Don't Feed Cows Like You Did 20 Years Ago with Ted Perry

High-performance genetics need high-performance nutrition. Cows are the engine that drive the industry, and high-performing cows need highly tuned fuel. If you're still feeding cows the way you did 20 years ago, you're shortchanging those modern genetics, says Ted Perry with Purina Animal Nutrition. 

He and host Miranda Reiman chat about what cows need, fetal programming effects, and plenty more. 

They discuss:

• How mineral intake during the last trimester can affect up to 30-40 pounds of weaning weight in that calf. 
• How feeding a cow during drought affects a calf's entire lifetime performance.
• In utero development and minerals fed to the mama affect a heifer's future reproductive performance.
• How to tell if a cow is truly getting what she needs.
• How to maximize the use of low-quality hay.
• Much, much more!

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Transcript

Hello and welcome to Angus at Work, I'm Kasey Brown. We're rounding out of a busy bull-buying season, but we are entering the perfect time to focus on the cow herd and the nutrition needed to keep them and their calves thriving. You'll hear in just a bit with today's host, Miranda Reiman, that cows are the engine that drive our industry, and I really love that. Today's episode has lots of tips to give some love to those cows, so let's dig in.

Miranda Reiman:

Miranda Reiman here with the Angus at Work podcast, and today we're joined by Ted Perry with Purina Animal Nutrition. How are you doing today?Ted Perry:

I'm good.

Miranda Reiman:

Why don't you first just give me a little bit of background on what you do, your background with Purina and what you do there?

Ted Perry:

Okay. I literally have the best job in the world, because I work with the tech service team, and my team's job is to help producers all over the country. So I get to either, now through remote access through Zoom and stuff, but there's still a lot of traveling. I get to go to ranches and help producers solve some of their issues, and any questions they have from a management, nutrition, anything like that. Our team can go in and help them, and that's literally what they've paid me to do for 26 years and it's like, cool, I'll just keep doing it till somebody realizes that, wow, that's a really good job.

Miranda Reiman:

That's fabulous. Our tagline for this podcast is how to help make Angus bulls work for you, and it seems like you fit nicely into that, when we talk about that the cow herd is such a big important part of that.

Ted Perry:

That's the engine. Those cows are the engine that drive our industry. Without them, we have nothing to move forward with, so we need to take care of those girls as much as we can.

Miranda Reiman:

Absolutely. And we are headed into a time here with all of our spring-calving cow herds that's really a critical time when it comes to nutrition.

Ted Perry:

Well, right. Some of the latest research we've seen, some of this fetal programming stuff is just, in the 30 years that I've been around beef cattle, and nutrition, and studies and everything, we're learning more that fetal nutrition, I don't think we truly understand the capability of our cow herd. And the better we feed that cow, especially when that calf is in utero, the performance of that animal after that is just phenomenal. And it's just little bitty things, like even there's even been studies done where if we just limit her, if we just screw up her mineral intake in the last trimester, then I mean, there's data out there that shows that's 30, 40 pounds of weaning weight, and that 30, 40 pounds is never made up, and that's just not getting the mineral during that last trimester when that fetus is really developing and putting the final stages on.

It's just, like I said, I don't think we fully appreciate what goes on in utero yet, and how critical it is to feed that cow. And historically, we've looked at it from a standpoint of how do we maintain body condition, and can we cheat them here? Drought, for example, or finding forage. What's the minimum I can feed and still maintain some body condition? What we're realizing now is even though she'll be fine, she'll live through it, and it's not so much of an energy reduction that she loses the pregnancy, but that calf literally will never reach its full potential. And that's a big deal in the feedlot style, obviously, because we've got to sell carcasses. That's what our industry's made for. But think about from that replacement heifer standpoint. That cow will never reach her full potential, and none of her calves will. So it's a big deal, and it's getting to be bigger all the time. And like I said, from a research standpoint, it's absolutely fascinating to watch and keep up with, because stuff is going on in utero that we never dreamed of.

Miranda Reiman:

That feels like a big weight. We don't want to screw them up. How does a producer maybe do a little bit of an audit, or know if they've got their nutrition matched up right?

