Farming '91, 1991-03-20, Page 10A10. FARMING ’91, WEDNESDAY, MARCH 20, 1991.
Farming ’91
Making up ration like cooking without a recipe book
Some of the Howatts’ cattle munch contentedly on carrots
and hay.
more fibre added.
Rate of gain is about the same as
with conventional feeds, Doug
says, ranging from 2.5 to 3.5 lbs.
per day. A bonus is that the
carrots, potatoes and turnips seem
to help keep the herd healthy. The
vegetables are loaded with vita
mins and he finds he doesn’t spend
as much time and money on
medicating the animals. The one
drawback is that carrots can’t be
fed to animals nearly ready for
market because the carrotene turns
the meat orange.
The animals, however, love the
vegetables. They will dig to the
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Continued from page A9
tent, he says. “It’s like cooking in
the kitchen: you don’t have a recipe
book. You have to work with what
you’ve got. It’s all done by eye.”
The ration is made up by the
experience gained putting it to
gether over the years. “It’s not like
calling the feed mill and getting a
load of feed,” he says.
One of the subtleties of the
system is keeping watch on what
feeds you’re running out of and
knowing what will be available in
the next while and if something
you’re using isn’t going to be
available, gradually switching over
to something else so the cattle
won’t notice too much change.
Another important skill gained
by experience is knowing the
characteristics of each feed. Some
feeds are “heavy” without as much
fibre available to the cattle and
cattle can get grain overload. When
these feeds are used there must be
A mixer wagon helps cut labour to the point it takes only an
hour a day to feed the 700-800 head of cattle.
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