Backyard Cattle Management
Print
EmailFebruary 18, 2021
Video Transcript
- Recording, good afternoon, everyone, welcome to my, or Michigan AG Ideas to Grow with Virtual Conference. Please note that the session will be recorded. Recordings for all session will be posted a few weeks after the conference and we ask you to please remain muted, throughout the presentation. My name is Paula Bacigalupo and I'm a dairy educator for Southern Michigan. It is my pleasure to welcome you to this session. Raising beef for your freezer, a nutritional perspective. Today, we will hear from Dr. Jared Jaborek. Before we start, we would like to take a quick moment to thank our sponsors, who are showing on the screen. Due to their generous support we're able to offer this event at no charge to participant. We also have a short video, that we will like to share with you. So if nutritious food is something that we can, that can often be taken for granted. It is important to remember some simple but easy ways to keep ourselves, and our families safe. MSU extension has created some short fun videos, to share some simple, easy tips related to food safety. So, give me one second. - Paula, there's no sound. - Oh, guess I'm gonna stop and share again. Please let me know if you can hear it. - [Narrator] Most everybody that grows or handles apples knows that apples float. You know what else floats? Deer poop. Believe it or not, deer poop can get near apples like this. If you're an Apple grower, you've likely staged your Apple bins in the field to fill with apples. Conscientious apple growers have someone walk the rows where the bins are staged to mark areas where there are piles of deer poop. The person who stages the boxes usually avoids these marked areas to put boxes on. If you're an Apple handler and processor, you likely submerged the bin and float the apples through your line. A poopy bin bottom would be the first thing to hit your dunk tank. That poop would likely float to the top and move through the line with the apples. Once poop enters the dunk tank and touches fruit, no amount of sanitizer can clean it off. Scout rows where bins will be staged for deer poop. Keep poop off food. - If you'd like to learn more food safety, visit the MSU extension website and search for food safety. Now let's jump to today's presentation. If you have any questions during the presentation please type them in the chat and we will go over the question at the end of the session. Let's begin, and I made a mistake, today we're gonna hear about Jared and from Serah Fronczak So Serah, I'm going to stop sharing. Oh, you're good? - Yeah, I bumped you. Hi, my name is Sarah Fronczak, I'm an environmental management educator with MSU Extension. And to this evening, I'm going to give a short presentation on small farm manure management for cattle. So in this presentation, you'll be learning about manure production, nutrients in manure, manure storage and options and manure application. I'm going to be pretty brief on all these topics. And if you want more information, I'll pop some links into the chat that you can look for more information but you're always welcome to like contact me. Or if you contact an educator, a beef educator like Jared or Kevin, you can ask for me by name and they'll figure it out that I am the Serah in which you seek. So I have a question for you. How much manure do you think a 750 to 1,250 pound steer would produce in a day? I want, if you can, would you type into the chat some of your guesses? One day, how much poop are you gonna scoop? Do you have a guess Jared? Our chat is quite, quite quiet. - I'm going to refrain from guessing. - Okay, we got a hundred pounds, 50 pounds, 60 pounds 60 pounds is pretty darn close. Let's see. One day is 64 pounds of poop. This is just the poop. It's not any bedding that might be in there with the animals. So that is it, 64 pounds a day period. So all of that poop adds up, the manure produced for a 1000 pound finishing steer which I chose 1000 pounds because math is hard, so I just, it was a lot easier for me to figure it out. So a thousand pound finishing steer over six months is just under five tons. So that is a lot of poop. I don't, I it's hard to even think about that. I mean, you're looking at just like vehicle sized piles of poop here. So where does all the manure accumulate on your farm? So if you are like a lot of other small farmers, you have some kind of outdoor pen or a lot or a pasture. So we're gonna talk about a few different of the places that you might have your animals and how that manure accumulates. So many farms have some sort of outdoor pen and we suggest that to prevent runoff from these pens that you have some kind of a grassy area surrounding the pen. And we also suggest that you keep clean water clean. So if you can prevent clean water from a roof say to fall from falling onto the sacrifice lot or in, or a pen that you do that. So putting on gutters or diverting clean water away from that pen is a really good idea. So if you can, concrete lots are hard, lots are a lot easier to scrape. This is really just thinking about