Do your budget

First things first, finishing cattle is a specialised operation and should not be undertaken lightly. The first step must be to sit down and do the figures on the various systems. Feed will be the biggest factor in the equation but don’t forget to add in vet and medication costs, haulage and fees and a mortality figure. Be realistic with the figures you use. There’s no point setting an unrealistic performance targets or proclaiming that there will be some losses along the way.

Set your criteria

Once you have your budget done and a system decided on, the next step is to source your animals. It is important to set a strict criteria and specification when purchasing animals. The closer the breed type, weight and age the group is, the easier the rest of the job will be. Have a price per kilo worked out that you can afford to go to and stick to it. Avoid purchasing some animals at 10p/kg more than you budgeted for and have to buy a few inferior-quality animals at a cheaper price to balance the cost of the batch. This will lead to greater variation within the groups and make batching and drafting animals more difficult down the line.

Minimise stress

Moving to a new farm and being mixed with strange animals can be a stressful experience for cattle. Stress has a major effect on animal thrive. Therefore, anything that can be done to minimise this should be exercised. One step that can help reduce stress is to source cattle from as few holdings as possible. Once purchased, get the animals on farm as soon as possible. Cattle always have a hierarchy, from the leader of the herd down to the bottom of the pile. Every time cattle are mixed, or a new animal is added to the group, the whole process of ranking within the group will start again. This causes great stress for animals and so if cattle must be mixed, it should be done on arrival and then keep that group together throughout the finishing period. Ideally, cattle will spend a couple of weeks at grass to settle in and reduce the chances of sickness. However, if this is not possible, house the animals in a well-bedded shed and leave them to settle for 24 to 48 hours. Have the shed bedded and feed laid out prior to the animals arriving so that there is less noise and chance of stress. Handle animals with care and as calmly as possible.

Health

A good health plan underpins every successful finishing system. Best advice is to sit down with your local vet and draw up a plan that will work for your farm. Decide on what vaccination programme will be adopted. Remember vaccination is an insurance policy but it will not make up for good animal husbandry as described in the points that follow. Set out a dosing regimen for purchased animals. Unless you are certain they have been treated prior to purchase, the only option is to assume they haven’t.

Housing

Housing for finishing cattle needs to be fit for purpose. There are three elements here, the first being bedding – do not spare straw in a finishing shed. Animals lying on a wet or dirty bed will need to use energy to maintain temperature. This energy will come directly from liveweight gain, something we must avoid at all costs. The second element in regard to housing is ventilation. Adequate airflow in sheds is critically important to remove stale air and get as many bugs removed as possible. At the same time it should be draft free. Animals should be able to lie down without a breeze coming from under doors or open ended sheds. A smoke bomb is a useful way of assessing airflow in sheds and should be done prior to any animals being purchased. A quick rule of thumb is that if the inside of the roof is dirty, airflow is not sufficient. The final point on housing is feed space. If concentrate is being fed at a restricted rate, is there sufficient room for all animals to feed at once? A head space of 60cm per animal is recommended for restricted feeding. This can be reduced to 45cm where concentrate is available ad-lib.

Diet decisions

Often given the more thought and time than all the other factors put together. In reality when it comes to finishing diets the simpler the better. Grass silage can make up the bulk in the majority of finishing systems. The higher quality it is, the less concentrate will be required. Energy is the key component in finishing diets, depending on what is available to you. Barley or wheat will be the most common source here. Keep an eye on protein levels if animals are further away from finish with levels of around 16% required for a growing diet. This can be dropped back to 12% – 14% (depending on the system) for the final 80 – 100 days pre slaughter.

The changeover of the diet from completely forage to more concentrate based should be controlled and done over a period of time. Introducing high levels of concentrate feeding too quickly can cause a sudden drop in pH in the rumen and lead to problems such as laminitis and liver abscesses which can have huge detrimental effects on animal performance. Introduce concentrate feed at no higher than 3kg/head/day. Build up at a rate of 1kg every third day. Once you are feeding over 5kg, split the feed to twice a day. At very high levels of concentrate feeding, forage quality becomes less of an issue and is more of a fibre source to control passage rate in the animal.

6

Measure performance

A weighing scales is a must for any successful finishing enterprise. It is the only accurate way to measure performance. Liveweight gain will be the first thing to suffer if there is something wrong with animals. Therefore monthly weights will help identify any problems that may otherwise go unnoticed. If the whole group is not performing as they should then there may be a problem with the diet or housing. If it is an individual animal that has not performed as expected it may be a health issue with that particular beast.

Draft often

Linked to point six, weighing will come into play here. Know your carcass specification and weight limits. Once an animal is sufficiently fleshed and coming to the correct weight they should be drafted from the pen. Do not kill on a pen basis. While animals should be penned at the start of the process in as tight a weight group as possible, there will still be some variation between animals when it comes to being fit for slaughter.

Review the whole process

When the last load leaves the yard the work is not complete. Sit down and review the whole process. What went right? What went wrong? What type of animal worked well? What can we do better next time? Did they perform as well as we expected? Did we hit carcass specifications consistently? Were out kill-out percentages what we expected? Did we use more feed than budgeted for?

Asking these questions will help make decisions in the future. Whether to stick with the current system or identify any tweaks needed.