Ted Perry:

There's two things to look at to make sure that we know we're feeding the cows right. First is body condition score. Body condition scores that, we just talked about them, but body condition scores are our long-term report card, if you will. And we really, there's a lot of data in all the NRCs and everything, but we really want that cow to be at body condition score six, because if she's in a body condition score six, she's got all the nutrients to drop that calf, get good colostrum in that calf, and then turn around and breed in 80 days, which is what we need for a calving program. So our long-term report card is the body condition score. But the other thing that we know and we forget about is the short-term report card is manure scores. We can literally walk through a group of cows and look at the manure scores, and tell how well the rumen is working, and how much they're getting out of that forage.

So if you're walking through the pasture and the manure is really stacky, the reason that manure's really stacking up high is because there's so much fiber in there. Well, if there's all that fiber in the manure, guess where it didn't get used? It didn't get used in the rumen, and that fiber in the rumen is supposed to give its energy and protein to the cow. So even though we're feeding what we can, or what we have, because we're going to use that up first. I understand that.

But then when we look at those manure scores and we see that really stacking, we're not getting a lot out of our fiber by feeding the rumen. And that's where supplementation comes in, where it starts with minerals, and then maybe energy or protein where we feed the rumen microbes, and we can literally watch, over a matter of two or three weeks, we can watch those manure stacks go from a manure five, which is real stacky, down to a three, which is about that paddy that's about an inch to three quarters of an inch high. Then we know all of the fiber's getting used out of there. So those are our two report cards that we look at. Body condition score is the long-term, manure scores are the short-term.

Miranda Reiman:

And in that answer, I heard you talk about that it's not that you don't want to use the feed that you have. People start to get worried about spending too much money. But it's really about using that feed more efficiently.

Ted Perry:

Well yeah, and this is literally the fun part of my job as a nutritionist, is how do I match up what you have, okay? Because I raise hay at home too, and last year we had, around Kansas City, we had a horrible hay year. And I've joked all year that conveniently I baled first and second cutting at the same time. So now I've got a whole bunch of crappy hay, and I've had to supplement around that to make sure that... And watch my manure scores, watch my body condition scores, and we're doing that with basically putting out tubs and mineral to make sure that the rumen bugs are fed, and we've got the same manure scores that we had last year when we had really high quality hay. So we can use up that low quality forage, we just have to feed the rumen bugs and really take advantage of that. I mean, the rumen is really an amazing organ, and as long as we feed the bugs right, we're going to get out of there everything we can.

Miranda Reiman:

I think a good chunk of our listeners will have just come through this drought, and probably don't have a lot of stored feed, and maybe are trying to use what they have very sparingly. Do you have any, maybe different recommendations, for those in that situation?

Ted Perry:

Well, there's two ways. When we supplement the rumen microbes, then that goal is they're going to utilize more forage, they're going to eat more forage. But when we get to a situation where we just have no forage, then we have to go the other way and almost put the girls... That's where we need to supplement them with a lot of cubes, a lot of grain mixes type of things like that, that we're feeding the rumen bugs, but we're feeding them differently to get the energy out of the starch, if you will, rather than trying to digest forage, because there's nothing to digest. So it's a totally different program, nutrition program, but we can literally, depending on what the producer has... I've worked with producers in Iowa, they've got lots of corns and cornstalks. We can make that work.

We just have to have a feeding program allowed. And you have to allow, when you're going from a forage to say this high energy corn diet, you have to allow the rumen two to three weeks to acclimate. And then this time of year, what we have to be conscious of is if they're going to go to grass in April, say, okay, we need to start transferring them over about now so that we've got three to four weeks so that the rumen microbes are ready to digest forage, and not grain. Otherwise, we can take that cow and we get these calls all the time and it's really scary, but we had them on a very high, intense grain diet, and then April 1st or middle of April, we've got plenty of grass, so we just turn them out. Well, those rumen microbes aren't ready to eat that, so the body condition score literally crashes at that time.