you. If the easier it is to scrape, the more likely you are to scrape it. And like creating subdivisions for putting your animals, if the whole pen might be too big for two cattle, right? So subdividing it so you only have to clean a smaller part at a time might be really helpful and animals, so in pastures animals tend to defecate in or near the same place. They are creatures of habit, just like us. And you're gonna end up with piles of poo, kind of here near the water or over by the shade. So we recommend that you use a managed grazing approach to spread out the manure across your pasture. It's better for the health of your animals, it prevents you can shift the timing. So it prevents disease from moving from animal to animal. And in this case, you'd probably have to move the water. And you'd also have some sort of fencing which Jared might be able to tell you more about, I'm a poop specialist, not a fencing person. So, but we can find you somebody to help with that if that's something you're interested in. Another thing to know about manure is that it holds nutrients, it can be a valuable fertilizer when placed where plants, when and where plants can use it. And if it's allowed to run off, it could cause a lot of problems to surface water and groundwater. So in beef manure, in every thousand pounds, you can contain 5.5 pounds of nitrogen, 1.7 pounds of phosphorus and 4.7 pounds of potassium. These are just book values, your manure might be different and it's important to get it tested if you're planning on using it as a fertilizer. So the primary concern about manure runoff is fast for as loading and dissolved oxygen levels and a increase in biological oxygen demand is what kind of is what worries people when it gets into the water. So I'm not gonna really go into this a lot, I just wanna mention a harmful algal blooms. So this is Lake Erie, you might be aware of Lake Erie and down here near Toledo, this is the end by Toledo. And the, this is the harmful algal bloom that was in, was in like Erie and occurs every summer in Lake Erie that is fed by phosphorus. And this is one of the reasons that we're careful about applying manure and fertilizers in Michigan because all of our water runs into Lake Erie eventually. So you may understand why we'd like to keep manure in a storage facility where runoff can be limited or prevented because of things like harmful algal blooms. So a storage facility should keep manure from washing away or leaching into the ground. And three common types include three-sided concrete holding area with a concrete floor. It that's, that's not very common on a smaller farm. What's more common as smaller farms are covered dry stack stacking areas that are on like a packed clay or a concrete, which are a perfectly fine as long as they're maintained correctly. Roofed buildings are really great because it keeps the rain from falling on the manure and washing the nutrients out. A large tank, like a dumpster would also work. And then we've also seen like earthen or concrete pits but usually see that more in liquid manures on dairy farms and pig farms and things like that. If you're interested in manure storage, there is cost share for this. And if you contact us, we can get you some, we can get you connected with people that can help you with that kind of funding. So let's just review that really quick. So manure storage, if you have your manure storage kind of out here on top of the hill and it gets rain on it, it can be a real bad news for fish and you're gonna get a lot of plants growing, a lot of algae growing, and you're going to end up with fish kill. Better would be a storage facility with three sides that's going to keep most of that manure in place. It will not keep it dry though, so you'll have to deal with any kind of water that accumulates in that facility and best would be a roofed walled facility that allows those nutrients to be taken advantage of more as a fertilizer and less as a runoff risk. Let's talk about compost really briefly. If you've got just a few animals, this might be something you're interested in. Composting can reduce the volume of the manure by half and it can decrease the odor of the manure. So if you're dealing with animals that if you're close by you have lots of neighbors or something composting might be the way to go. I just got my two minute warning so I'm gonna move past composting. And if you have questions about composting, you can give me a call. Stockpiling is probably the choice that you're gonna choose to stack your manure. So you wanna keep nutrients from leaching into soil or groundwater keep away from surface water, rotate the location. So this is really important, you can't stockpile in the same place every time, it has to be moved around. Another thing that we see a lot is dry stacking. So again, this would be three walls an impermeable surface, and the drainage could run to a vegetative filter or another treatment. So this is really something where we're really interested in seeing in smaller farms. And then you want to also consider how you're going to apply that manure. So you're