Why?
OPINION: A mate of yours truly wants to know why the beef schedule differential is now more than 45-50 cents a kilo between North and South Island producers – if you look at February 2024 steer prices.
Rissington Station’s advanced weaning approach, honed over the past five years, is to wean calves at 150 days old instead of the traditional March or April date.
A minimum liveweight threshold of 160kg is applied but in practice calves are averaging 230kg at 150 days.
“We were doing well with our cows and calves until 2-3 weeks into January, when we found our calves’ weight gain was being compromised as we pushed the cows harder to clean up spring/summer surplus feed for our high performing sheep system,” recalls Rissington’s Ben Absolom.
“After some discussions with David Ginter from Animal Logic Group we came to the conclusion that calves could actually do better without mum at that point.”
A bit of a “suck and see approach” initially gave them the confidence to build earlier weaning with some supplementary feeding into their system as routine.
“Changing weaning method helped planning through to autumn and benefits have flowed on to the rest of our system too. Suddenly we could make crucial decisions through January around prioritisation of other stock classes, because we knew we were weaning cows and calves in the last week of January or first week of February.
“We find our cows are back to work, mobbed up and we start grooming our country for mating ewes and ewe hoggets.”
The earlier weaning allows a wedge of feed to be built up.
“The savings are anywhere from 300-600kg of dry matter per cow depending on when you traditionally would wean. When you dial in the fact you know your cattle and sheep stocking rate 12 months in advance, you can tinker with that a bit.”
Meanwhile the extra cost works out at about $25/calf, whether it’s a full grain advanced weaning programme or nuts fed for 21 days post weaning.
The feed saved through the cow not lactating normally recoups that calf feeding cost “and more,” says Absolom.
“However, last year because of the drought, we didn’t,” he admits.
In the first couple of seasons, to see how it worked, they monitored two mobs: one advanced weaned; one traditionally.
The mob weaned traditionally was about 5kg ahead of the advanced weaned mob by the traditional weaning date but then the traditional mob went through their usual dip such that the advanced weaned mob pulled ahead.
“There was about a 30-day difference between male calves of a kill weight at the other end: the advanced weaned ones kept going on their trajectory, while the other ones… dropped off for that 3 weeks, which was basically the 30kg difference at the other end.”
Absolom says the key to success with the advanced weaning approach is to not cut corners, “things such as clean water and adequate trough space. If you do, you’ll be disappointed.”
Jack Tarrant, of Animal Logic, says the reason earlier weaned calves do better is because it promotes rumen development* whereas milk at 5-6 months is actually detrimental.
Rissington is looking to capitalise on the earlier rumen development with a new generation of tall fescue grass called Tower. In 2013 they sowed a 10ha block to see how it would work.
“We have targets of 500kgs at 12 months of age for yearling bulls for Focus Genetics, so our critical times are in autumn and early spring. That’s when we find our ryegrasses are not doing it for us – they will in winter, but not spring,” says Absolom.
“We wanted a deep rooted plant, so we sowed the tall fescue in the middle of the drought, late February 2013 and we’ve been rapt at how it’s come through.”
Absolum notes their stock manager, Fanie Erumus, commented they would “need a whole lot more cattle on it to control it come spring,” it established so well.
They’ve had no autumn or spring bloating issues and from a weight gain perspective, stock on the Fescue are doing better than off any of the ryegrass species they’ve had.
“Part of that I put down to the diet balance,” says Absolom.
“Tall fescue has a stable protein level through a 12-month period, without the diet fluctuations of rye. The fescue ranges from a 12-18% protein level whereas traditional ryegrasses range from 8-35%.
“With our high proportion [of] cattle system it should go really well.”
In due course they plan to put a third of the farm down to tall fescue.
– More from Tarrant on rumen development in Animal Health, pXX.
