Heifer Weanlings

Atilathehun

Hallo lads, great forum here.

I'm wondering what advice lads would give on feeding weanling heifers.
This year I decided for one reason or another to keep on to my spring born weanling heifers. I sold the bulls.
They are all charolais from charolais cross cows. Stock bull out of CF52.

I have 4 out of good milky cows, which I am keeping for replacements. On silage only.
However I have 6 more I'm thinking I'd like to keep and feed for slaughter.
What feed plan would ye advise. Silage only and out to grass in March, OR, silage with a kg nuts? I never done this before so I'm a bit lost.

Would I be better selling as store heifers say, in May or so, for the big boys to do the finishing?

What age would you expect these type heifers to reach finish weight?

Nutcase

We finish all our calves from our sucklers. The heifers are finished at at 24-28 months at around 320-350kgs they've been on 2kgs since they went in and the bulls are finished from 21-24 months at 400-460kgs they have been on 2kgs since they went and pending results of second cut silage will be fed another 0.5kg if its less than 70 DMD. We will start to reduce the meal to them all next year and have it so that they are only getting 1kg or no meal at all from mid Feburary to turnout. These will all be housed in autumn time and finished out of shed in spring on a diet of meal/silage/straw. Hope this helps!!

I often wondered about people who finished their heifers off the grass say in september how they would fair out it could be a better option that putting them back into the shed again? Not sure how this system works id imagine u would need a good heavy heifer coming out of the shed in springtime!!?

defadman

it Depends on weight of the animals you have. I would roughly estimate they are 350 kg. I feel they would want to be recieving 1 to 2 kg of meal a day along with silage. A ration of 14% protein would do. try to get them out to grass as early as possible. then about 110 days before killing them start them off with roughly 2 kg of meal and build this up to 4kg gradually. I would reccomend going down the finishing route

sheepdogone

24 to 28 months to finish heifers ?? what breeding are you working with ? surely 18 to 20 months is achievable without excess meal ?? we finish all heifers at 550kgs live at 18 or 19 months

Shauny2010

Atilathehun wrote: »

Hallo lads, great forum here.


Would I be better selling as store heifers say, in May or so, for the big boys to do the finishing?

If you going to sell them I wouldn't wait until may, for some reason the prices always fall off by the end of April

Nutcase

sheepdogone wrote: »

24 to 28 months to finish heifers ?? what breeding are you working with ? surely 18 to 20 months is achievable without excess meal ?? we finish all heifers at 550kgs live at 18 or 19 months

Jst checked again for ye and the average age at slaughter last year was 25 months. Working with all charolais x. Yes 18-20 months is achievable but do ye get as good a weights?? We killed a few last year 21-22 months wer only 300kgs. Wot way are u finishing ur heifers and how many kilos of meal are u using? Surely at only 550 live weight not many of them would go over 300kgs DW.

sheepdogone

yeah most dying out at 290kgs - 320kgs all in spec carcase weights so bonus of 6p a kg . low input system feed very economically over winter as weanlings then feed last 6 wks before slaughter up to 3kgs a day depending on condition some mite take more or some less . six months less on farm and a quicker turn over .

Nutcase

sheepdogone wrote: »

yeah most dying out at 290kgs - 320kgs all in spec carcase weights so bonus of 6p a kg . low input system feed very economically over winter as weanlings then feed last 6 wks before slaughter up to 3kgs a day depending on condition some mite take more or some less . six months less on farm and a quicker turn over .

So ur finishing them off the grass then.. Are these ur own heifers from ur own suckler herd of bought in ones?
Wot weight would they be coming out of the shed 2 go 2 grass in the spring approx??