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SEAZ | Thanks for the replies- Russ, I'll give you a call later, thanks for the email. Dave, thanks for pointing out the assumptions issue. I by no means have this thing figured out, which is why I am asking questions here. Jim- I do have facilities available now, which has been my limiting factor for the past few years. I have tried to take many things into account in order to make informed decisions, but am not afraid to ask first, before jumping. The group of cattle that I am looking at buying for this are ranch raised, high quality english crossbred cattle. They are going to be a mix of steers and heifers. These calves are not going to see a sale barn or any other cattle at all unless I take in one of the neighbors groups, which are good healthy vaccinated, creeped cattle that will already be weaned. Also, in our country, calves take to this alfalfa hay and don't look back, but I have only seen them weaned for a couple of weeks and then moved. Had a neighbor that grew out some calves for 90 days on some rye grass hay, had a adg of 1.5lb/day, averaging about 10 lbs of hay/head/day. But he doesn't have experience with cattle, and his death loss ate him up. I'm trying to avoid that by starting with high quality, healthy calves that should do well.
The other big problem I have is that I not only am cursed with the farming bug, but I enjoy messing with cattle, also. I appreciate what you guys are saying about 'you better like it', because if I didn't, I wouldn't even be messing with all this.
Sooo, back to my original question, what kind of feed conversion can a guy look for out of straight alfalfa? This local guy did 1.5lb gain/10lbs rye grass hay, so I am thinking that alfalfa should do better than that, but would like to hear someone else's experience. Thanks to you guys who are trying to help me out in this. | |
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Feeding Alfalfa to 5-6 wt calves
