Forage-backgrounding
Depending on your location, options for high-quality pasture will vary.
February 24, 2025
Many people background weaned calves in a drylot setting, but there are advantages to forage-backgrounding on pasture. If green forages are part of the equation, lighter-weight, smaller-framed calves can be on a slow backgrounding track through winter and then go to grass. There are many high-quality pasture options. Forages and timing of grazing can vary, however, depending on the region.
Midwest
Aaron Berger, extension beef educator for the University of Nebraska–Lincoln (UNL), says research at UNL has looked at growing calves on forage.
“In Nebraska we have cornstalk residue and native range pastures, along with drylotting on grass hay or annual forages,” he says.
“It’s crucial to test the feed you have, to know if nutrient levels are adequate,” he emphasizes. “Based on targeted rate of gain, you might need to supplement your forages. Sometimes a high-quality forage alone can get those cattle to gain 1.5 to 2 pounds (lb.) per day, but calves lose weight on low-quality forage.”
There are many options for grazing.
“In Nebraska we don’t see much wheat pasture, but we have some stockpiled annual forages,” he says. Those can be strip-grazed or windrowed for winter feed.
“In central eastern Nebraska there might be some irrigated wheat or seed-corn production. In late summer there might be opportunity to plant annual forages and graze those or windrow-graze. Calf performance varies with forage quality, stocking rates, severity of the winter, etc.”
A major advantage in Nebraska is access to ethanol coproducts like distillers’ grains.
“Many cattle operations use this to complement forage because it’s an energy-dense, high-protein, fiber-based source,” Berger explains. “Producers often winter-grow calves on crop residues like cornstalks or graze native range and use distillers’ grains to balance the diet. It works well not only because it’s high-protein, but also the rumen undegradable protein (RUP) in those grains benefits young cattle.”
RUP is the protein not digested by rumen microbes that is available to the animal for tissue growth or lactation. It’s sometimes called bypass protein or escape protein.
Karla Wilke, UNL cow-calf systems and stocker management, says calves have greater need for rumen undegradable protein for frame, muscle growth and skeletal structure.
“There are distillers’-based supplements; some producers put dried distillers’ in a bunk where cattle are grazing, or have access to wet distillers’ or distillers’-based cubes,” she says. “These work much better than corn, even though corn might be cheaper. The starchy energy doesn’t meet the needs of young cattle for growth.”
Starchy concentrates are better in the finishing phase and are not as good for structural growth.
Grazing cornstalks isn’t the best for young calves; they will lose weight unless they are supplemented, Wilke says. Depending on maturity, plant species and growing conditions, grazing winter range is usually a better option. Those native plants usually have more nutrients even when dry and mature.
A research experiment in eastern Nebraska reported loss of body weight in 500-lb. calves receiving only mineral supplementation while grazing cornstalks. Another group of calves on cornstalks (supplemented with 3.5 lb. of a mixture of corn, molasses and urea) only gained 0.5 lb. per day, while a third group supplemented with 3 lb. of dried distillers’ grains gained 1.3 lb. per day.
“This suggests that calves need supplemental rumen undegradable protein as well as energy while grazing cornstalk residue,” Wilke says. Similarly, she notes, a group of 450-lb. calves in the Texas Panhandle grazing dormant native range gained 0.5 lb. per day without energy or protein supplementation. However, they gained 1.4 lb. per day when supplemented 2.5 lb. of dried distillers’ grains.
Berger says sometimes people supplement with soybean meal, canola meal or some other protein source like cottonseed meal or whole cottonseed.
“In Nebraska, distillers’ grain is an excellent resource, but high in phosphorus,” he says. “That’s not a bad thing, if you use a mineral mix that complements that phosphorus content.”
You don’t want to be short on any important mineral, he adds, but you also don’t want excess that may upset the dietary balance.
“People growing calves through winter usually target 1- to 1.5-pound average daily gain,” Berger says. “Sometimes calves only gain 0.5 to 0.75 pounds per day and people think they can make that up with compensatory gain the next summer. With today’s genetics, there is still some compensatory gain to be had, but studies we’ve done show that calves that don’t gain much through winter never do catch up with the calves that gain at least a pound per day or more.”
Wilke says those calves have a weight advantage through the finishing phase compared to cattle backgrounded to gain less than 1 lb. per day.
“Even though the slower-growing calves experience compensatory gain, they typically only compensate by about 37%-38%; they continue to have lighter body weight than cattle backgrounded to gain 1.5 pounds,” she says. “Annual forage crops will usually give you 1.5 to 2 pounds per day because they have more nutrient density.”
High-quality forage can put cheaper gain on young cattle than using an expensive supplement.
“Some people put in a cover crop behind silage or something they can grow early, like irrigated wheat. Planting winter annuals like oats, triticale or rye after corn silage harvest can provide high-quality winter grazing for weaned calves,” she says. “Research in Nebraska has shown 550-pound calves gain between 1.5 and 2 pounds per day when grazing oats or a mix of oats and radishes from November to January.”
