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Introduction to Beef: Stocker-Feedlot

We have two choices, weaned calves or yearlings. Either one of these ages of animals is usually placed in either a grazing or a background scenario and many people think of backgrounding as grazing. The major goal is to maximize frame growth, get the animals, structurally, to grow, not in body fat. Maximize frame growth while not getting these animals too fat. Many calves, if you look at when they’re weaned, this late summer/fall, they will be in the range of 450 to 550 and these calves are too small to go directly into the feedlot. They need to go into some other situation where you maximize frame growth and not necessarily fatten the animals. If you look at the animals that are most efficient when they go into the feedlot, you look at days on feed and feed conversion, enter animals that enter the feedlot at 700 to 750 pounds. You have a couple hundred pounds between these weaned calves and when they are actually ready to go into the feedlot. Can weaned calves go directly into the feedlot? Can they? I said it wasn’t efficient, but they can. But it is better off if they spend some time somewhere else getting some frame growth rather than going directly into the feedlot.

How many of you are involved with the stocker project out at Berry Creek? There is about 1,500 acres at Soap Creek and about another 1,500 at Berry Creek. Something like that. I do not know how much is in pasture and how much is in woods, but there is lots of forage out there in the spring and summer. And they bring in 300 to 400 stockers and run them on Berry Creek for what spring/summer? April through July. What they are trying to do is utilize the forage, but also to put some frame growth on these animals. And then they go where? Then, they go into the feedlots.

Those of you who are in the meat club can maybe help me out a bit on my quality grades and yield grades. Here are the frame sizes and these will be the harvesting weights for these animals. To grade choice, they would have a harvesting weight of about 1,200, if they are large framed. For medium framed animals, about 1,000 to 1,200 pounds. And for small framed animals, something less than 1,000 pounds. Remember when you look up nutrient requirements in you tables you see large framed animals, medium framed animals and small framed animals. These would be the target ending weights for these different frame sizes.

Maturity is the same in all animals. As animals mature, fat deposition will increase and protein and water deposition will decrease. That means that as animals get close to finishing, they need more energy per unit of weight gain. If you look at a gram of weight gain of fat, you will usually get about .9 of a gram of actual fat and about .1 of a gram of water. Mainly, when they are putting on fat that is actually what they are putting on, the majority of it is fat. When you look at muscle deposition, they will put on about .2 of a gram of muscle and about .8 of a gram of water. How much does it cost, in energy, to put on water? How much does water cost you? It is free or it is essentially free. So considering that, what is the energy content of water? Zero. What is the energy content of protein? If you look at kilocals per gram. Does it make sense that it costs a lot more to put on fat. Not only is it more energy dense, but when an animal puts on a gram of fat, the majority of it is fat. When animals put on muscle, the majority of it is actually water gain and not muscle gain. As fat deposition increases, gross efficiency and feed conversion decrease. Pounds of feed per pound of gain, if you look at an animal that is on feed from 0 to 200, feed efficiency would look something like this. One of the reasons feed efficiency is decreasing is because for each pound of gain, it is very energy dense because it is fat. In addition to decreased energy, extended feeding times also result in additional yardage charges, additional interest costs on your investment in the animals.

Getting back to our stockers. If you look at different classes of animals that enter the feedlot, we have newly weaned calves, yearlings or long yearlings, this is how long they were on feed to finish.

Of course, calves were on feed much longer than yearlings were on feed because they were younger. Their harvesting weight actually increased as age increased and dressing percent was the same. If you looked at frame sizes, large, medium or small, animals that had large frame sizes were on feed longer than animals with small frame sizes because in general they needed to gain more weight because they were larger framed. They also finished at a higher weight and dressing percent was somewhat similar. If you look at boxed meat, which one of them would you get more out of? It is the percent of their harvesting weight that was actually meat, think of it that way. You look at the live animal weight on the hoof versus what they weigh on the rail hanging.

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