probably going use some kind of a manure spreader. It's important that you have that manure spreader calibrated which our technicians can help you with. And if you have any more questions about that, I can help you with that. And then I guess I wanna really emphasize this before Paula cuts me off and pulls me off the stage is that I'd really like you to think about keeping records. I will post a link in the chat that will, has a sample of record keeping and. Keeping records isn't fun, but it's an essential job. And when you're spreading manure and you're creating manure, keeping records keeps you safe and it keeps other people safe. So if anybody ever has problems with your farm, you can say I know exactly what I did with my manure and it'll protect you in the future. So keep your records. And again, if you guys have any questions, you can contact me, you can email me or give me a phone call and I will put that link in the chat. I think, I think I got it in. - Yes, you did great. Thank you, Serah. And we only have one question during your presentation. It was how would you that equate to cattle and I'm guessing it's half or so, would you agree for Jared or Dexter? - Yeah, there is going to be a proportion of weight. So with them being smaller cattle, they're going to produce less manure. - Yeah, it's so, yeah, usually it's by weight and we can figure that out and find some like equivalency to it. So if, if that's something you're interested in, then shoot me your email and I'll get you some answers. - Serah, before we let you go, can you please type your email in the chat? Just in case? - I can. - Please and Jared, please share your screen. And now the floor is yours. - Okay. There we go. Can you see my presentation okay? - It's getting there. - I see a black screen. - Yeah, we can see, but you started the screen-sharing but we cannot see anything yet. - Okay, that's odd. Let me stop and try again. I wonder if it's my internet connection - It might be your internet connection. - Oh, there, it just went. - All right, we can now, we can see the presenter mode though. - Okay, how do I switch that? - So I was like raised on freezer beef when I was growing up. - Still the wrong slide. - We can see the, like, now we can see, now we're good. - There you go. You're good now? - Yeah, we're seeing, so you've decided you want to raise your own freezer beef? - Okay. - That's not the first slide. - No, I. - That was the first slide. - Okay, sorry about that, everyone. Thank you for attending tonight's presentation. I'll be talking about raising beef for your freezer. I'm offering a nutritional perspective on this and talking a little bit about cattle group. So I have a lot of slides to get through. So I'm gonna try to move through these pretty quickly, as quickly MSU extension programs are open to everyone. So with that, there's been an increased movement for people deciding to want to raise their own freezer beef. And this could come from a variety of different reasons possibly that they want to supply beef to their own family or direct family. If it's suspected they may want to sell to other family members, friends, neighbors, people also like the peace of mind knowing where their food comes from, knowing how the animal was raised, what it was fed. People are also becoming increasingly interested in being self-sustaining or raising their own food which would be another option for raising freezer beef. People are also interested in freezer beef because of the idea that they can raise what they consider high quality where they think that the beef that they are raising is a better option than what they can buy from the store. And for some, it may be that they think they can raise the beef more cost-effectively than if they were to be purchasing beef from say a local supermarket or a food service market. So if you've decided you wanna raise your own freezer beef, there's a few things you need to consider. One of those being, where are you gonna buy your cattle from? Who are you gonna buy those cattle from? When you consider the facilities that you have at your disposal, the land, are you gonna be raising these cattle in a feed lot setting, a pen setting in a barn shed? Are you gonna have them on pasture? So there's just some things I need to consider. You have to consider what feed resources you have or where you can get feed from and will the animals have access to clean fresh water at all times? You also need to consider how are these animals going to get to your operation? And then also when it's time for harvesting these animals, how are you gonna transport those animals to the small meat processor? Another consideration would be if any of your animals become sick. Do you have a veterinarian that you have a close relationship with? And maybe one of the most important considerations you need to think about is when will this animal be ready for harvest? And that's become an increasingly more important thing to consider nowadays, especially since the COVID pandemic, it's been difficult to schedule appointments at some of the small processors. Some of them are booked