Adequate nutrition for breeding season success

By Kacie McCarthy, UNL Cow-Calf Specialist; Travis Mulliniks, UNL Beef Cattle Nutritionist, Range Production Systems

We ask a lot from our cows come breeding season. We expect her to be providing adequate nutrients for calf growth (lactating), we expect her reproductive tract to repair and return to estrus prior to the start of breeding. All these expectations are within 90 days after calving to maintain a yearly calving interval.

So, what are some considerations that we can think about to meet nutritional requirements in our cows at breeding and have a successful breeding season? Those considerations may include quality and quantity of the consumed forage, nutrient requirements, and understanding what feed resources options we may need to consider helping meet those requirements.

Evaluate your Forage Base

When evaluating your forage base, we need to think about two things: 1) Can a cow eat all she wants in a given day?

2) What is the quality of forage she is consuming? During drought or drought conditions, we may see reductions in both quality and quantity of your forage. More resources related to forage management during a drought can be found on our drought page: https://beef.unl.edu/cattleproduction/drought.

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Depending on when your breeding season occurs, knowing the quality of your forage and body condition of your cows will be key in knowing how to proceed. Forage quality of native range tends to peak around June and starts declining in July until November.

Cow’s Requirements and Strategic Supplementation

Typically, when cows are moving from mid- to late gestation, energy requirements will increase by 25% and protein requirements by 10%. However, post-calving is where the greatest nutrient demand is occurring due to lactation. Table 1 illustrates the increased energy and protein intake differences to meet late gestation and early lactation requirements for a 1,200-pound mature beef cow with 20 pounds of milk production.

Table 1. Maintenance requirements for a 1,200-pound mature beef cow with 20 pounds of milk

CP, lb/d TDN, lb/d

Late gestation 1.9 12.9

Early lactation 2.8 16.0

Generally, weight loss occurs after calving due to an inadequate supply of nutrients to support milk production. To overcome some of these hurdles, supplementation is generally recommended if forage protein and energy are inadequate.

Developing an effective supplementation strategy that meets the needs of the lactating cow is critical to improve performance. One thing to keep in mind is that protein sources are not all created equal for a beef cow. During early lactation and throughout the breeding season, we find that cows are often consuming diets that are insufficient in metabolizable protein, but not insufficient in overall dietary crude protein. To increase the supply of metabolizable protein to the cow, a protein source high in rumen undegradable protein may need to be utilized. Historically, research over the last 40 years have shown that feeding rumen undegradable protein sources to lactating cows has resulted in increased pregnancy

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Predictive technology to dial in precision agriculture approaches

CONTINUED FROM PAGE C32 their own to select between possible approaches. He also noted that OFPE has never been intended to make decisions for producers. Instead, it is designed to provide them with more accurate, detailed information to make those decisions themselves.

“This isn’t a new gadget that a farmer has to buy to get at this data. We want to make this as automated and accessible as possible,” said Maxwell. “The eventual idea is that we can make these tools something to interact with, so farmers can run simulations based on the performance of their own field to generate suggestions. We’re trying to make this something that makes our individual farmers more money, based on information tailored for their specific needs.”