The cycle begins when dairy cross continental calves, originating through the designated rearer from farms across Cheshire, come on to the farm in batches of 60.
Rob says: "They come in as a batch and remain in a batch, and we acclimatise them to our system over several weeks. We keep them on the pellet used by the calf rearer, and after three weeks, we start to transition them to our own grower ration." He says transitioning them carefully over two or three weeks, by the age of five or six months, the switch is complete. By then, young growing cattle are consuming a ration comprimising grass silage (70%), wholecrop barley (20%), rolled beans (5%), pot ale syrup (5%) and minerals.
Rob says: "We top up this TMR with 1-2kg/head of a home-grown barley blend fed in the trough. This allows us to use the same TMR for two different groups, which will stay on this ration until about six months of age. After this point, barley will be cut out, but they will stay on the same TMR until aged 15 or 16 months, while they continue to grow frame."
During this period, they may go out to grass, without supplementary feed, depending on season. Daily live-weight gain for this growing period averages about 1.1kg/day. It is after this period cattle are switched to a cereal-based, high-intensity finisher ration, which is carefully introduced over a 16-day period. Rob says: "We know from experience if you switch them too quickly or push them too hard, there will be major rumen upsets. We had those issues many years ago when we had acidosis.
They would lose condition and we ended up putting more feed into them and gaining less. "For this reason, we ease them on to the finisher ration over 16 days. This means a 70:30 ratio of the grower to finisher ration on days one to three; 60:40 on days four to six; 50:50 on days seven to nine; then the reverse proportions until day 15. "On day 16, they are fully switched to the finisher ration, by which time they have acclimatised well."