Growing Efficient Pounds Equals Growing Money
Protein, mineral are part of stocker grazing strategy.
Money doesn’t grow on trees. However, it does grow on healthy cattle that are out grazing longer periods during the day. The more time calves spend grazing, the more they are going to gain and the faster they are going to get to their market-ready end point.
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Isaac Marcum (right) says a wise investment in minerals paid dividends this summer. [Photo courtesy Biozyme Inc.] |
Isaac Marcum at Paint Lick, Ky., discovered his appreciation for backgrounding cattle from his father, who managed the Eastern Kentucky University beef farm for more than 30 years, where he too backgrounded calves. Although both Marcum’s maternal and paternal grandparents owned cow-calf operations, as a self-proclaimed “part-time farmer,” he enjoys buying, feeding and selling the calves more.
Marcum likes to buy a few potloads of steers about twice a year — once in the winter or early spring, and then again in the summer once those are sold. He backgrounds the calves on pasture.
He relies on the same order buyer his dad did to buy the calves from the sale barn, all within about 100 miles from home, most of them in the Blue Grass Stockyards network. When it is time to sell his calves, they are sold back through the auction market.
“I’m a firm believer in the auction way to sell cattle. If you get two or three people that want the same thing, that helps your sale price a little bit,” Marcum says.
Once he gets those cattle home and gets them straightened out, they go to pasture. This summer he was looking for an alternative to feeding them a commodity-based feed to save time during his busy day as a full-time Kentucky Farm Bureau insurance agent. His local feed dealer suggested the VitaFerm® 30-13% Protein Tub® as an alternative to feeding every day. Once his calves took to the tubs, Marcum asked his feed rep about a mineral solution. That’s how he learned about the Gain Smart® Stocker HEAT® mineral.
The free-choice vitamin and mineral supplement for stocker cattle is designed to balance basic nutrient needs to maximize efficient gain on grass pasture. The heat package, containing capsaicin, helps prevent heat stress during temperatures 70° and above, or anytime cattle are grazing fescue. Organic copper and zinc plus added iodine support hoof health and immunity, and the Amaferm® prebiotic enhances digestibility for maximum performance. Garlic deters insects.
“The first thing I like is the cattle will eat it. The mineral I was feeding before, it seemed like they weren’t eating very much of it. I don’t know if it had a bitter taste or what. The second thing, during the heat of the summer in July and August, when it is 90°-plus and really humid here in Kentucky, those cattle were out picking, eating grass almost all day,” Marcum says. “They weren’t shaded up and trying to stay cool.”
Marcum adds that calf gains were impressive and made him a believer in the mineral product.
He explained that during the five years since he’s been on his own backgrounding calves, he’s kept very detailed records. In a typical summer, when he supplements his calves with feed they will gain about 1.8 pounds (lb.) per day. This year, his calves were solely grazing grass supplemented with the mineral. During the summer heat, they gained 2.1 lb. per day, and the protein tubs were only out a portion of that two-month grazing period.
“I’ve never had cattle gain like that in the summer, especially with no feed, and I did see a lot less flies on those cattle. At the end of the day, pounds equal money,” Marcum says.
Money might not grow on trees, but making a wise investment in a mineral program helps grow calves. As Marcum says, “pounds equal money.” With 0.3 lb. more gain per day, that means more efficient gains on fewer resources, and getting calves turned back to the auction market more quickly for one Kentucky cattleman.
To learn more, visit www.gainsmart.com.
Editor’s note: Shelia Grobosky is a public relations coordinator for BioZyme Inc.
