Technological and Economic Research on the Cow-calf Slaughter System

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To be successful in beef cattle production, some cow-calf operators begen to keep their young steer in their own operation and finish them for slaughter. On the other hand, some finishing operators began to introduce heifers and cows into their operations to get feeder calves for themselves. This is cow-calf slaughter system. When herd size of cows is small, operators want to improve marketability of feeder calves by feeding a lot of concentrate ration. However, these calves are not always profitable in finishing system because over-feeding of calves frequently results in depressed daily gain in the latter part of fattening. His contradiction should be improved in cow-calf slaughter system. Recently, there are tendencies to develop cow-calf slaughter system in Kyushu, Hokkaido and Tohoku districts. We studied and found that cow-calf slaughter system in Kagoshima prefecture was more profitable than cow-calf or finishing systems when whole crop corn silage for fattening cattle could be produced in their own land. In Hokkaido, we found a good example where dairy operation adopted fattening section by using calf hatch for rearing new-born calves, by grazing feeder cattle on good pasture and by feeding whole crop corn silage to finish cattle. To establish cow-calf slaughter system efficiently, it is important to understand nutrient requirements for cow, calf and fattening cattle respectively and to prepare much domestic feed of good quality for these animals.