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Anyone Creep Feeding Calves?
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<blockquote data-quote="WarEagle73" data-source="post: 1594594" data-attributes="member: 19171"><p>Tried creep feeding this year for the first time. We had some health issues at weaning last year, and I felt like some of it might have been due to the stress of weaning. This year we provided creep for the calves starting 5 weeks prior to weaning and then they stayed on the self feeder 8 days after weaning. At that point we pulled the heifers and bigger steers off and started hand feeding, but left the smaller steers on the feeder. Trying to limit stress due to the nutritional change. We retain ownership on everything that isn't a replacement, so we think this might get the steers ready to head west at a bit heavier weight and maybe improve our quality grade 1/2 to a full marbling score. </p><p></p><p>In the 5 weeks prior to weaning, we were running a rough feed conversion of 3.21# Feed per # of gain for a CoG of $0.42, but that doesn't take into account milk or grazing, or the fact that even without the creep they still would gained. From a purely gain perspective, it didn't pay in my mind. We will lower our cost CoG to at least $0.35 after we get our feed bin out up and start buying feed in bulk, but still that won't make it profitable if we only think about gain. For us, I think the value is getting the calves transitioned at weaning faster. Don't know how to quantify that, but it seemed to be effective and worth it for us.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="WarEagle73, post: 1594594, member: 19171"] Tried creep feeding this year for the first time. We had some health issues at weaning last year, and I felt like some of it might have been due to the stress of weaning. This year we provided creep for the calves starting 5 weeks prior to weaning and then they stayed on the self feeder 8 days after weaning. At that point we pulled the heifers and bigger steers off and started hand feeding, but left the smaller steers on the feeder. Trying to limit stress due to the nutritional change. We retain ownership on everything that isn't a replacement, so we think this might get the steers ready to head west at a bit heavier weight and maybe improve our quality grade 1/2 to a full marbling score. In the 5 weeks prior to weaning, we were running a rough feed conversion of 3.21# Feed per # of gain for a CoG of $0.42, but that doesn't take into account milk or grazing, or the fact that even without the creep they still would gained. From a purely gain perspective, it didn't pay in my mind. We will lower our cost CoG to at least $0.35 after we get our feed bin out up and start buying feed in bulk, but still that won't make it profitable if we only think about gain. For us, I think the value is getting the calves transitioned at weaning faster. Don't know how to quantify that, but it seemed to be effective and worth it for us. [/QUOTE]
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