Ideal Grazing Herd Size & Type

[Stocker Steve]

I am currently rotating and supplementing yearlings and light calves seperately, but I have not sorted out the heifers and the steers. It seemed a little easier to treat and supplement with a groups of less than 75 to 100 head.

Any experience or suggestion or with grazing larger herds?
Any performance benifit to not grazing mixed herds?

 

[NorCalFarms]

I rented a pasture one year that we ran 150 pairs in (everything I had at the time plus some of a friends), they were in tall grass all year and everything came out looking like hell. I think the dominate cows and calves which were already larger got the choice feeds, and everyone else fell further behind. Now everything I have is in groups less that 40 pair. Much easier as we can supplement the later calves with a little hay, and any light groups as well. Since we haul everything to pasture, it is real easy to group them at spring turnout.

We run replacement heifers and steers together, never supplement much as they are on great grass, but the all seem to do well, I want good gain on both. Rotational grazing has helped a bunch-when we did the big pasture they were on the same place all year and the feed wasn't very uniform. It was real easy (all I did was drive by and check them once in a while, another guy irrigated it) but I will never do that again. Big places like that around here are expensive anyway.

 

[msscamp]

Any performance benifit to not grazing mixed herds?

The biggest performance benefit would be if you sort the steers off of the heifers, you don't have to worry about the steers riding and losing weight every time a heifer cycles. Because of your screen name I'm thinking all of these calves/yearlings are headed for slaughter? If that is right then there may also be the advantage of being able to customize rations because the heifers still have their natural hormones to help them convert it to weight, where the steers do not. I don't know if that is correct or not, but it makes sense.

 

[mnmtranching]

Sure seems like separating Steers and heifers makes them perform better, that riding and chasing uses energy. And if there happens to be a one nut in with the steers all kinds of problems.

mnmt

 

[VAStocker]

Stocker Steve, the way we rotate pasture is graze a padock hard for 4 to 6 days like 1/4 to 1/2 acre per head you will be able to tell that better as you watch your grass.

With running Steers and Heifers together we have never had a problem with it always came out with the same ADG as groups that were seperated.

One thing that dose effect your ADG is having the groups in as tight a weight range as possible. I've always tried to stay with no greater spread than 100lbs.

 

[Stocker Steve]

I have seen where the much lighter animals get pushed around in a dry lot situation, and so they may gain 0.5 lb/day less.

How much effect do you see on pasture?