We want them on grain early to encourage lean tissue growth rather than bone and frame growth.” “You don’t want to finish these cattle at 24 or 25 months. “I discourage my producers from thinking that forage is their cheapest diet,” she says. One of the first lessons Felix tries to teach newbie dairy beef feeders is that cattle raised for beef need grain, not forage. But her two years of feeding trials with Holsteins, and a third on-going, suggests dairy steers can be a profitable enterprise, she says. Some or all of that can be true if they’re mismanaged, says Felix. But the stigma against Holstein steers is they have poor feed:gain ratios, take too long to grow and don’t grade as well native cattle. Pennsylvania farmers are looking to capitalize on these trends. 2) A major drought four years ago meant far fewer “native” cattle were being raised, which meant Holstein steers made a larger and larger percentage of the fed cattle market. Male dairy calves no longer used for veal had to go somewhere, and that somewhere was the feedlot. There’s a couple of reason for that: 1) Veal consumption has plummeted in the last 50 years. That’s up almost four-fold in less than a decade, says Tara Felix, an Extension beef specialist with Pennsylvania State University. The secret to raising high quality dairy beef at a profit is really no secret at all: It just requires top management throughout the steer’s life cycle and consistent forward contracting to mitigate market risk.ĭairy beef now makes up about 20% of the fed cattle market.
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