There are quite a number of things to discuss to transition to finishing your own cattle. You have 600- to 700-lb steers and heifers. The first thing would be to feed them separately based on steers and heifers if you can, based on the number. You don't have to feed separately, but you might consider feeding MGA (feed additive) to prevent the heifers from cycling or exhibiting estrus. Feeding MGA to the heifers will improve your feed efficiency and gains.

You have to consider the frame size of these cattle to determine whether they should be "grown" on forages prior to finishing. If they are smaller-framed, usually British breeds, some "growing" would be beneficial to increase mature weight or the weight they reach at finish. If they are mostly Continental breeding or influence and have a large mature size, finishing them directly on a high-grain diet is critical to prevent them from being too heavy at finish and avoiding discounts. If not, you can sell them lighter; however, their grade will be negatively impacted. With this said, you might either background them on a high-forage with or without by-products for a period or graze these cattle, then finish. Growing cattle with 30% forage or less may not be really helpful and probably just increases your cost of gain. If the gain is over 2.5 lb/day anyway, you should probably just get them on a finisher diet (described below) within 28 days or so.

Another consideration is use of different technologies. We would recommend implanting these steers and heifers depending on your marketing goals. A good approach is to target 100 days on a "terminal" implant which is usually a strong combination implant. Examples of these terminal implants would be Revalor-S, Synovex Plus, Synovex Choice (a bit milder), Component TES, etc. If you feed the cattle longer than 100 days (which is probable in this situation), you need to decide if you will give them another implant ahead of these last 100 days, and how long, and what. It is common to have another implant for 60 to 120 days prior to this last 100-day period. For example, if you were going to feed these calves for 200 days, you might consider implanting initially with Synovex-S (estrogenic implant) or Component-ES, Ralgro, Ralgro magnum, Revalor IS, Synovex Choice, or others.

Starting these calves is critical. You have backgrounding experience from the past. Clearly, the first 30 days is primarily to get these calves to eat well and get over any health challenges. An entirely separate issue is health management that we will not discuss. However, if you have specific questions on health program, you might to contact your local vet for help with those questions.

Once you have these calves over their initial receiving period, then we would recommend a 21- to 28-day transition period to adapt these calves over to high grain diets. As a general rule, if you are going to feed 10% hay (DM basis), you may start at 40% hay for 4 to 7 days, 30% hay for 5 to 7 days, 22% hay for 7 days, and 15% hay for 7 days, and then your finisher. You might move a little slower at the later steps and make smaller changes in roughage levels. A good rule of thumb is never to decrease forage by more than 10% and keep them on a step diet for 5 to 7 days.

Your roughage sources can be alfalfa hay, corn silage (remember 50% grain in silage), grasses, stalks, or other sources. Our recommendations on roughage level and source are dependent on the type of corn you are feeding and whether or not you have access to corn milling by-products. You might want to purchase wet distillers grains or wet corn gluten feed to include at 20 to 30% of diet DM in your finisher and step-up diets.

We assume you are feeding dry-rolled corn, but high-moisture corn works well at a certain amount and interacts with roughage level and by-product feeding or not. If you have enough cattle to feed semi-loads of wet by-products at a time (3 to 7 days) and can get consistent deliveries, this will work well for you assuming you can purchase it at a fair price.

We prefer to get cattle on a finishing diet within 28 days and then manage them on finisher. This can be done for as many as 180 to 200 days depending on how well you manage bunks, by-product use or not, and to be sure that you have implanted the calves correctly. You mention wanting to market these in November. Why? If you want to market in November, you will probably need to grow these cattle more. If you start a 700-lb steer, and it will go to market at 1300 lb, a 600-lb gain at 3.0 lb per day (a conservative estimate since they should do better than that)), then you will still market in September in this scenario.

You will need a supplement for these finishing calves. The most critical component of the supplement is to include calcium as limestone which should be cheap. You need a diet with approximately 0.7% calcium or approximately 1.5% limestone in your finishing diet. You will not need supplemental mineral phosphorus. Depending on ingredients in your final diet, you may need some small amounts of potassium. You will also need supplemental protein unless you use high levels of by-products. We would recommend use of urea at approximately 1.0% of the diet if you do not have 25% or more by-product. We would also recommend feeding Rumensin and Tylan at 300 mg/hd/d and 90 mg/hd/day, respectively. To target those small amounts, you will need a supplement that you feed at 1 to 1.5 lb per day with 300 mg per lb for Rumensin, as an example.

Sample diets for the finishing segment would be 10% alfalfa hay, 5% molasses, 5% supplement, and 80% corn. If you get a liquid supplement, you might get by with even more corn. The challenge with a dry corn and alfalfa hay diet is getting some liquid in the diet to prevent fines in the bunks and help with keeping the diet mixed. Molasses is quite expensive this year, so corn syrup or steep might be good liquids to use. However, you will need the equipment to handle liquid ingredients. Tallow for energy might be useful in some situations depending on tallow price.

The last comments would be related to use of wet distillers grains. If you can purchase these for the price of corn or less at your feedlot (dry basis to dry basis), you should use 25 to 35% wet distiller grains at your location. You might also consider pricing and evaluating use of wet corn gluten feed from Columbus (ADM) or Sweet Bran from Blair, Nebraska (Cargill) depending on your location from Grand Island. However, remember that these feeds are high in water content, so to convert to pricing on a DM basis, you must correct the price to compare to dry corn price. For example, if corn is $2.00 per bushel, the price is 2/56/.85 is 4.20 cents per lb of DM or $84.03 per ton. If you can purchase wet distillers grains that is 35% for $29.40 or less per ton as-is, then it is probably a pretty good buy ($84 * 0.35). You still need to factor in trucking to your operation. If the DM content was 50%, you could afford to pay $42 per ton as-is using the same assumptions above, or $84 * 0.50.

We hope this answers your questions or at least gives you a place to start. You will probably have access to advice when you purchase your supplement. Let us know if you have any follow-up questions. Watch whether you are planning for as-is % in the diet (when you weigh the feed out for loading of feed trucks) or DM % of diets (discussed above, which is the only important part when discussing the nutrition for the cattle). A good example of this is with corn silage. You have to weigh out much more silage (as a wet ingredient) to get 10% diet inclusion compared to dry alfalfa hay (as a dry ingredient). As you can see, the best diets are all a function of what you can handle, number of cattle you are feeding, and prices for each of these different alternatives.