Dairy X Beef - Calve concentrate intake

Location
Newtown
I’m just trying to work out some figures for how much concentrates lim/Hereford/blue/Angus X Fresian/Holstein calves will eat per day from around 8/10 weeks to around 6 to 8 months of age, I wasn’t thinking around 5kg per animal per day average? What do others feed/think,

Thanks in advance
 

Bullring

Member
Location
Cornwall
I would have though 5kgs would be on the high side, a general rule of thumb is 1kg per 100kg of liveweight. Are they going to be inside or out at grass, if at grass then you could reduce the amount of concentrate fed.
 
Location
Newtown
I would have though 5kgs would be on the high side, a general rule of thumb is 1kg per 100kg of liveweight. Are they going to be inside or out at grass, if at grass then you could reduce the amount of concentrate fed.
I have the option of inside but I will have to buy straw in or outside and I will have to pay keep, I’m buying as calves and selling them at roughly 6 to 9 months old
 

AndrewM

Member
BASIS
Location
Devon
i was a bit tight for silage this year so i fed straw and cake to my blue x calves for longer than normal, 18 weeks old calves were eating about 3.6kg of 18% cake + straw a day.
have got them on silage now and cut them back to 1.6kg a day.
i guess it all depends on what else you are feeding?

im never sure how much and for how long to feed concentrates to bucket reared calves after they are weaned, lots of good info out there on milk powder amounts ect, not so much good info on the next steps.
 
i was a bit tight for silage this year so i fed straw and cake to my blue x calves for longer than normal, 18 weeks old calves were eating about 3.6kg of 18% cake + straw a day.
have got them on silage now and cut them back to 1.6kg a day.
i guess it all depends on what else you are feeding?

im never sure how much and for how long to feed concentrates to bucket reared calves after they are weaned, lots of good info out there on milk powder amounts ect, not so much good info on the next steps.
Mine have a bale of hay but they're only nibbling it. It's taken them a long time to finish it. No chance of them developing 'hay belly'!
 

HarryB97

Member
Mixed Farmer
If they're inside and being fed adlib 2.5-3% of their body weight in dry matter so a 200kg animal will eat 6 kg of dry matter. If the feed is 80% dry matter thats a total freshweight of 7.2kg per day. If they're at grass just a kilo a day to keep them tame. When they're young indoors we also add 2kg of whole oats per day to the ration which they do really well on and stop feeding them around 6-7 months once they start passing straight through them, also brings the ration cost down.
 

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