farmerjan
Herd Master
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Unfortunately, you will find that any animal that eats whole corn will only get 50% use out of it. The digestive enzymes often do not do a very good job of breaking down the outer part of the kernel, which when ground is known as the bran. It is very hard and not well digested. The corn does not stay in their system long enough for them to get full benefit. The only ones that can fully utilize it are poultry as they have a gizzard that actually grinds it. If you look at the manure of any cow that is getting whole corn, and even coarse cracked corn, there will be alot of undigested particles/kernels in the it. It all goes through at the same speed, whole or cracked. Dairy farmers that feed alot of corn silage usually have a "kernel processor" on the choppers/combines that they chop the corn with in the field, in order to further break down the kernels so that more is digested in the rumen faster. I wouldn't feed whole corn to anything except my poultry as you are putting some money into the manure not the animal. We have a large grinder mixer that we put whole corn, dried distillers grain for protein and alfalfa hay into and it grinds it up to the consistancy of very coarse corn meal when we have a group in the barn on feed.
Straight corn does not have enough protein for her, it is an energy feed that runs in the neighborhood of 8% protein, and will not supply all the nutrients that her growing body needs. In the perfect situation, a calf will stay on it's mother for 8-10 months, getting a more balanced diet from the milk and the roughage( grass, hay etc) that it eats. In the real world of humans determining when a calf gets weaned, you cannot expect them to get enough nutrition from just hay and grass at the much younger age. Their mothers' milk supplies alot of the stuff their bodies need to grow. She really does need a more balanced ration of some sort of protein and vitamins/minerals along with the hay in order for her bones, and body to grow. Being a smaller breed also, she cannot possibly eat enough to draw the nutrition from hay alone. Even a high protein hay like alfalfa.
We are a grass based beef operation. I finish my jerseys on grass for the freezer with a couple pounds of grain a week. That's more of a treat than "being on feed". But when we wean calves off our cows at 4-500 lbs. they get a couple pounds grain per head per day at least up to 6-700 lbs weight and they are close to a year old. On just grass, or hay they get pot bellied, and just don't grow properly. Unless we have a sale for a certain size calf, like the 425 lb steers we sold recently, we are leaving the calves on the cows longer unless the cows are losing body condition, since the calves just do better and look much better. I would think that a calf grower, NON-MEDICATED, of 14-15% protein will do her the best. By the time she is a yearling and grass is growing good, she will be able to get most of her nutrition from that and a mineral supplement. We use both loose mineral, and TM salt blocks. The loose mineral has salt in it too, but some animals seem to prefer the blocks, so I get around that by putting a block in each mineral feeder and pouring a bag of loose mineral all around it so the get some mineral when they are licking the block.
Please feel free to ask anyone else, I don't claim to have all the answers. Just don't shortchange the heifer while she is growing or she will never develop to her potential.
Straight corn does not have enough protein for her, it is an energy feed that runs in the neighborhood of 8% protein, and will not supply all the nutrients that her growing body needs. In the perfect situation, a calf will stay on it's mother for 8-10 months, getting a more balanced diet from the milk and the roughage( grass, hay etc) that it eats. In the real world of humans determining when a calf gets weaned, you cannot expect them to get enough nutrition from just hay and grass at the much younger age. Their mothers' milk supplies alot of the stuff their bodies need to grow. She really does need a more balanced ration of some sort of protein and vitamins/minerals along with the hay in order for her bones, and body to grow. Being a smaller breed also, she cannot possibly eat enough to draw the nutrition from hay alone. Even a high protein hay like alfalfa.
We are a grass based beef operation. I finish my jerseys on grass for the freezer with a couple pounds of grain a week. That's more of a treat than "being on feed". But when we wean calves off our cows at 4-500 lbs. they get a couple pounds grain per head per day at least up to 6-700 lbs weight and they are close to a year old. On just grass, or hay they get pot bellied, and just don't grow properly. Unless we have a sale for a certain size calf, like the 425 lb steers we sold recently, we are leaving the calves on the cows longer unless the cows are losing body condition, since the calves just do better and look much better. I would think that a calf grower, NON-MEDICATED, of 14-15% protein will do her the best. By the time she is a yearling and grass is growing good, she will be able to get most of her nutrition from that and a mineral supplement. We use both loose mineral, and TM salt blocks. The loose mineral has salt in it too, but some animals seem to prefer the blocks, so I get around that by putting a block in each mineral feeder and pouring a bag of loose mineral all around it so the get some mineral when they are licking the block.
Please feel free to ask anyone else, I don't claim to have all the answers. Just don't shortchange the heifer while she is growing or she will never develop to her potential.
