrition for a small calf. They will survive, but grow slowly and appear malnuourished. Some of the posters on this site are totally brainwashed into believing that corn or other grains are bad for their calves, so they take them off milk replacer at about 2 - 3 months and start them on hay or pasture. I'll bet those calves look mighty poor quite quickly.

 

[CESpeed]

I should have given more information, my apologies. I definitely want to keep costs down, but I do want healthy cattle. I live in Hot Springs, Arkansas. There is an active hay field on the land I plan to buy. I would just prefer to grow a hay that will give me good quality meat. I do plan to mix corn in their diet as well.

The farm is only 10 acres so I'm only planning on two cows so they don't get lonely. My biggest goal here is to make sure I can take care of them before I get them.

Thank you everyone for your contributions, your thoughts and experiences are greatly appreciated.