Even on native range, calves may need a supplement, Wilke says, citing a study conducted in the Nebraska Sandhills. Calves grazed a mix of warm- and cool-season native grasses (predominantly warm-season) for winter feed on a deferred grazing pasture. The calves weighed 600 lb. going into the program. They were supplemented with 2 lb. per head of dried distillers’ grains and gained 1 lb. per day.
“That’s a little better quality than cornstalks, but makes us realize that even on native range they may need a supplement,” she says. Mature dry cows do fine on this type of feed, but they are not still growing.
Southern Plains
Ron Gill, Texas A&M professor and extension livestock specialist, says in Texas a lot of cattle winter on pasture, especially wheat pastures.
“Most of the time these cattle don’t need anything else other than minerals. They grow and gain enough on pasture, and the cost of gain is a lot cheaper on pasture than in the feedlot,” Gill says. “Some people supplement a little with distillers’ grains or gluten feed, mainly because it helps keep cattle from bloating as readily on wheat pastures.”
Gill says feeding hay can help prevent bloating on high-quality forages; however, it slows the rate of gain. So, most people don’t feed much hay in this type of winter forage program.
“Winter wheat pastures are 20% to 30% protein when young and green,” he notes. These pastures are also high in energy, with high moisture content.
Bloat can be a problem for cattle on wheat pasture, says Ron Gill. Cattlemen often supplement a little distillers’ grains or corn gluten feed to lessen the risk of bloat. [Photo courtesy Terry Klopfenstein.]
“It’s a very different scenario than grazing perennial or prairie pastures with a shorter growing season,” he says. “The benefit of a wheat pasture, however, is dependent on weight and age of the calves. If you put big cattle on wheat, it’s not as efficient, but this is what many feedlots do to get them staged at different times to go into the feedlot — to spread out their inventory. You can change the rate of growth by how you manage them, and put on cheaper gain.”
Many people put lighter calves (300 lb.-400 lb.) on wheat pasture.
“This is very efficient use; you can run more calves on the pasture, so your gain per acre is higher,” Gill says. “How these pastures are utilized often depends on what the price of wheat will be. If grain will be more valuable, people pull cattle off those pastures in February, before the plants start putting up seedheads. If people just graze the pasture on out, often they can double-stock during that spring flush of growth.”
His area, around Chico, Texas, has a lot of dryland wheat; however, graziers are at the mercy of the weather, Gill explains. The Panhandle, where they have irrigated wheat, provides a more consistent situation.
“This is where feedlots do most of the warehousing on these cattle,” he says. “Most of the calves we run on winter pasture down here come out of the Southeast or maybe even Mexico. A lot of Texas calves stay here, but are bigger at weaning and end up going to a feedyard quicker. We are the stopping point for a lot of Southeastern cattle heading for the feedyards.”
A lot of cattlemen send cattle to Kansas or Nebraska seeking the higher quality grades coming out of those areas, Gill observes. “We do have some tallgrass prairie operations where people background in the spring, almost like they do in the Flint Hills, with an early intensive-grazing situation, but the gains are lower there.”
“Some of the high-intensity graziers don’t supplement cattle at all, if it’s high-quality forage; but supplements can help improve forage efficiency and digestibility with warm-season grasses. We see more use of supplementation in spring and early-summer grazing programs. Forage quality drops so much in the summer here that we don’t see much summer grazing, except for the places that warehouse cattle for the feedlots; they are not really after much of a gain,” says Gill.
Featured in the 2025 Angus Beef Bulletin
Table 1: Nutrient requirements of growing steer and heifer calves, 1,400 lb. at finishing
“Down here we don’t supplement much on winter pastures because we don’t need to. We don’t have much spring grazing, because even our best spring forages are not very good. We’re looking at about 1.5 pounds of gain,” he says. “In Kansas they may get 2 to 2.5 pounds of gain. Here, however, we have small cattle that come through on wheat pasture in the fall, and we grow them to 550 or maybe 700 pounds, and they go to the Flint Hills in the spring. On those pastures they grow those cattle on up to 900 pounds or more and then they go to the feedyards.”
Producers see value in going to better grass, he says. “Cattlemen here are not afraid to put wheels under cattle and take them to better grass somewhere if they need to. It’s cheaper to haul cattle to grass than haul feed to cattle.”
Typically, calves go from wheat pasture to some other pasture somewhere else, maybe the Flint Hills.
“There’s a lot of good grazing in Oklahoma, but most of those folks already have theirs contracted out by the time our people are ready to move cattle somewhere,” Gill says.
Editor’s note: Heather Smith Thomas is a freelance writer and cattlewoman from Salmon, Idaho.
Topics: Management , Pasture and Forage , Nutrition
Publication: Angus Beef Bulletin
Issue: March 2025
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