Fact Sheet Written by:
Donald R. Gill, Extension Animal Science
David L. Lalman, Extension Animal Science
And Provided by
Oklahoma State University
For a cattleman, who has light weight cattle and who does not have adequate forage to maintain growth for some limited period of time, but has sound economic reason to retain the cattle for pasture or feeding at a later date, limit feeding may be the answer. Light weight cattle usually are grown on forages or on bulky high roughage growing diets. Another method to grow cattle at moderate rates of gain is to limit feed at a higher concentrate ration. In times of drought or with high roughage prices, limit feeding concentrates may be more economical. With limited intake of high energy diets, it may be cheaper for cattlemen to buy complete high energy feeds from feed manufacturers and achieve lower costs of gain than buying hay or forage which is expensive and difficult
to transport and handle. However, more management is required to handle limit feeding high concentrate diets than to feed roughages. Warning!! Complete pelleted diets will not work with programmed feeding. The usual problem with complete pelleted feed is that it is not possible to maintain adequate roughage particle size to prevent rumen disorders and bloat.
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