The choice of supplementing or not for summer grazing yearlings

Chabella Guzman Author

07/10/2024 Added

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Karla Wilke, Nebraska Extension cow-calf stocker and range management specialist, discusses her study on performance and reducing labor costs with supplementation strategies of summer grazing yearlings.

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[00:00:00.000]Wheat is not the only thing growing at the High Plains Ag Lab in Sidney.
[00:00:03.160]Karla Wilke, Nebraska Extension Cow-Calf Stocker and Range Management Specialist,
[00:00:08.240]tells us more on a study looking at performance and reducing labor costs
[00:00:12.180]with supplemental strategies of summer grazing yearlings.
[00:00:15.280]So we have yearling steers on crested wheatgrass pastures and we're supplementing
[00:00:22.500]dried distiller's grains as a protein source, so you know three pounds a day per steer.
[00:00:28.980]And so we have a negative control treatment so those just graze and don't get any additional
[00:00:34.140]supplement and then we have one treatment that gets their supplement six days a week,
[00:00:38.580]seven days worth of supplement prorated to six days a week all summer. And then a treatment where
[00:00:45.460]they just get it six days a week the last half of the summer which is based off of a previous
[00:00:51.120]study that we did that actually found that you get the same gain doing it all summer
[00:00:57.960]versus the last half but you save all the labor and the supplement costs not doing it the first
[00:01:03.640]part of the summer. So that was a unique thing. So then what we've added that would be those two
[00:01:09.660]treatments would be kind of a positive control to what we think we know. And then we added some
[00:01:15.960]treatments where they would get three times in the end. And so the reason behind that is when we put
[00:01:26.940]some economics to it if we could reduce labor costs and time constraints for people who have
[00:01:32.580]integrated operations and yet we could still make more money than no supplement at all then
[00:01:38.160]it would be something that would be beneficial for producers to evaluate. Alright and this
[00:01:44.340]is a two-year or four-year study. It's a three-year study um we're trying to get enough replication
[00:01:50.760]on it. Pasture is the is the experimental unit, and so to have enough replication
[00:01:55.920]to know for sure.
[00:01:58.460]So what we've seen so far in this trial is that what we expected in the past from past research, the six times a week, six days a week all summer long is better gain than no supplement at all. We knew that.
[00:02:17.300]And then there was certainly similarities between doing it six days a week the last half as we expected. And then what we have seen with the three days a week is that it was numerically similar to the last half six days a week, but not quite statistically different.
[00:02:37.700]And then again, it was numerically better than the control, but not statistically yet.
[00:02:44.640]And so I want to make sure that we have enough statistics.
[00:02:47.280]Enough statistical power to actually say, yes, this is good, or no, this didn't help.
[00:02:52.340]Because if at the end of the trial it doesn't have any biological significance from doing it three times a week to not doing it at all,
[00:03:04.020]then you definitely don't want to spend the money to do the supplement,
[00:03:07.080]because it didn't get you anything but extra work and extra supplement costs.
[00:03:11.240]But if, in fact, it's better than the control,
[00:03:15.520]and maybe not as good as one of the other ones,
[00:03:18.120]but you can put some economics to it and say,
[00:03:20.100]well, we wouldn't have to put in this much labor,
[00:03:22.480]but we could still get a bump in our overall bottom line,
[00:03:26.220]then we want to know for sure before we make those recommendations
[00:03:29.740]that what we're suggesting to producers is statistically significant,
[00:03:34.560]not just variation around the treatments.
[00:03:36.680]We've been talking with Karla Wilke, Nebraska Extension cow-calf stocker
[00:03:42.160]and range management specialist,
[00:03:43.760]on a study looking at enhancing performance and reducing labor costs
[00:03:47.660]with supplementation strategies of summer grazing yearlings.
[00:03:51.000]Ag Watch has been brought to you by
[00:03:53.020]the UNL Panhandle Research Extension and Education Center.

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The choice of supplementing or not for summer grazing yearlings

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