Goin' Showin': Welcome back,

Now that we know much of the basic terminology used in showing cattle from last week’s post. We can get down to the nitty gritty of the basics of showing cattle. So it is your first time taking care of and raising a show calf, and you have no clue what to feed your animal, whether it is a heifer or a steer. According to the Cattle Today article called “Feeding Show Cattle Requires Good Management,” a show calf that is in the process of gaining weight should gain 3 pounds per day so they would need to eat at least 1.5% of their body weight each day. The real question here is, “what does one feed these calves?” There are so many good quality show feeds out there today so really it comes down to what is mixed into each one of those feed that will provide you show calf with the nutrients and weight gain that it needs to be show ready. This will come down to the overall fat content in the feed you choose. There are many people with many different opinions about the best quality show feed, but according to an article written by Texas Cooperative Extension called, “Managing Beef Cattle For Show,” feed with high energy will fatten cattle so corn and molasses are good to mix together for gaining purposes. Corn makes the best fatten grain because it is high in nutrients. There are other additives such as Vitamin A, D, and E that will improve the quality in which your calf gains as well. Water is another huge benefactor when feeding a show calf. You will want to make sure they have plenty of water with the feed you choose. Ration is another question many people have, “how do we know how much to feed?” this will depend on the weight of the calf. Like earlier in the post I stated they need to gain around 3 pounds per day and that is about 1.5% of their body weight so as they keep gaining weight you will want to keep upping their feed as their body weight keeps going up.