months to maybe a year out so it's important to consider the timing that you will be harvesting your animal to produce freezer beef. And ultimately you're gonna have to ask yourself was the cost of raising this beef worth it to me? So for starters, let's talk about dressing percentage and carcass yield. How much do you, how much weight or poundage of beef should you expect to receive once you have your animal harvested from the live animal that you took there? So from the live steer, we can expect to get about 55 to 65% dress on this. This means of that carcass weight divided by the live weight, we will get a dressing percentage, meaning 55% or 65% for a heavily muscled steer, will end up on that carcass. And so that includes the removal of the hide, the digestive tract, all the digests, the head, the hooves. So we're left with the carcass that's primarily muscle, fat and bone. At the processor, they're gonna cut that up into retail cuts for you, into steaks into roasts, process that into hamburger and ultra. And from that carcass, we're only going to see about a 60 to 73% real retail yield. And that's gonna come up to a grand total from that live animal, from that live steer, you're only gonna get about 33 to 47% of that weight back in retail beef cuts or boneless retail cuts, meaning you lost all the bone, what's left is muscle and fat. So you're losing extra weight that had a fat trim. And like I said, all the digestive track, et cetera. So another thing that I want to cover is when we're talking about nutrition is how are nutrients prioritized for the animal to grow? Meaning where is energy going? How is it being used? And our hierarchy of nutrient use is ordered first from maintenance. So we have to maintain the daily processes of the animal to live. Next, energy will be used for development and growth and then if the animal was lactating or reproducing, but in this case, we're raising them for beef so if it's a steer, we don't have to worry about those. And the last hierarchy would be for fat deposition. So energy would be used last for fattening. So when we think about maintenance, our energy is gonna first go to our nervous system, second to the skeletal system and to our internal organs. So we can kind of think about this as maintaining the animal to just live every day. Then we have skeletal muscle growth, and then lastly will be energy that is used for fattening of that animal. So as the animal's, growing from the calf say to your finished steer that's ready for harvest, as that animal's increasing in weight. What we see is a constant accumulation of protein or muscle but then we also see that as that animal's growing, they're typically eating a little bit more they have more energy intake and they're able to start depositing more fat. They have more energy for to store as fat on that carcass. So as we're thinking about how are we going to feed this animal, we have a couple of options. Many people are going to think immediately we have grass fed beef or grain fed. So let's discuss those a little bit further. So depending on what type of diet we want to feed, whether it's a forage based diets, pasture, grass, or hay compared to a grain-based diet that you typically see in a feed lot or finishing type ration, that's ultimately gonna affect them on the energy that can be produced from that diet. So grain-based diets, they're going to have a greater digestability when they're consumed compared to forage based diets meaning that they're going to produce more energy. And as depending on the type of diet that we are offering these animals, the rumen microbial community, or the microbes that are in the digestive tract of that animal, are gonna adapt and change so that they can digest or break down the different feed stuffs that the animal is consuming so it can produce energy. So in a grain based diet, those rumen microbes will be amiolytic and they would be able to break down starch whereas on a forage based diet, we see more cellulolytic bacteria that are designed to break down cellulose or our fiber sources. So these bacteria, what they do is they break down these molecules into smaller energy molecules. So here we have glucose molecules that are being broken down even further into short chain volatile fatty acids that the animals are able to use as energy. And they have different amount of carbons which affects the amount of energy that they ultimately produce. And what we see is on a forage based diet, we have a greater percentage of acetate being produced compared to on a grain-based diet where we have a greater percentage of propionate produced. Propionate is a more energy dense and we also have a greater concentration of volatile fatty acids being produced on that grain based diet because of that increased digestibility. Therefore on the grain-based diet, we're getting more energy compared to forage based diet. So let's quickly look at a few feed stuffs, the nutrient composition of a few feedstuffs here. I have total digestible nutrients, which is an indicator of energy of that feed, as well as the net energy for maintenance and gain