calves and corn silage????

[JLSKRM]

i'm wondering what age or size of calves and i start feeding corn silage? and what is the out come of feeding corn silage to calves that are 150lbs?????  

[jrsiajdranch]

Are these beef calves?

Biggest issue is that they need a huge amount of protien at this age to get the body grwoing correctly and have adequate frame.  Yea it can be done and I have done it. Just be careful that you don't just fatten them at that age.  You need to grow'em.  Are you outa grass? 

[JLSKRM]

Corn silage to 150 pound holstein bull calves.  Planting this year was late and now with the cool summer im thinking  that my corn wont make it, but either way I was gonna make silage for the bigger steers but never tried it on 3 month olds.  They will be fully weaned and on quality starter grain before I would go corn silage.  I was thinking about feeding silage with dry disstillers and corn gluten and a little oats.  Thanks for any input advice.  

[jrsiajdranch]

I wouldn't feed DDG's to these little guys. instead use the energy in the Corn Silage and a soybean meal product for your protien source. The use of DDg's in these small calves can lead to some metabollic problems. You will be much happier to use a non Corn product for your protien source.

[Husker-J]

Do you have good quality hay?

We have fed silage to calves immideately after weaning, without any problems.   Just be sure to start them off gradually, and don't give them too much when they are still in a fast growing stage, they will do much better with more hay and less silage until they get past that stage.   We had the best luck, starting out with just enough silage to keep the hay dust down in the bunk, then gradually add more.   We don't have a scale on the feedwagon, but we stopped at about 1/3 silage.   Any more and they got big bellied.