If the body condition score, and now where we started with the fetal development, now we've got that calf, that cow in April, she's in her last trimester. We just crashed her body condition score, which means we crashed the nutrients going to that fetus, and we delayed everything. And then after two or three weeks, the rumen is re-acclimated, and now we're back to running. But that three week period, we don't know how bad we've actually set that calf back. And there's more data coming in all the time, but it's not good. So we have to account for that now, where before we never did.

Miranda Reiman:

Yeah, that's a great point, especially when you talk about later impacts on everything from weaning weight, to even carcass quality, and things later on. All right, so we've talked about that last trimester and how important that is. But as we transition into lactation, which is an entirely nother set of stressor, calorie users on the cow, what kind of things should we be thinking about?

Ted Perry:

When we start talking about going to lactation, one of the huge things we're looking at here is minerals, because there's a lot of calcium and there's a lot of phosphorous. But also keep in mind that the way that cow is set up, she's going to pull her nutrients out of her to feed the calf on the ground. So if we don't make sure that she's got what she needs, then she's going to delay breeding, or not breed at all. If you look in the wild, what do they do? They have a calf every other year, or wildlife, and that's because they're conserving what they have. So if we make sure that the cow's got what she needs going into lactation, but that literally starts 60 days before calving. So here we are, February 1st, if we're going to start calving April 1st, right now, we need to make sure that we've got the mineral tank full on that cow, because what she's doing right now is she's developing colostrum.

The better her nutrition status is right now, 60 days before, the better colostrum, and the higher quality colostrum she will get. Besides what we already talked about with the fetal development, but we get more and higher quality colostrum for that calf when it hits the ground. That gets that calf off to a good start. If she's got enough there, we've also got the mineral tank full so she can lactate, and it's not going to drain off her body enough, that way she'll go ahead and 80, 90 days she's back recycling, and she can get re-bred. So literally, one feeds off the other, but mother nature sets it up that, "Okay, we've got a calf on the ground, we're going to take care of that calf before we make another one." So we've got to take care of having all those body reserves in place in order for her to recycle.

Miranda Reiman:

We talked last year with Dr. Ron Scott from your team, and talked a lot about the importance of that colostrum, and I think gut health, and later on things. So I think you're exactly right that we often don't think about that being a before the cow is lactating kind of thing.

Ted Perry:

I mean, if we think about it in terms of, we as humans tend to think of, "Okay, we're going to calve April 1st, so what do we need to do April 1st?" Well, that's nice, but literally if we're thinking 60 days ahead, then she's got what she needs. And cows do an amazing job of taking care of themselves if we just give them what they need and get out of their way. But the key thing as beef producers is, we've got to give the girls what they need when they need it, not... And sometimes it's when they need it, not when we think they need it. Like I said, we got to think ahead, because if we think of calving, colostrum's made 30 days before. Well colostrum, the value of colostrum only comes in what's available. So that's why we've got to start 30 days ahead to make sure that the tank is full, and then we can make the colostrum, and that just cascades into everything else going down the road.

Miranda Reiman:

Being on the Angus team, we talk often about how much the genetics have changed even within the last decade.

Ted Perry:

Oh, it's amazing.

Miranda Reiman:

Yeah, it's just a lot of high performance genetics out there. How does nutrition need to maybe adapt over time? Maybe is that a signal that we shouldn't be doing what we were doing 10 years ago?

Ted Perry:

I think we're still doing a lot of what we did 10 years ago, and that's fine. Let's face it, cows are there to use up forage. If I don't have grass, I don't have cows. I mean, as much as I love playing with cows, if I don't have any grass, I don't have cows. So we're still doing that. But the couple of things that we need to think about is when we define high performance cows, those are cows that are breeding, and they're producing bigger calves, and they're weaning off instead of a 350 pound calf, they're weaning off a 600 pound calf. That's a lot of calories different. And one of the things that I work with producers a lot, and we're going to start in as we get into spring meetings, we think in terms of, okay, cow size went from a 1200 pound cow 20 years ago to now we're pushing 14, 1500.