protein percentage and neutral detergent, fiber percentage indicator of fiber. And these are a few different feed stuffs that you may possibly be considering to feed to your animal. So you'll notice here on top, we have a few different grains. Cracked corn is Distiller's grain or soybean meal are all relatively high in their energy values compared to more fibrous feeds of hay or pasture. Likewise, we also have feeds that specialize in delivering proteins, such as soybean meal. Whereas you can see on our forage based diets we have greater amount of fiber in there. So if we're trying to add fiber, or trying to slow our rate of gain for our animals, we could feed more fiber sources such as corn silage or these animals could be consuming hay of sorts. So as we're thinking about the energy demands of the animal on a daily basis, as the animal's growing or the live weight's increasing, the maintenance energy demands of that animal are also gonna increase which you can see in the purple bars here. Likewise, to achieve a desirable average daily gain for those animals, we're also going to see an increase in the net energy required for growth. And if we want the animal to have an even greater average daily gain, say 4.4 pounds compared to 2.2 pounds, they need to be consuming a greater amount of energy on a daily basis. Similarly, for protein, you can see, it's not quite the same graph, these animals here will typically have a greater protein requirement, a daily protein requirement from say 450 to 750 pounds but then it kind of plateaus. One thing I like to think about in this is how much is the animal eating or what percentage of protein needs to be in the diet? So these green bars represent the dry matter intake of the animal, as that animal's growing or increasing in weight, they're able to consume more dry matter intake or more feed. So because of that, when the animal's small or you're feeding a calf they require a greater percentage of protein in their diet on a percentage basis because they're not eating as much. So you'll see that it gradually declines as those animals are increasing weight and eat continuing or starting to eat more feed. So here, I wanna take a second to talk about growth curves. When we think about animals growing, growth curves are typically sigmoidal or S shape, meaning that we typically have a rapid rate of gain early on in life before animals start to plateau as they start to reach a mature weight. And there's a couple of different factors that can influence the shape or position of a growth curve. In this figure, here we have the influence of sex. So we have a heifer compared to a bull, and you can see here that the bull has a much greater mature weight. So we shifted this growth curve upwards here. We can also see differences in growth curves depending on breed of animals. So if we have larger animals or continental type breeds compared to your English breeds, they'll say, Limousine Sharlay versus Burford or Angus or Shorthorn, they may have differences in growth curves. They may reach a mature weight and begin to fatten or grow, reach that plateau growth at a earlier age. Likewise, diet or energy density of the diet can also affect growth. So here we have an example of a high energy diet and a medium level energy diet. And you can see that we have a greater amount of lean being accumulated or muscle on the high energy diet compared to a medium level energy diet, likewise same thing for fat on a high energy diet, we have more fat deposition on the high energy diet compared to a medium level energy diet with similar levels for bone growth and development. So with more energy in our diet, we're able to meet those requirements for growth and also meet, spend more energy towards fattening on that animal. So, one thing I want you to think about is not all gain is created equal. So here's some data from Coleman and others. And what they show here is we have our daily gain, daily weight gain on the vertical axis and they raised cattle on growing cattle or calves on a growing diet, which was a sorghum silage based diet. So more of a fibrous diet for lower lesser average daily gain, take a little bit more time. So for these cattle, they had a dressing percentage of 58%. So on the live weight daily gain, they were just under 600 grams per day. For empty body weight, they only received 68% of that daily gain meaning that for empty body weight, this includes the removal of all the digesta and the urine. So a large proportion of that weight that the animal's gaining on a daily basis was not really going to stay with that animal for the carcass. When we move to the carcass, only 39% of that daily gain stays with that carcass. Meaning that a lot of the daily gain for these animals was associated with the digestive track in parts that are gonna be lost once the animal's harvested. So as these animals were transitioned to a finishing diet and fed a grain-based diet for 105 days, they saw that these cattle had a greater dressing percentage at 64%. And one thing that they noticed is that on an empty body weight basis, they exceeded the live weight