creeping calves

john p mc g

When would ye start to creep calves born in april intend to sell in november or will i have to keep them until spring to get weight on them

GrandSoftDay

john p mc g wrote: »

When would ye start to creep calves born in april intend to sell in november or will i have to keep them until spring to get weight on them

What weight do you want to sell them at and what breed are they?

john p mc g

GrandSoftDay wrote: »

What weight do you want to sell them at and what breed are they?

All limos what would be realistic weight

Tyson Lannister

It's hardly worth creeping em at all lads is it? With the money they're making I've given it up and just trying to keep the grass good.

GrandSoftDay

john p mc g wrote: »

All limos what would be realistic weight

Anywhere from 280-350 kg for the bulls if there is milk in your cows without mealing them. That's what the most of ours would be and born around the same time. Often came out as well out of the light lad as the heavy lad. Crystal ball stuff as to whether it's worth holding them the winter or not. Normally hold half of them here so we are never losing or winning from it really.

GrandSoftDay

Tyson Lannister wrote: »

It's hardly worth creeping em at all lads is it? With the money they're making I've given it up and just trying to keep the grass good.

You could well be right even though I think it drives them on a good bit for a month before weaning them and makes the job easier too.

Mac Taylor

Don't creep here either, similar weights to GSD. Culling cows that are not rearing calves to those weights is one way to go. Doing that here at the moment.

Tyson Lannister

I've a few pedigree calves I know I should be creep feeding but the rest of the commercial calves would be tucking in too and I just can't see the return

tanko

Tyson Lannister wrote: »

It's hardly worth creeping em at all lads is it? With the money they're making I've given it up and just trying to keep the grass good.

I reckon creep feeding weanlings was dreamt up by the milling industry to increase their profits. There's no doubt a few nuts does help at weaning time but overfat weanlings dont sell that well at the autumn sales. The best selling weanlings last autumn were around 330 -350 kgs. Heavier calves over 400kgs didn't make enough extra to justify all the meal they had eaten unless they were export quality.
Farmers would be better off addressing the problem of lack of milk in their cows before they go filling up creep feeders.

EamonKilkenny

If you can get the calves creep grazing ahead of the cows it will go a long way towards getting them up to weight. Raise a strip wire at one side and guide a few calves out with another tape a couple of times a day. A weeks time and you will have 90% of them grazing ahead and let your cows do the topping.

Mac Taylor

EamonKilkenny wrote: »

If you can get the calves creep grazing ahead of the cows it will go a long way towards getting them up to weight. Raise a strip wire at one side and guide a few calves out with another tape a couple of times a day. A weeks time and you will have 90% of them grazing ahead and let your cows do the topping.

Going to try that myself this year, a neighbour got some extra long white stakes and the calves made there own way out, hopefully mine will too!!

Tyson Lannister

I made a light box iron gate for forward grazing, I just move it with the fence, the wire hooks in and above the horizontal box iron so as not to encourage calves to go under the fence wire.
That is when I'm not too lazy to move it to the next field.

Mac Taylor

Tyson Lannister wrote: »

I made a light box iron gate for forward grazing, I just move it with the fence, the wire hooks in and above the horizontal box iron so as not to encourage calves to go under the fence wire.
That is when I'm not too lazy to move it to the next field.

Any chance of a picture! Sounds good.

Tyson Lannister

I can't post pics yet til my post count goes over 50

blue5000

Tyson Lannister wrote: »

I made a light box iron gate for forward grazing, I just move it with the fence, the wire hooks in and above the horizontal box iron so as not to encourage calves to go under the fence wire.
That is when I'm not too lazy to move it to the next field.

Does it actually work? tried that here too and very few go through it..

Tyson Lannister

It's the same gate I had for the autumn bought calves to go through to eat the calf ration so they went straight through it when I put it up. After a bit the spring born calves followed.

EamonKilkenny

Mac Taylor wrote: »

Going to try that myself this year, a neighbour got some extra long white stakes and the calves made there own way out, hopefully mine will too!!

We got a couple of those in the farm relief, they were horse stakes. Just keep the gap at ten or twelve feet or you will have a couple of cows learning to do the limbo. Always found if you let them graze the paddock they were in pretty bare all the stock will be gathered at wire looking to be moved and it's easy get the calves out then. It's worth helping them out the fist time as a couple of shy ones will stay back otherwise.
Also when I divided big fields I just put a single strand of wire at 4ft. Calves stay going and cows stay put. Leave a row of insulators on them when you wean calves so you can just hang an electric fence reel as a second strand to stop them then.
As for feeding, I still think it's worth throwing them at least a kilo of meal a day for next couple of months. When they are creep grazing one double feed trough will feed 20 and you can see them all line up eating. Everyone gets there fair share and nobody sits in a creep feeder eating 5-6kg not letting the next lad in. It's easy herd, when you have them weaned an empty meal bag will move the whole lot of them from field to field and if you break it down to a kilo a day for a 100 days it's the cheapest thing you will do. €350/ton : 35cent/kiloX100 days : €35. Surely you will get at least the price of that back out of them as bad as things are.

just_did_it

What prices are ye paying for ration?

Paying €320/tonne / €8 bag here 16% protein weanling crunch grennans.

sandydan

just_did_it wrote: »

What prices are ye paying for ration?

Paying €320/tonne / €8 bag here 16% protein weanling crunch grennans.

€7.80 bag bull nuts lisavaird,slow eating beef nuts and calf nuts/plenty grass,not weaned. so switched , no problems now

sandydan

i should have said bull nuts are 12% protein . calve were slow eating beef and calf nuts as the higher protein was not required got southern milling as well, same price i think.
can't ever get calves to eat crunchy calf got one bag and i recon there would be flying pigs by the time it would be eaten if i didnt mix calf nuts through it

dzer2

Got 16% nuts from a supplier close to me for the calves. The agent said there was a additive that made the nuts smell like the cows udder. I didnt believe him until I got them, the calves fleeced them as soon as we changed over.