And that's not even a big cow. I mean, there's even... 14, 1500's the average, and there's big ones out there. What have we done as producers to the pasture or the forage situation, to account for each cow is 50% bigger? And a lot of times we've done nothing. I mean, this is our pasture on our farm. We raise 50 cows, we're going to raise 50 cows. We've always raised 50 cows. Grandpa raised 50 cows. Well, if you're thinking in terms of grandpa's 50 cows, we're now raising 75 cows, and each one of those cows has a bigger motor. So we've got to feed that motor, and the cows do a great job, don't get me wrong, but we've got to account for, if we're going to have high performance genetics, we have to have high performance nutrition programs to feed it. I look at it as my daughter has a little Ford focus that she goes to school with. Gets 35 miles a gallon. That's great, but if I put her focus motor in my truck, it's not going to pull my trailer worth a darn.

So you've got to fit, you've got to have the calories. We've got big motors in these cows and the reason we have big motors in these cows is because those cows produce calves that have big motors that grow fast and do everything we want. I mean, if you look at what we've done from a carcass quality standpoint in the last 20 years, it's phenomenal, which is genetics. But we've got to feed those genetics. We can't feed them like the cows of 20 years ago, and that starts at the cow side.

And the big thing that I think that we're seeing is we're seeing more and more response to mineral programs. And I think that's because everything is, all the enzymes and everything are built off the minerals. So if I'm looking at improving my cow herd, or reevaluating my nutrition program, I'm going to start with the minerals. And then once I have the minerals, then we're back to body condition score and manure scores, just like we talked about earlier. But that all feeds off the same thing, but we've got to feed that bigger motor, or she's not going to perform, and it's not her fault. We just didn't give her what she needs.

Miranda Reiman:

Excellent. So we've covered a lot of ground. Minerals, make sure you have the right number of calories. Is there anything that we're missing?

Ted Perry:

I think it's just we have to look... As we talked about, the higher performance cows, we have to be looking farther down the road, because if we get her out of condition, then it's a much, much bigger deal. A bigger cow, it takes longer, and that many more calories to get her back into condition. So it used to be we can lose them behind... We could wean the cows, and lose them until after deer season, or when the snow flies, and catch them back up. These big high performance cows today, I don't think you can do that. You've got to be on it. It's just attention to detail. Everybody has done it. Everybody does it. But I think it's attention to detail, and we have to look farther down the road that we're not playing catch up. We're giving the girls what they need when they need it.

Miranda Reiman:

Excellent advice. Well, we always say that the cattle business is a people business, and so we always end on this random question. Tell me something good, whether it's personally or professionally, that's happened to you lately?

Ted Perry:

The fun thing is now is this is the fun time in the cattle cycle to work, because calf prices are coming up, everybody's happy. But this is the time when I think producers need to try something, because the next couple years we'll have money to spend. I'm not saying blow money, I'm just saying that, okay, maybe we haven't creep fed. Maybe we haven't had a complete mineral program. Maybe we don't supplement in the wintertime, or maybe we don't just test forage and see what we need. Now's the time, we will have extra income because the calf prices are up, that we can try stuff. And then when we go down this price cycle, sorry folks, we're not going to have $2 calves forever. But then we know what works on our farm, and when it's time to pinch pennies, we'll know what works and how we get the most out of those cows.

Miranda Reiman:

I like that it's the fun time to be in the cattle cycle. Over on our Angus Conversation podcast earlier today, we interviewed Randy Block and he talked about how optimistic he is for the next few years. You're absolutely right.

Ted Perry:

And like I said, it's the fun time. And then we get, those of us that are getting long in the tooth, that we've been around a long time, and we go through these cycles. And we'll get through it, but it's what we do now that sets us up, just like we talked about feeding the cow 60 days early, okay, I want to be looking six months out on my cow herd. What am I going to spend? Where am I going to partition this money that we have, to set ourself up to go through the other end? It's all planning.

Miranda Reiman:

Thanks so much for joining us on the podcast today.

Kasey Brown:

Listeners, to get more information to help make Angus work for you, check out the Angus Beef Bulletin and the Angus Beef Bulletin extra publications. You'll find links to subscribe to both of those in our show notes. If you have questions or comments, please let us know at abbeditorial@angus.org, and we'd sure appreciate it if you would rate this podcast, or leave a review to tell us what you learned or what was helpful, and share this episode with any other profit minded cattleman. Thanks for listening. This has been Angus at Work.