daily weight gain. And this is because from the silage based diet to a grain-based diet, the digestive tract can actually shrink. You have on our forage based diet, you have very bulky feeds, and it takes a lot of energy to maintain that digestive tract whereas on a grain-based diet, it can shrink up, you don't have that bulky fill and so more energy can be used for muscle growth and fattening instead of maintaining the digestive tract for instance. And this resulted in a much greater proportion of the daily gain staying with the carcass, and then also staying with the total lean produced from those animals. So we see that on forage based diets, we have increased feed intake from these animals which is gonna result in a greater gut fill, a greater gastrointestinal tract weight. And this is ultimately gonna decrease the dressing percentage of these animals, meaning that you're gonna get less beef back after you have that animal harvested. Additionally, on these forage-based diets, these animals had a lesser feed efficiency. So on the growing period, they required 19 and a half pounds of feed for one a pound of gain. Whereas on the grain-based finishing diet, they required only eight pounds of feed for one pound of gain. So almost that's twice the efficiency rate there. So quickly, I wanna talk about a few different examples of research between grain fed and grass fed beef. Here, we have some research that was conducted at Ohio state university, ST standing for stocker animals and FL standing for feedlot animals. For our stocker animals, they were weaned at seven months of age, allowed to graze full pasture and offered hay during the winter and then they were allowed to graze spring and summer pasture until they were about 16 months of age. For the feedlot calves, they were also weaned at seven months of age but they were placed into a feedlot and fed a finishing ration until they achieved half an inch of back fat. So the results from this, we saw that, for the feedlot cattle, they had a greater average daily gain from seven and 10 months of age and also a greater average daily gain from 10 months of age until the time of harvest compared to the stocker cattle or the cattle that are consuming a forge based diet. This resulted in a greater final weight and they were able to do this in fewer days on feed. Here are the carcass characteristics from that study. Like I said, the feedlot cattle fed cattle had a greater final weight. This translated to a greater hot carcass weight. And partially because those animals had a greater dressing percentage compared to the animals that were consuming pasture or the forage based diet they had would have had a greater digestive tract weight that's not gonna stay with that carcass. So they had a lower dressing percentage. Cattle that were fed in the feedlot, had greater rib-eye area or which is an indicator of muscle. They also had a greater amount of fat deposition as back fat or also internal fat and additionally as intramuscular fat or marbling. And that is the fat flecks that you can see within the steak here. So in this study, the cattle that were fed in the stocker system or on pasture would have had enough marbling for a low choice. But the cattle that were fed in the feedlot would have had enough marbling to achieve high choice. And marbling is gonna influence the eating quality of that beef, it's gonna add more flavor and allow that steak to be juicy when you're consuming it. Some other nutritional management strategies you might want to consider are backgrounding or growing diets. These are diets that are lower in energy and typically comprised of a 50 to 70% grain and 30 to 50% fiber. So these diets are designed to achieve lean growth instead of excessive fat deposition. This means that they're gonna have, those cattle are gonna have a moderate average daily gain and this will hopefully reduce your feed cost of gain. And grazing stocker systems act similarly in this scenario but they're designed for cattle that would be placed on pasture. Another option that you may wanna consider is limit feeding grain. And here's a study that compares limit feeding grain versus a forage based diet. So in this study compared Ad-libitum intake which is free choice or a hundred percent intake, all they can eat concentrate in forage based diet compared to 70% intake of a concentrate based diet. So here we have ad libitum, or all they can eat on a grain-based diet, we have a restriction at 70% of intake on the grain based diet. We have all they can eat on a forage based diet. So because we're restricting, obviously they're eating less so they have a lesser dry matter intake compared to the ad libitum treatments. One thing that you'll notice is that on the ad-lib concentrate based diet those animals had a much greater average daily gain. They're consuming a lot more feed, therefore they're consuming a lot more energy that can be used for growth. In this study, they were shooting for a similar average daily gain between the restricted concentrate diet and forage based diet. But one thing you'll notice is that on the restricted