How to Feed 1,000 Head of Cattle

hello everyone uh it's greg and kendall here we're going to give you guys a brief rundown of our cattle operation today here at the main farm talking a little bit about how we raise cattle here kind of what type of cattle operation we are what we feed how we feed all the details uh what type of cattle operation are we so this place is a backgrounding lot that's what our dad did for a lot of years and that's what we're still doing so we bite calves uh when other people wean them off when other people sell them they sell them at you know between 400 pounds and 600 pounds we're going to buy in that range we're going to raise them up to 800 to 900 pounds sometimes we sell a little lighter sometimes you sell a little bit more and so this is the kind of stuff that we're feeding right here this is where we load so we're feeding primarily corn silage and then we also feed distillers mixed hay which would be alfalfa millet straw and then grain screenings and rolled corn are the primary ingredients to our background in action and we also have a cow calf hurt currently we're feeding both the spring herd on the south side of this place and the fall herd on the east side of the feed lot so both those sets of cows are here too you'll get to see the doing the chores for them doing the chores for them is a little bit different with the background because they eat some hay that's just in round bale feeders so a lot of people they have their cow hurt and there's a lot of small cow herds all across the united states and then those cow herds people buy the calves based on the size and move them into lots like this or keep them and put them on grass over the next summer and then they eventually end up in load lots and get sent to feedlots which would be the third stage so we're kind of the second stage here with the backgrounding so we're adding weight to the cattle getting them from where they were small calves they were used to being with their mama or they were used to being on grass and they need to eat something else different we kind of own them for that middle stage putting weight on them getting them ready to go into the finishing phase which is when they're the majority of cattle before they're slaughtered would be in that finishing lot where they're fed concentrated feeds which would be you know corn a lot of different corn products and what would they weigh when they're at the finish when they're finished you know 300 to 1700 pounds uh generally like 1450 pounds would be when they're finished so how many head of cattle do we have on the farm here oh this one maybe 800 head of feeder cattle from 400 pounds up to 875 pounds and then the cacao there's uh almost 50 spring cows just a little bit over 60 fall cows plus a of bowls so that kind of that's that's the different types of cattle that we have a lot of different livestock classes and they're all worth something different based on what you're using them for so we're essentially we're adding value to the calves by buying when they're really you know buying them when they're light and then you add weight to them you get them used to a feed bunk you get them used to you know waters get them where they're you know you know aggressive at the feed bunk you give them vaccines implants get them all ready and then they can be sold as a load lot and they're much more turned into a commodity rather than just like an individual calf someone raised on a ranch out there somewhere we kind of sell them into a commodity market where they're ready to be finished and that's part of the premium that we get for our calves all the stuff we're doing in this video is done every day these are morning chores showcased at peterson farm what's better than being greeted in the morning by a nice hello from your scale and let's crank up crank open the john deere i did not plug it in last night but uh we should just cold start it right up we'll visit with okay now while the tractor is warming up i go and i look over my bunk sheets here and adjust any numbers based on whether they clean up their feed or how the weather was overnight if it was a little colder or it's supposed to be a warmer day all right first thing pull into this auger and this well ben's got some um protein mineral in it it's called 40 20. three four five six seven eight the reason i counted the eight was because i know that's about how long it takes to put 90 pounds of that in there cat loader all right first ingredient is silage so i just do a scoop of this first and then we also top it off with salad after we've loaded all the other ingredients in because silage is over 60 percent of this ration [Music] [Music] [Music] okay so this load is loaded with what's called grower one ration so this auger has this rotor goes and auger on the other side is this pin 4b they're just now starting my rations they're only going to get about 150 pounds they're gonna be transitioning off of dad's ration over the course of you know 10 15 days or so so this is pin six that down there is pin five pen five is also transitioning on and five is a group of steers that we're transitioning on and 4b over there that's the heifers we're transitioning on this pin six and that pin seven seven is a lot bigger than six i mean the cattle not the pin me [Applause] so explain what the dad's doing dad we call that the starter wagon so he's going to feed a ration when we're starting the cattle so basically when they first arrive they get hay and some of his ration and some pellets on top makes them really want to come to the bunk gets them used to eating out of a bunk and then on about between day 10 and 20 we start transitioning to my ration my grow one ration which is a silage based ration and so then once they transition over from his ration to my ration and they're on feed a little longer changes to grower two rations so he's feeding the smaller groups of they're smaller pins they're in load lots kind of uh making sure they're all on feed pitching them hay and that's kind of that's kind of where you make your money and backgrounding is taking high risk calves and then uh adding weight to them adding value to them and then selling them in a load loss all right so these pins closest to the house are where we keep our newer cattle so um these are the the smaller cattle that we we just got in or that we just weaned and dad feeds his um starter ration out of that feed wagon [Music] [Music] 10 pounds [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] all right we're done with chores hope you guys learned something uh we know that was kind of a an overview and not a complete summary of everything we did um and we you'll obviously notice that we filmed this in two different days one day there was a little snow and one day there wasn't but it was a cold day on both days okay pretty normal january chores yeah it was uh it's it's like 20 23 degrees today and it was pretty similar to that the other day we filmed too yep so that's gotta get fed cattle eat gotta feed everybody gotta feed everybody all right everybody remember to uh click like and subscribe leave any comments if you have any questions about our cattle operation we film our cows year-round they're always growing now yeah growing so we'll keep making videos hopefully you guys keep picking up different things so you got to keep coming back for more you can't just watch the one video we'll see you next time see ya [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Peterson Family Farm

Views: 60,416

Rating: 4.9525952 out of 5

Keywords: peterson farm brothers, family farm, peterson family farm, peterson farm bros, farming, agriculture, feeding cattle in the usa, kansas cattle farm, feeding cattle in winter, feeding cattle in feedlots, feeding cattle hay, feeding cattle grain, feeding cattle corn, feeding cattle silage, feeding cattle cubes, feedlot cattle, feedlot operation, backgrounding cattle, backgrounding calves, cow calf, cow calf operation, backgrounding vs cow calf

Id: 60aQbTRPXX4

Length: 15min 19sec (919 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 28 2021