A SEMINAR on Thursday, September 14, sponsored by J M Ellis & Co, at Tarrington with presentations by Animal Innovations and Management (AIM) senior technical sales specialist, Rob Coburn and technical sales specialist, Matt Hall, on the topic of ‘Feeding Livestock for Profit’ was well attended.

The seminar covered numerous topics including ruminant function and dysfunction - the causes and signs and symptoms - how to recognise and address these issues and the impacts this has on your bottom line.

While acknowledging that farm goals differ from one enterprise to another, there was still a set of desirable goals for each.

Whether you are growing sheep for wool or meat or both - animal health and high fertility are common to all.

The ruminant health session was both thorough and interesting and had a lot of the producers interjecting with questions – leading to more questions and discussion.

To understand how the rumen works and how feed is converted into energy and protein is essential for planning feeding efficiencies.

In fact, this knowledge should directly impact a farm manager’s decision making around summer crop choice and supplementary feeding to ensure there is a correct balance between starch, protein, and fibre.

“Ruminants don’t like change - they like consistency,” Mr Coburn said.

“Every time you change the feed, it takes time for the rumen to adapt and in that time the ruminant will stagnate.”

Choosing summer crops and how you transition your stock to these crops can impact rumen health, so, what is the best summer crop for your enterprise?

Mr Coburn then asked, “have you noticed …?” regularly. There were many cause and effect scenarios which can be overcome if you understand what the cause is. He said, any delay in your animals getting to a prime saleable state is costing you time and money.

The whole morning largely focused on ‘efficiencies - how to get the most weight on your stock in the quickest amount of time.

Time was also spent on minimising handling of stock to reduce stock stress which sets back weight gain.

There were some interesting questions posed - like do we notice why stock on lush green feed still don’t gain weight - it seems to go in one end and out the other.

For stock to digest and absorb and utilise feed on offer there needs to be that balance.

Stock on green feed without adequate amounts of starch and fibre will not be able to convert that green feed into animal protein.

To emphasise the importance of this balance, Mr Coburn and Mr Hall said that if a diet was short of one of the three pillars of weight gain - starch, fibre and protein - then more energy was needed by the animal to digest the food. So considerably less energy is available to convert that food to animal protein.

Importantly, too much rich green feed can lead to scalding/burning of the rumen which takes weeks to repair.

Naturally, if there is an imbalance of trace elements then this hinders the absorption of various vitamins.

If your soils are low in magnesium, copper or selenium, then the animals will show various signs of that deficiency. Those signs were discussed at length and most of us, in this area have seen them first-hand – although few of us were aware of the causes.

Many of us have scanned ewes in lamb and thought we were doing the right thing by putting those ewes onto a rape crop or similar pasture – but did you know that a high nitrogen diet can burn the embryo off the uterus wall. There may be nothing wrong with your fertility rates but the numbers of lambs born at term may be significantly less than originally counted.

Mr Coburn said that “green feed is amongst the best and cheapest feed sources available, but we can be more efficient and get better results if we utilise it better.”

Another area that was covered was the most economical way to add what’s needed into the feed ration - grains.

Which grains will meet your requirements at the most economical cost, and remember, if you require less per head of one grain source then it may be more economical than a greater portion at the same or cheaper price.

I can assure you that there was great conversation in the car on the way home, as we analysed how this information translates to our farming enterprise.

There were many ‘take away’ insights and I expect that the success of the session will see demand for more of them.

Congratulations JM Ellis and Co - a morning very well spent, and I have some more work to do.