Artificial rearing is a common practice for rearing calves from the dairy herd destined for beef production. In commercial practice calves are typically weaned from 5 to 9 weeks old. There are four criteria that can be used to determine weaning time: - age, compound feed intake, liveweight, and, milk price and quota policy. Late weaning systems are based on the theory of giving the calf the best possible start in life, but are costly with high milk intakes (Davis and Drackley, 1998). Hence emphasis is usually placed on early weaning of the calf and encouraging concentrate intake. The objective of this study was to determine the effect of weaning at either 6 or 8 weeks old on the performance dairy-bred beef calves.