By Lauren Quinn
Beef producers in the upper Midwest know grazing land is in short supply. With more acres being developed or converted to cropland, producers who want to expand their cow-calf operations are looking for alternatives to traditional pasture management.
New research from University of Illinois animal scientists and I-BELIEF students shows cow-calf pairs can be managed in drylots throughout the summer grazing period with few negative consequences.
"When we extended the drylot phase throughout the summer, we were able to get excellent performance on our drylot cows. They maintained body weight and body condition and had good reproductive rates. Everything was excellent in that regard. Calves on the drylot had increased performance throughout the pre-weaning phase, as well," says Dan Shike, associate professor in the Department of Animal Sciences at U of I and lead researcher on the study.
The team compared Angus × Simmental cow-calf pairs on pasture and in drylots—in this case, concrete lots and open-front sheds with bedding—between May and August, repeated over two years. Broadly, they looked at growth performance, lactation, locomotion, and calf behavior at weaning and during the feedlot receiving period.
"Producers who want to explore drylotting have a lot of questions, so we tried to tackle as many of the big-picture answers as we could," Shike says.
In the drylot, cows were limit-fed a standard TMR maintenance diet, but calves had free access to the same diet in an adjacent creep pen. Pairs on pasture grazed available forage, with calves nursing and eating a processed creep feed three weeks prior to weaning.
The research team expected cows and calves to do as well or better in the drylot, and that's just what they found.
"The cows in the drylot performed exactly as we intended because we had more control over their environment and were able to formulate a ration to meet their nutritional needs. The cows in the pasture are really at the mercy of the weather," Shike says. "Consequently, the cows on pasture had lower body weight and body condition score compared to cows in the drylot."
Calves did better in the drylot than pasture, again because of the controlled diet and environment. When it was time for weaning and shipment to the feedlot, pasture-raised calves were significantly smaller than their drylot-raised counterparts.
"We anticipated the pasture-raised calves would have compensatory gain, and they did. They had higher rates of gain and tended to be more efficient in that receiving phase," Shike says. "But, even after 42 days, they hadn't caught up because they started so far behind the drylot calves in weight."
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