Even with late rains, much of Missouri is in drought conditions. This is causing many cattle producers to feed next winter's hay supply and sell lightweight calves. There is no point in selling lightweight calves. The creep fed calves at our research farm are doing wellÑbetter than 3.0 ADG.

From 100 to 205 days of age, calves that are fed high-concentrate diets convert 3.5 to 4 pounds of feed to a pound of gain. So even when TrendSetter SLR, SLR blends or creep feed is $200, the feed cost per pound of gain is $0.40/lb. Research and field work indicates that early weaned steers can be fed from 100 days of age until slaughter weight of 1,150 to 1,200 lbs. at an average age of 340 to 360 days. Early weaned steers fed out as calves tend to have overall feed to gain of 5 to 5.5 lbs., with five out of six grading choice.

Offer 2 pounds of hay per day. Feed calves 1 percent of body weight of Cattle Charge or SLR. Use a feed additive such as BovatecÑit improves performance and stretches feed. If you are hand feeding a grain and supplement high energy ration, don't increase intake by more than

1 pound of concentrate/head/day, even if the feed is cleaned up in a couple of hours. When you increase the feed by a pound, make sure they can eat it for 2 to 3 days before increasing them another pound. High energy feed supports rapid gains; hay does not.

However, calves must be adjusted to the diet slowly; the process will go faster if the calves were creeped. From 100 to 205 days of age, calves will consume approximately 2 to 2.5 percent of their body weight every day. Following 205 days of age, normal "age at weaning," calves should be fed typical finishing diets containing approximately 85 percent concentrate and 12.5 to 14 percent protein. Feed intake will decline to about 2 percent of body weight on a dry-matter basis. With growthy steers, gains should be approximately 3 to 3.5 lbs. per day over the entire feeding period. For smaller framed British cattle, an aggressive implant strategy works well for early weaned calves to assure that animals don't finish at light weights.

Rather than buying expensive, hard-to-find hay, consider limit feeding Cattle Charge, Bucket Rattler, StockGuard or SLR. Even a big, 1,300 lb. cow, can have her maintenance needs met with 15 lbs. of Cattle Charge and 4 lbs. of hay. She will likely be hungry, but we have successfully limit-fed any number of animals, and we routinely do it for gestating sows. Assume that hay is $150/ton, and Cattle Charge is $200. Then 15 lbs. of Cattle Charge and 4 lbs. of hay costs $1.80. Offering free-choice hay, if she went through 30 lbs. of it, would cost $2.25 per day. If there is enough pasture to meet the cow's fiber requirement, then hay does not need to be fed. If the calves are pulled off the cow, the concentrate feeding rate can be cut by 65 percent because the cow is not in milk. The table below compares the pounds of dry matter needed from either Cattle Charge or a medium quality hayÑabout 0.52 net energy maintenance (NEm) to meet the daily needs of different cows with a calf to their side.

Recommendations for starting cows on concentrate feed:

1. Take 3 to 4 days adjusting the Cattle Charge/Stock Guard and decreasing hay to 3 to 4 lbs.

2. Feed intake is being limited, so make sure that cows have enough space that all cows can eat at once.

3. If feeding corn with a supplement, feed corn whole. Whole corn works better than ground corn when daily hay intake is limited to less than 5 pounds on cows.

4. Use an ionophore like Bovatec in the feed.