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Feedstuffs

A bit about roughage. Animals on full-feed, the diet will usually contain about 5% to 10% roughage. Very little roughage. If it contains this minuscule amount, is it important that it is in there at all? If you look on an energy basis, do not worry about protein, concentrates are always cheaper than forages. Right now, alfalfa would cost you 7.4 cents per pound of TDN and corn 6.2. Regardless if it is barley versus grass hay, high energy feeds or concentrates are always cheaper than roughages. However, low roughage diets, diets less than 5% roughage, can lead to acidosis and liver abscesses. The 5% to 10% is very important. Depending upon on where you live in the US, some common sources, you guys know roughage sources by now, would be a legume or grass hay, corn, wheat or grass silage, by-products such as cottonseed hulls, cottonseed gin trash, soy hulls, grass seed screenings, distiller's grains and brewer's grains are very high in fiber.

Usually your grains are processed. What happens when you feed a whole grain to a ruminant, with the exception of sheep? It passes through them. Grain can be cracked, it can be ground. But to get the most bang for your buck, steam flaking is the most economical source. It may not be economical from buying it, you pay more for it but you get more out of it. What does a bushel of corn weigh on a whole grain basis? Someone said 56 pounds per bushel. If you fill a bushel basket full of corn and weight it, it’ll weight 56 pounds on average. How can you decrease the weight to 28 pounds per bushel. How does it become less dense? If you flatten it like a pancake and so you have fewer kernels that will actually fit in the bushel basket. They have done lots of steam flaking studies. Flaking at a higher density or at a lower density and they have found that cattle perform best when corn is flaked at 28 pounds per bushel. Sorghum, how much does it weigh per bushel? Sorghum is very indigestible as a whole seed, compared to corn. If you flake it a lower density, at 18 pounds and 28 pounds these would have equal digestibilities. Actually, these have a higher feeding value than corn grain or sorghum that is finely ground and why is that? The processing is important, breaking the seed coat. There is another process that is involved with steam flaking that also causes gelatinization of the starch granule. It would be heat and moisture. Steam is warm or hot and it is moist. You would also get gelatinization of the starch granule which increases digestibility in the rumen.

Look at energy sources. Most of these will be processed in some way, except whole cottonseed. But corn, sorghum in the southwest, barley you will find that in the northwest, wheat it depends upon market price, whole cottonseed in the southwest, you would find potatoes in finishing diets where? Maybe Oregon, Washington, Idaho, right? Distiller's and brewer's, if it is competitively priced with other energy sources you can use these also.

Protein. Write this in you notes because this is important. These percentages are greater than what NRC recommends. They are greater than what you would get from your tables if you divide it by intake. If you look at most finishing steers, they would need somewhere between 8% to 10% protein on a dry matter basis. If you look at what they are consuming and what they need. In industry, this is typically what you will find, 12.5% to 14.5% diets being formulated by nutritionists that work with feedlots. Usually quite a bit of this will be made up by urea. Urea is what kind of protein source, DIP or UIP? Degradable intake protein. They have found that degradable sources of protein are much better or enhance performance more than undegradable protein sources.

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