Laura Wight, Beef and Sheep Nutritionist, Davidsons Animal Feeds
In today’s escalating beef market, optimising every stage of production is paramount. Calf creep feeding stands out as a highly profitable investment for beef farmers, offering a combination of enhanced calf performance, improved health, and significant economic returns. This practice is strategically designed to reduce the number of days calves are on farm while providing a balanced nutritional diet crucial for early
development.
With current market conditions, declining concentrate costs and robust beef prices, the cost-efficiency of creep feeding calves has never been more compelling.
Pre-weaning, calves exhibit their lifetime peak in feed conversion efficiency (FCE).
Heavier, well-grown calves will reach target weights sooner, shortening their stay on the farm. This directly reduces overall input costs, particularly critical with rising expenses for resources like straw and labour.
A well-managed creep feeding can yield substantial financial gains. Consider this example (shown in the table below):
- Feeding 3kg of creep feed per day can result in an additional 0.5kg – 0.6kg Daily Live Weight Gain (DLWG).
- Over a 150-day feeding period, this equates to an extra 75kg of live weight per calf.
- Even after deducting concentrate costs (e.g an estimated £139.50 in the provided scenario), this can leave a profit of approximately £220.50 per calf.
- For a herd of 50 calves, this translates to a potential additional profit exceeding £11,000.
(Note: Specific costs and values will vary; farmers should use their own figures for precise calculations.)
While a higher quality creep feed might appear more expensive initially, the returns in terms of higher daily live weight gain (DLWG) and overall calf performance justifies the investment. Prioritising a feed with a good
balance of digestible starches and quality protein sources is key to unlocking the full potential of creep feeding.
By providing consistent high-quality nutrition, creep feeding helps calves maintain a steady growth pattern, avoiding performance dips often seen during weaning or when pasture quality declines. Creep feeding
becomes especially valuable when grass quality or quantity decreases, for instance, during drier summer months that can occur or as the grazing season progresses. It ensures calves continue to receive the
necessary energy and protein for optimal growth, irrespective of pasture conditions.Building on this principle of quality, choosing a well-formulated product is paramount to achieving the desired outcomes when implementing a creep feeding strategy. Davidsons offers two top-of-the-range options specifically designed to maximise calf performance: Davidsons Excel Nut and Davidsons Dynamo Nut.
Both feeds are built on a foundation of excellent ingredients, with maize as the primary ingredient, providing a crucial source of bypass starch for sustained energy release, and barley as the second key
ingredient, offering readily available energy. This strategic combination supports optimal rumen function and efficient growth.
Both high-energy diets, packed with crucial vitamins and minerals to meet the demanding requirements of growing calves. They feature an added copper pack, crucial for supporting robust immune function, enzyme activity, and overall health, directly impacting growth rates. These premier feeds include Levucell SC Titan, a specific strain of live yeast. This unique additive is scientifically proven to stabilise rumen pH,
enhance fibre digestion, and optimise overall rumen function, leading to increased feed efficiency, improved growth rates, and higher daily live weight gains.
Choosing between Davidsons Excel Creep and Dynamo Creep Nut allows you to tailor the creep feeding strategy to specific growth targets and calf requirements, either choice delivers top-tier nutrition for exceptional results.
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