A winter grazing experiment was conducted to evaluate the performance of bred 2-year old second-calf heifers grazing stockpiled forage at two stocking rates and two levels of supplementation during winter. Two 30- acre blocks containing \u27Fawn\u27 endophyte-free tall fescuered clover were each divided into four pastures of 6.25 or 8.75 acres. Hay was harvested from the pastures in June and August of 2003 and N applied at 40 lb/acre to initiate stockpiling in August. On October 22, 2003, twenty-four Angus-Simmental two-year old heifers, pregnant with their second calf, were allotted by weight and body condition score (BCS) to strip-graze for 147 d at 0.48 or 0.34 cow/acre and eight similar second-calf heifers were allotted to two drylots and fed tall fescue-red clover hay. Corn gluten feed was fed to maintain a mean BCS of 5 or 4.33 (9-point scale) for the high and low supplementation levels, respectively, or when weather prevented grazing. Mean initial forage yield was 3188 lb/acre and decreased 12.2 lb/acre/d in grazed areas of the pasture over 147 d. Mean seasonal concentrations of CP and IVDMD were greater (P \u3c 0.05) in hay than stockpiled forage, while the concentration of ADF was greater (P \u3c 0.05) in stockpiled forage. At the conclusion of winter feeding, animals grazing at the low stocking rate had greater (P \u3c 0.1) BW than those grazing at the high stocking rate, and the BCS of grazing animals was 0.42 lower (P \u3c 0.05) than animals maintained in the drylot. Animals in the drylot were fed 5944 lb/hd of hay. Mean amounts of corn gluten feed fed was 189.6, 19.1, 278.5, 16.9, and 5.2 lb DM/hd for the high stocking rate-high supplementation, high stocking rate-low supplementation, low stocking rate-high supplementation, low stocking rate-low supplementation, and drylot treatments, respectively, but did not significantly differ (P \u3e 0.1)
