The results are in!

We loaded out our purchased stockers this morning. Just a little background. We purchased 309 head of stockers on March 23rd with an average weight of 727 lbs. We implanted them with Ralgro G and wormed with Ivermec. For the first 2 weeks we fed them some average hay and a little ddg. After 2 weeks, we combined them with our home raised stockers (500 of them) and grazed stockpiled fescue until green up. Our first rotation was fairly short on grass and the pastures were around 20 acres in size (stock density approx 25,000 lbs per acre)...the stockers were chasing grass a bit for probably 20-30 days until the grass caught up. We then went to 10 acre pastures and smaller (stock density approx 60,000 lbs per acre). Stockers were moved once a day. It was a great clover year and most pastures had 50% or greater ladino clover and later lespedeza.

The stockers were given free choice mineral with Rumensin and consumed .07 lbs per head per day. They were also fed an average of 2.7 lbs per head per day of pelleted ddg. We had a very cool, wet spring and forage was mostly pretty good throughout the grazing season. Aside from the 20-30 days when the stockers were chasing green grass, I don't think they were ever hungry....they always had plenty to eat and left plenty of residual in the paddocks.

Now for the results: The stockers weighed out at 905.4 lbs after 113 days for an average daily gain of 1.58 lbs. Keep in mind we cut off the smallest 24 head from this group (we presold 285 of the 309 head we purchased)...but I will tell you that we had some calves that won't get to 1000 lbs ever...just very small framed calves. Overall I'm a bit disappointed but probably only because I was expecting so much. Probably not a bad result for our first time out of the box.