Efficient beef production is crucial for meeting global food demands. Most of the feed consumed by beef cows is used for essential bodily functions like breathing, maintaining heart rate, and regulating body temperature. The remaining energy is partitioned into milk production, body weight gain, and pregnancy. Understanding how mature cows partition feed energy is essential for optimizing grazing and supplementation strategies. This study investigated the effects of increasing feed energy intake on production parameters of mature beef cows and their calves. Over the 2-yr study, mature beef cows were fed 5 different levels of a complete diet to manipulate their energy intake. The results indicated that as energy intake increased, cows partitioned energy to both body weight gain and to milk production. However, the efficiency of calf growth (weight gain per unit of energy consumed) decreased as milk energy availability increased. These findings suggest that while greater energy intake can improve cow body condition, a large proportion of the added energy is partitioned into milk production. Thus, feeding the lactating beef cow to achieve increased body condition is expensive and may result in decreased efficiency of calf growth.

Read the full article in the Journal of Animal Science.