concentrate based diet, those animals were more feed efficient meaning that they produce more gain relative to the amount feed that they had to consume to produce that gain compared to the forage based diet. And obviously on the Ad libitum concentrate treatment or cattle they had the, they were the most feed efficient. So in the scenario, we were able to improve feed efficiency by restricting the amount of corn. This ultimately extended the days on feed that those cattle required. So here it looks at, look we're looking at their carcass characteristics. No difference in carcass weight between these animals no differences in our ribeye area muscling when these animals were harvested however you'll see that on the concentrate based diet more energy was available to be used towards fattening. And likewise, while it was used for back fat, it could also be used for marbling deposition as well to improve the quality of those animals. Therefore, we see that the amount of fat that was gained on a daily basis was different or greater for the animals that able to consume all the concentrate they wanted versus a restricted or a forage based diet. And additionally, more energy was available for the concentrate restricted cattle to deposit more protein or muscle compared to the forage based diet as well. So many people ask how long do I need to feed these animals? How long do they need to be on a high energy diet? So this figure here shows that as these animals are on feed, we typically see a increase in live weight and carcass weight. And we're also gonna get increase with dressing percentage. That means we have more muscle and more fat being deposited. In this figure, we have ribeye area, you can see ribeye area which is an indicator of muscling with increasing days on feed, we typically have, like, it appears to be a linear response or a linear increase in ribeye area or muscling while fat thickness or back fat thickness is increasing at a much greater rate. And if you remember from the figure I showed you earlier, as those animals are increasing in weight, they're consuming more energy, they're able to deposit more fat relative to muscle as they reach finishing weight. This figure here shows a marbling score. So as animals were on feed for about 112 days, you can see that's when these animals took a major jump in marbling deposition. So they took a big step from re, achieving a select quality grade and achieving a low choice quality grade. And part of this has to do with the amount of energy that those animals have consumed to sufficiently deposit intramuscular fat. So I just got a warning that I'm almost out of time so we're gonna wrap this up. And so, as we conclude here, you ultimately need to determine what kind of freezer beef you wanna produce. You need to determine is it going to be grass fed? You wanna produce lean beef, do you wanna produce highly marbled beef? How are you gonna market this beef if you plan on selling it? You need to schedule your harvest appointments based on the expected days required to reach your desired level of finish. So first remember that energy is gonna be used for maintenance, second growth, and then lastly, for fattening. That deposition is gonna occur at a greater rate than your protein deposition when the animal grows and fat deposition occurs in the order of internal being your visceral fat and then seam fat which is intermuscular fat, subcutaneous fat or your back or outer fat. And then lastly, the important fat or intramuscular fat known as marbling. Also remember that not all weight gain is created equal, forage based diets are gonna increase the gastro intestinal track weight, the gut fill and the maintenance energy maintenance requirements to maintain that gut. So switching cattle from a forage, or growing based diet to a high energy diet for 120, a hundred to 120 days prior to harvest should cause compensatory gain and allow for adequate fat deposition of cattle. And then we also talked about a few different nutritional management strategies that you can use to modify average daily gain and the carcass composition of cattle. So with additional time, backgrounding or limit feeding may become options for you to control cost of gain and improve the feed efficiency of your cattle. So with that, thank you for attending and I'd be happy to take any questions at this time. And if I'm not able to answer your questions now, or you have additional questions, feel free to contact me. - Thank you very much, Dr. Jaborek for this presentation. I think we only got one question and I think for the sake of time, I have the email for the person that asked that question, so we're going to ask you to respond directly to that person. But in the meantime, I just posted a link and we ask you to please complete that survey for this session. We wanna know your opinion, we wanna know if you learned something and if we can do something better, we wanna know that too. So please, please complete that survey. And for, if you joined this meeting, but you were you were wanted to attend the next section, we are gonna end this meeting right now and.