12-7 FB Bottom Line

  A rose by any other name is still a rose. So can you make the same assumption with forage? Not necessarily, and that is particularly true with feeding cattle in the wintertime. So says Mary Drewnaski, a University of Idaho beef nutritionist with eyes on 2 different concerns. The bottom line in terms of dollars and calories. She is very concerned about what cattle producers feed in the winter. So I asked her ...Why the winter? Why the winter? “We are talking about cow-calf producers so in the winter it is the most expensive time in terms of cow carrying costs and it is because we are providing them with stored forages and some form of supplement. In the winter, particularly during late gestation, so the last 3 months of pregnancy they have some of the highest requirements that they have all year, early lactation being the highest, so with those 2 times you are actually winter feeding so on top of the fact that you are having to provide a stored forage source, you are also in some of their higher requirements have to be putting the pencil to it and see what we need to be feeding them such that we get good calf growth and we get the rebreeding of our cows.  What happens during this time sets the stage for the rest of the year.”