Farmer's Weekly (South Africa)
On-farm feedlot beefs up Zululand cattle business
The often hot and humid Zululand area may appear lush and bountiful to the uninitiated, but it can be a challenging environment in which to be a commercial beef farmer. One such producer, PJ Hassard, explains how he balances natural with supplied nutrition to get the best from his oxen. Lloyd Phillips reports.
Not far north-east of Hluhluwe, in KwaZulu-Natal’s (KZN) Zululand area, is an expansive and diversified farming business that has been in the Maré and Hassard families since 1919. The local climate is classified as subtropical, but visitors during February – when daytime temperatures can reach over 40˚C, the humidity level is high, and thunderstorms are frequent – could be forgiven for believing the climate is tropical.
However, the Silvasands Farm property, as named by the Hassard family, gets a reprieve in late autumn, winter and early spring when average daytime temperatures can drop to the high teens, and rainfall is generally at its lowest for the year. More commonly during this time, the days are sunny and comfortably warm, and the local natural vegetation retains some of its green colour, unlike parts of South Africa where winter’s frequent earlymorning frosts chill the grasses and other susceptible plants to shades of golden-brown.
Since 1993, Peter-John ‘PJ’ Hassard has been involved full-time in running the family’s agribusiness alongside his father, Peter. He has diligently developed a hardy Brahman x Simmentaler commercial beef herd that is now well known and respected in the province’s red meat sector. Hassard has also earned the respect of his fellow farmers, as evidenced by his election to his current positions of vice-chairperson of the KZN Red Meat Producers’ Organisation and president of the KZN Agricultural Union.
“Before the big drought of 2015 and 2016, I was running about 1 200 breeding cows,” he says. “The drought was so bad that I had to reduce my cow herd to 850 head. Since the drought ended in the summer of 2016/2017, I’ve been gradually rebuilding the herd. My breeding cows now number around 1 000 and continue to increase.”
Hassard uses a two-breed rotational cross, or criss-cross, breeding system in his commercial beef herd. He puts purebred Simmentaler
( Bos taurus) bulls to cover his Brahman-type cows and replacement heifers, and purebred Brahman ( B. indicus) bulls to cover his Simmentalertype breeding female animals. One of the key advantages of this system is that the resulting calves benefit from heterosis, or hybrid vigour, a natural phenomenon where one or more traits of a crossbred offspring are superior to those of its purebred parents.
In the case of his cattle, Hassard explains that two key characteristics of the Simmentaler breed are that it is dual-purpose, with the cows producing good milk for their calves which means the weaners are beefy, and it is a larger-framed breed that functions well in the Zululand area and crosses well with the Brahman, which also has a larger frame.
“It’s important that the Simmentaler bulls that I buy in are smooth-coated to help them cope with the often extreme heat and humidity of our summer months,” he says. “I typically have about 20 of these breeding bulls at a time. I buy most of them from Louis Albertse of AL-DI Simmentalers near Dundee, and from Bruce Taylor of Garrisford Simmentaler in the Underberg area.”
Hassard says that advantageous traits of the Brahman breed are the fact that it is hardy, smooth-coated, tolerant of ticks and tick-borne diseases, and adapted to converting lower-quality grazing into beef. The approximately 20 Brahman breeding bulls that are on Silvasands at any given time are mostly bought from Ting Braithwaite of Damview Brahmans near Winterton, Dawie Labuschagne of Duikershoek Brahman Stud near Wasbank, and Danie du Plessis of Broadview Brahmans in the Dundee area.
To help spread the enterprise’s cash flow through the year, Hassard has two breeding seasons. About 85% of the female animals are put to the bulls between 1 December and 1 March, with this batch calving from around October into January. The calves from these cows are weaned in June and July. The remaining 15% of the mature female animals are bred from
1 June to 31 July, and calve in March and April, with the calves being weaned in November.
If Hassard considers weaner prices at these two weaning times to be favourable, he immediately sells most of the bull weaners, and any heifer weaners that are not retained, to buyers from feedlots. If prices are unfavourable, he retains a calculated number of bull weaners for on-farm backgrounding, and then finishes these in his on-farm feedlot before selling them to an abattoir and butchery business in Hluhluwe.
