Beef Unit

The beef unit at Harper Adams is based on finishing Continental cross Holstein bull and heifer calves and Holstein bulls from the college's 200 cow dairy herd. Weaned suckled calves are also purchased for 'yard finishing' and approximately 100 cattle per year are finished. The cattle are reared on either cereal or silage beef systems. The last batch of Continental x Holstein and Holstein bulls reared on the cereal beef system recorded overall daily live weight gains of 1.3 kg to slaughter at 386 and 379 days old weighing 548kg (304kg carcase wt) and 533kg (280kg carcase wt) respectively.

Both dairy and suckler bred cattle have also been finished on silage (whole crop or maize) based systems. A group of ¾ bred Limousin suckled steers have recently been finished in a Maize Growers Association funded trial. They were fed a range of diets based on either fermented whole crop or processed urea treated whole crop (Alkalage) through to slaughter at 500kg. Full details are available in the College Farm Information Room.

The beef unit provides opportunities for trial work to be carried out with calves and finishing cattle on projects for commercial organizations and offers a resource for education and demonstration activities. Within the unit is a range of stock types so students can for example see at first hand the difference in performance between bulls and heifers and the difference in conformation between Holstein and Continental bred cattle. All of the cattle, including calves, are assigned to research projects which are carried out by up to four final year Degree students. The student takes responsibility under the guidance of College Technicians for recording data such as live weight, wither height and feed intakes. Trials involving finishing cattle will involve collation of data from the abattoir on carcass grade and killing out percent. The cattle are weighed every 21 days and are used for beef production tutorial practicals. The facility is also available for short course teaching and a series of training sessions have been successfully completed on Cattle Handling for the Health and Safety Executive with 'in-class' theory being demonstrated with 'hands-on' experience in the beef unit.

Some of the trials carried out at Harper Adams over the last few years include:

• Effect of high versus low milk replacer feeding levels on the health and performance of artificially reared beef calves
• Whole crop for finishing beef cattle
• Evaluation of yeast cultures and plant extracts as 'natural' performance enhancers for beef cattle
• Comparison of High (top 1% of breed) and Average Beef Value Belgian Blue bulls