Nutritional Considerations for Heifer Development

By Brian Fieser, originally published in Progressive Cattle

Proper nutritional planning for raising productive heifers starts well before the animals are of breeding age. Producers need to consider what a heifer on their operation needs to succeed at every stage of life.

Regardless of the class of cattle you are feeding, the first step is to determine the goals of the feeding program. This includes knowing your on-farm labor, forage and ingredient-handling restrictions and opportunities, as well as the size and look of the animal you want to have at the end of the program. The nuances of feeding breeding stock take on greater dimension compared to feeder cattle because of the long-term considerations required of breeding stock. In a broad sense, the goal with replacement heifers is to give them the nutritional foundation for success that will hopefully allow them to produce eight to 10 big, healthy calves in their productive lifetime.

One of the most common questions posed in heifer development is if a high-input or low-input feeding program is the way to go. The answer, as in so many complex situations, is: “It depends.” The fact is: There isn’t any one right program that fits everyone. Every producer should do what fits their operation and their resources best. This could mean growing heifers in big grass pastures with some supplemental feed or, on the other end of the spectrum, it may include confining heifers in smaller pens and feeding a hay or silage-based TMR. My first (and best) piece of advice when developing heifers is the same advice when feeding any other class of cattle: Don’t let the check you write limit the size of the check you receive. In other words, don’t waste any money on a feeding program by overfeeding or throwing every bell and whistle on the market at them. But we can do a good job of monitoring our input costs while making the most desirable product possible to buyers (or for our own heifer replacements).

Every producer should do what fits their operation and their resources best. This could mean growing heifers in big grass pastures with some supplemental feed or, on the other end of the spectrum, it may include confining heifers in smaller pens and feeding a hay or silage-based TMR.

The best place to start is always the beginning, and in this case, it may be much earlier than is typically considered in developing heifers. As our understanding deepens in so many areas, such as genomics and nutrition, it is important to know the indirect responses we can influence. When I say the beginning, I mean all the way back to conception. With our knowledge of generational nutrition (the effect nutrition can have on subsequent generations), we know that when cows have their nutritional needs met, they produce offspring that are more productive than offspring born