In addition to this, he retains any other weaners that are over 275kg live weight, as weaners above this weight are generally unpopular with feedlots, which prefer groups of weaners to be as uniformly sized as possible for optimal profitability.
GETTING READY FOR THE VELD
“All of the bull weaners that I keep, which amount to between 100 and 150 a year, are fitted with elasticated castration rings and dehorned at the same time that they are first dipped. They’re then put onto my natural thornveld grazing, which is dominated by Panicum maximum (Guinea grass) and Themeda triandra (red grass). This grazing is supplemented with production licks that have been formulated to supply the growing oxen with any vitamins and minerals that are deficient in the grazing,” explains Hassard.
He says that in winter, when the natural veld dries down somewhat and becomes more fibrous, he uses Voermol’s Ekonolick and Super 18 licks.
In addition to providing other important vitamins and minerals, these are high in the crude protein and energy that the veld lacks at this time.
In summer, when the veld is green and has bulked up, Hassard supplements grazing with Voermol’s Supermol lick, as this contains the phosphorus and trace elements often limited in green grazing.
Because ‘free’ veld grazing is far cheaper than feeding the animals a concentrate ration from the outset, Hassard backgrounds the oxen, running all in a single herd based on which of the two breeding cow herds they came from, before placing them in the on-farm feedlot.
If he did not first grow them on natural veld for about three months to get them to the minimum 300kg live weight that he targets before putting them into the feedlot, he would need to feed them on expensive concentrate feed for a full six months.
“In early February this year, hominy chop was around R3 600/t delivered, and Voermol SB100 concentrate ration was about R4 000/t. In the feedlot, each ox eats an average of 10kg a day of a mix comprising 20% SB100 and 80% hominy chop. This adds up to a lot of money,” he says.
The oxen that are on the veld in June and July are fitted with ear implants that stimulate their growth. Oxen that are on the veld in the hot and wet summer months when tick loads are high are also fitted with ear implants and dipped every two weeks to minimise their risk of contracting tick-borne diseases that could negatively affect their health and productivity.
EASING THE VELD-TO-FEEDLOT TRANSITION
About a month before Hassard’s oxen are transferred to his feedlot, he removes all supplementary licks and replaces them with a ration of initially 2kg/animal/day of the SB100/hominy chop concentrate ration, and eventually increases this to 3kg/day. This is in addition to the veld grazing, and gradually allows the animals’ digestive systems to adapt to being fed only a full-concentrate ration once they are in the feedlot.
“Just before they’re put into the feedlot, we replace their original ear implants with a hormonefree Ralgro cattle implant that stimulates feed conversion and body mass gain. The oxen are also dipped, weighed and ear-tagged. By now their digestive systems are used to the concentrate ration, and there’s minimal stress for their transition to a full-concentrate ration.”
Silvasands Farm’s feedlot consists of three kraals capable of holding 50 oxen each. These kraals enable Hassard to separate groups if they show weight variations or if he wants to stagger his sales to maximise the prices that he can achieve for his finished animals. Typically, though, he will sell all of his finished oxen as a single group to Craig Liversage of Allan’s Abattoir and Butchery in Hluhluwe.
After three months in the on-farm feedlot, and at an average daily weight gain of 1,8kg to 2kg, Hassard’s oxen are slaughtered to yield an average carcass weight of 335kg at an average dressing out percentage of 57% to 58%.
The larger of the two oxen herds that he feedlots in a year are finished to coincide with the peak red meat demand of South Africa’s Christmas and New Year season. This demand typically drives favourable red meat prices, on which Hassard capitalises. Email PJ Hassard at peterjohn@silvasands.co.za.
IF THE CATTLE DIDN’T GRAZE VELD FOR THREE MONTHS, THEY WOULD NEED TO GET EXPENSIVE CONCENTRATE FEED FOR A FULL SIX MONTHS