My small experiment with winter finishing some beef bullocks has come to an end (thank goodness) and, once again, it has served as a reminder that cattle should be stored over the winter, and finished off grass.

Over the years, I have had plenty of pleasant surprises after weighing grass-fed animals, whereas anything weighed out of the house usually disappoints. This winter’s cattle were no exception, and apart from under-performing at a physical and therefore financial level, it also becomes an embarrassment when talking to other farmers.

The general idea is that when your bullocks are crunching their way through 5kg of meal per day for nearly three months, you are allowed to mutter stuff such as ‘‘them cattle are quarely thriving’’.

Instead, I found myself trying to ascertain what sort of weight gain others expected, and the outcome of that pointless exercise is that my cattle seem to put on about half the weight (according to meal fed) of everyone else’s stock.

In addition, I was expecting a higher kill-out percentage than grazed stock, but discovered to my horror (they were weighed the day before leaving here) an average figure of 54.8%. I can weigh fat cattle off grass (as full as ticks) and have no bother hitting at least 56%, so my anticipated calculations, based on a 56.5% kill-out also made me look slightly foolish.

Failure

If I’m going to admit being pretty useless at winter finishing, I might as well get the other great failure out of the way while I’m at it. I have to confess that only nine out of the original twelve steers were sold. The other three are out in the field, having decided they couldn’t possibly tolerate the whole business of lying on slats. I know lots of experimental work has been done and we are told there is no difference between performance on various surfaces. But I have a notion that there are huge variations between different types of slats, and I suspect mine are in the ‘‘skating rink’’ category. I didn’t see how those cattle with sore legs could possibly be putting on weight, so I slipped them out to a sheltery field, reduced the meal feeding, and they seem as happy as Larry.

Weight gain

The bullocks’ physical performance reminds me of the man who stopped with an old farmer to ask directions to some obscure place, and was told: “Well, I wouldn’t start from here!” And, similarly, the weight gained very much depends where you start counting from.

I discovered that using full weights off grass as a starting point for winter-feeding is very bad for your mental health. It seems it’s a much better idea to give them four or five weeks to adjust to their surroundings, and start from there.

These boys were weighed at the end of November (after a fantastic spell of autumn weather), then housed and during the first few weeks, moved from round bales to clamp silage. At the end of December, they were pretty much the same weight as four weeks earlier. Admittedly, meal levels were in the region of 3kg, so this was quickly stepped up to 5kg for the duration of their feeding period.

A bit of a check at the end of January showed everything moving in the right direction, so the panic subsided for a while. They were sold on 27 February, and the most optimistic interpretation of weight gained would suggest 0.97kg/day. However, if I use the full weighing as a reference (from November), then this acceptable performance drops to 0.66kg. And if I want to depress myself completely, then I should point out that those three bullocks that didn’t like the slats are not included in this calculation.

Nor can I kid myself that these were plain, or dairy bred cattle that had very low growth potential. They were 740kg when sold, with six of them grading U, and the other three R grades. All nine fell into fat class 3. Weights ranged from 378kg to 429kg and averaged 406kg.

Formula

I realise that many farmers winter-fatten cattle every year, and presumably they have worked out some formula that works both on a financial and physical level.

I also have worked out a reasonably secure method of cost-effectively fattening beef cattle, and this error of judgment has highlighted the need to return to it as soon as possible.

It relies very heavily on fresh green stuff that is really cheap to grow, the cattle love it and it agrees with them so much that they pile on weight every day.

Good, green, grazeable grass – the farmer’s true friend.