With fodder likely to be tight this winter, and many under TB restrictions, one option might be to keep spring-born males entire and finish them out of the house next year as young bulls.

Outlined below are 10 steps to consider.

1 Split bull calves and heifers now.

If going down the bull beef route, you should separate spring-born bull calves from heifer calves as soon as possible.

It will allow you to give priority grazing to the cows with bull calves and deliver a late season performance boost.

2 Introduce creep feed

Once calves are split, you should introduce creep feed to bull calves. Start calves off on 1-2kg/day of a 16% growing ration.

Increase meal levels from 2kg to 3kg/day by September, or earlier if grass quality begins to decline or if grazing is limited.

Once calves are successfully eating meals, they will be less reliant on the cow as she moves into late lactation. This will also help to minimise the drop in performance when weaning.

3 Weaning

Where possible, try to wean early spring-born calves ahead of the housing period. Housing and weaning at the same time puts calves under additional stress and increases the risk of pneumonia.

Calves can be weaned by gradually removing cows from the group and housing the cows for a short period. They can return to grazing once properly dried off and if weather conditions permit.

4 Housing management

Spring-born bull calves should ideally weigh 300-400kg at housing. Calves of similar age and size should be grouped together.

Once bulls are penned, they should remain in the same group until they reach slaughter weight as mixing older bulls can lead to aggression.

With bulls, it is also important to allow them plenty of space once housed.

Bulls on ad-lib meals will be gaining 1.5kg to 2kg/day. For a group of 10, this is a gain of 105-140kg liveweight each week, which is the equivalent of adding an extra animal to the group every five to six weeks.

If bulls cannot all lie at the same time, then they are overstocked, and there will be a significant drop off in performance.

5 Weigh cattle

Weighing cattle on a regular basis (every 30 to 60 days) is the best way to monitor performance and ensure that weight gain more than covers feed cost.

It will also help highlight if there are any underlying health or diet issues affecting performance.

6 Silage or straw

Good-quality silage can play a role in finishing young bulls during the first half of the winter period. Ideally, silage should have a D-Value of 70 or better.

However, if silage is of average to poor quality, then bulls will be better on a concentrate and straw diet.

Once bulls are over 500kg liveweight and moving towards ad-lib concentrate feeding, they should go from silage to straw as the main source of fibre.

7 Growing diet

Once housed, bulls should be placed on a growing diet to develop as much frame as possible.

During this phase, feeding a ration with 15-16% crude protein is advisable.

Start bulls off on 4kg/day at housing and build up to around 8kg/day by the time the bull is 500kg.

8 Gradually change to finishing diet

Once bulls are over 500kg it is important they move on to a finishing diet. At this point, the ration should change to a lower protein content of around 12%.

At the same time, energy and starch levels should be increased as this will help to increase the fat cover of bulls.

Introduce the finishing diet gradually over a period of one week and build bulls up to ad-lib levels.

Once bulls are on ad-lib concentrates, it is important that they do not run out of feed, so make sure feed troughs are of adequate size.

9 Water supply

Cattle on high levels of concentrates have a high requirement for drinking water. As a rule of thumb, for every 1kg of concentrate feed, bulls will drink around six litres of water.

If drinking troughs have low water pressure, then you need to make alterations before housing.

10 Meet market spec

Factories will offer an improved price if there are larger numbers on offer and they meet the required market spec on age, carcase weight and conformation.