We just make sure that they've always got a couple round bales of good hay in the feeders and fresh water (no eating snow for the boys). Seems sufficient, as they're always plenty fat and sassy once the cows start cycling (that's prime fence repairing time around here) and they get right to business when we turn them out with the girls.
But we don't feed them any grain as we want them in their working clothes come spring. It's a different way of overwintering the bulls compared to some, but ours have to cover a lot of ground when they get to pasture, and sometimes it seems that bulls that have been "pushed" hard have a difficult time keeping good feet under them... at least in our experience. Sorefooted bulls don't travel well enough to cover all the cows, and we all know that open cows are a costly thing when you're in the business of producing calves.
I did have a bit of a hard time putting weight on one bull that I bought, but that was a different story altogether. I purchased him sight unseen on recommendation by a local breeder who gets a lot of his seedstock from a ranch in southern Alberta. The fanciest Char bull I've ever seen when he walked out of their trailer - bar none. Deep, thick, long and moved like a cat. But he had a hard time adjusting to the hay we feed up here, as he'd been fed on silage before that. Took him a year to finally get his gut adjusted to our feed, but he still puts the best calves on the ground every year - growthy and vigorous - never have had to help a single one find the teat.
But it's not uncommon for short grass cattle to have a hard time adjusting even to our native pasture grasses up here, so I guess it was par for course.
Take care.
