Epi. 217 – Forage Nutrition for Beef Cows

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AABP Executive Director Dr. Fred Gingrich is joined by Dr. Sara Linneen, a PhD ruminant nutritionist on the beef cattle technical consultant team at Elanco Animal Health. The overarching theme for this episode is “nutrition is everything”, and Linneen walks us through how nutrition impacts all aspects of cow-calf production.

We discuss some of the challenges and opportunities for wintering beef cows and determining how to supplement cows over the winter. Linneen also discusses how drought affects forage quality and the impacts that has not only on dry matter intake, but intake of energy and protein which are critical nutrients for the cow and gestating fetus. The veterinarian is often the technical resource for the cow-calf ranch, and over 30% of the time, a call from a producer to the veterinarian is related to the nutrition program. Veterinarians have an opportunity to impact cow health, productivity, calf health and farm economics by becoming involved in the nutrition program.

Linneen points out that body condition score at calving is the greatest predictor of reproductive success in the next year. It is also important to remember that we are feeding the cow, the gestating calf and the rumen micro-organisms with our nutrition program. Fetal programming, weaning weights, lactation performance and reproductive performance are influenced by how we feed cows over the winter and manage pastures in the spring and summer.

Finally, Linneen offers some suggestions for improving forage efficiency in the cow by feeding monensin. Many cow-calf producers overlook this opportunity to improve forage efficiency which will decrease the amount of hay needing to be fed to cows over the winter which is a net economic return to the farm.

Gingrich reminds listeners of the opportunity to learn beef cow nutrition from AABP. We will host an eight-hour beef cow nutrition seminar at the 8th Recent Graduate Conference in Norman, Okla. On February 13. Find out information here. We will also have a beef cow nutrition seminar at the 58th AABP Conference in Omaha, Neb.; conference registration will open in May.