Feeding guidelines for various stages of production

Tara Felix, an extension beef specialist, and Nathan Briggs, a former beef extension educator, both from Pennsylvania State University in the US, provide guidelines as hypothetical scenarios that show dietary comparisons across a singular system for growing beef cattle.

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There are numerous feed ingredients possible for cattle diets and numerous ways to combine those feed ingredients to meet beef cattle daily requirements, according to Tara Felix, an extension beef specialist, and Nathan Briggs, a former beef extension educator, both from Pennsylvania State University in the US.

They say that formulating a diet for beef cattle and feeding a balanced ration are essential to running a profitable beef operation.

“Most beef cattle nutritionists and producers begin balancing a ration using a least-cost formulation that considers the overall cost of mixing the diet and feeding the daily ration. Proper ration formulation for animal class allows nutritionists to predict how long beef cattle will need to be fed to achieve a targeted body weight,” say Felix and Briggs.

They add that before a diet can be formulated and a ration developed for gain predictions, the following things need to be known: the animal type; sex; weight; available feed ingredients; use of feed technologies; and housing type.

This article will focus on animal type, sex and housing type in particular.