Finishing cattle - shed flooring

Bedded won't be beaten, you also have milled peat and rushes

and breed of cattle. Likes of Belgium blues and simm are softer on the feet than others

Are they bulls

Finish bulls here. All sheds have Easyfix rubber slat mats. Injury’s and lameness way down since we started installing them.
Wouldn't worry about cleanliness, keep them fairly tight and the diet right and that’ll do them.
Straw is a disaster if you are finishing them in numbers. Just too dear and labour intensive.

Bedding is away to expensive to be used for finishing cattle. Straw is 30+/ round bale accross most of the country, milled peat is no longer legally available, woodchip and rushes are about the only option. Hard to beat slats and mats.

I be considering diet as well.

You also need preventive treatment for acidosis. You need to feed a buffer if its not already in the ration. Limestone flour or bread soda and a rumen stabiliser like Uu-Max from Agriking, another option is a product called Optigest. It has the ph balancer and the stabiliser all in one. You may already have similar innthecration just check.

Another fact with bulls is to prevent them rising on each other. Electric fence over head diets the lead there pencils.

Are you dividing that into two meals? I found with straw bedding after about the first fortnight in I used to bed them only every second day and it worked fine which saved on costs. I only have one shed that requires straw and the cost per head was c.55e. Which wasn't bad I finished cattle in that shed. The bales were 35e to buy. I also confined the bedding to a certain area.

There is no comparison to finishing cattle on straw versus slats,with a slated shed you do not have a workable area when the animals are out or you retire from livestock,cattle are obviously much more content & there is no arguing that, & the obvious weight gain,cleanliness,lameness,injury reduction etc.

Scrapers at feeding barrier & straw lie back would be the real deal,what you will spend on straw you will get back in not digging a big hole,adg,usefullness of shed,etc.

No big deal blowing straw & of course you have the fym,we fed in a passage out in the yard & gave it a scrape with a tidy tractor every morning.

Have to disagree. Grand if you’ve only a few but if you’re dealing with numbers and buying your straw it wouldn’t work.

Would 2 bales of straw be enough for 1 animal for 100 days to finish? At €30 a bale.
Remember it couldn’t be got in 23. Also you need twice the space in a straw bedded shed as you would in a slatted shed.
Trials carried out by teagasc have shown that there is no difference in liveweight gain between rubber matted slats and straw bedding.

We used 8 bales a week for 42 400/500 kg bullocks & i never had a problem sourcing + delivery using forward purchasing in an arable area,there is a capital cost naturally to adding rubber to slats which I presume is not cheap given that nothing is,I had ample sheds with concrete floors if I had dug out for slats then later put on rubber that is burning up alot of straw to provide a crap area for my cattle to lie down & shuffle around,I am aware there is a grant for slatted units,& then you do not have a shed that can be used for anything other than cattle housing.

That Is true in an area where commercial storage letting is not common,I mean to say versus a standard concrete floor which would be suitable.

According to the HSA they should not be subject to any vehicular traffic whatsoever but sure what could go wrong,I don't care if you tip up a load of corn in there,I'd say if a fella has a shed to finish a few cattle I'd throw them in a bale of barley straw & let them lay down& eat it & that's all.

Your points are well made however given that the shed is not suitable for any use other than housing cattle & that is a real issue which you seem to be ignoring it is my opinion a straw bed is superior & would be mine & the animals preference ,I hazard a guess that funky monkey will not be horrified if someone gives an alternative opinion for him/her to contemplate.

Holy God this is unreal,maybe you are living inland in a bad tourist area,I think we will leave it at that.

Finishing Cattle will do better on straw bed, but the time and effort required for same just doesn't compensate for this. Plus if you have to pay for transporting straw down the country then it gets expensive. As outlined above twice the area needed for straw bed

Just my take on it but who the f**k would want fellas coming into their yard with camper vans or using their sheds for storage in rural areas.