Feeding veggies to steer?

[bcbeaver]

I've got a great line on all the unsaleable veggies from one of our local grocery stores. Initially I was feeding it all to my pigs but the quantities I'me getting are far to much for 3 pigs. I'm hauling home up to 400lb/day of lettuce, potatoes, beets, kale, oranges, apples, squash, avocados..... Everything available at the grocery store. Last week I decided to see if my cows would eat some of this stuff so I dumped a 50lb box of little potatoes in their trough. Sure enough they devoured them. Next was onions, I watched as one picked up an onion and after a lame attempt to chew it tried to swallow it. I was a bit concerned as he was attempting to get it down whole, eventually he spat it out which wsa good because I was thinking how the be nice do you give a cow the heimlich? Maybe a good kick in the gut? I now cut up things of cow choking size.

So I'm wondering, is all this produce god for a steer? Will it make them tasty?

[ohiosteve]

I can't tell you if it's healthy for a steer to eat oranges and avocados but I think the marketing possibilities are endless!
"100% vegetarian-fed beef" I think folks will pay a premium.

[cowmilker]

Only if they are organic vegetables.

[bcbeaver]

Last year I heard an interview on CBC, a company in the Okanagan (Sezmu) was finishing theirs with red wine so I tried it, a bottle of my finest U-brew red each per day. Those were yummy.

[Howdyjabo]

There is a choking issue with some of them(round ones)- like you saw
You can limit the possibilities of choking by feeding at ground level and making sure they aren't excited when you give them the round vegs/fruits(they choke if they try to eat them fast).
It might be worth sending them thru a wood chipper just to be safe.
Be careful of sweet potatoes- broken or bruised skin grows a toxin that will kill them with very little exposure.The other fruits and veggies that might cause problems can be diluted by making sure you feed them as a small part of the diet. Do a search on avacado pits, seems like I read some where there could be an issue with them.
Get all the scraps too(leaves,tops,roots ect), they actually have the most nutrients.

Keep in mind that most fruits and vegetables are only 10-20%DM so you are hauling around alot of water and not much feed. It would take around 80-90 lbs of fresh veg to equal 10 lbs of hay or pellets.

[bcbeaver]

I realize that it is mostly water, they still have about 11 ac to graze. Between them they are getting a couple hundred pounds of veggies per day, I don't feed them until the evening so I figure they are probably eating grass all day and getting the veggies for desert. I spend a bit of time on my tailgate wielding a knife to chop the veggies into smaller pieces, I also hack open watermelons etc. as they didn't realize they were food at first.

Thanks for the info on the sweet potatoes, that would suck. The pigs have eaten lots of them with no problems so I'll keep the sweet potatoes for them.

[chippie]

be careful with the onions. they can be poisonous to cattle.

http://cal.vet.upenn.edu/projects/poiso ... ponion.htm

I'm curious. How long does it take to chop up several hundred pounds of veggies by hand?

[bcbeaver]

Good to know about onions. I guess they will become dirt, the pigs don't eat them. Probably because they are inundated by piles of stuff they prefer.

The most I've spent chopping is about 15 minutes. That was because of a large box of big potatoes. I don't have to chop beet tops, cabbage, lettuce, radishes, bok choy, bean sprouts, beans, peas.... Usually the melons will smash open if I slam them into the feeder but occasionally I've got to cut them.

[shaz]

If you have free groceries then why not get more pigs?

[bcbeaver]

I've been recently offered bread from the store that has been giving my veggies/ In past years I've given bread to my pigs but they are in the freezer right now. Is it OK to feed bread to cattle?

[dun]

Yes, gradually

[colleen]

Cabbage turnips onions and mustard are poisonous.

[LRTX1]

Cabbage turnips onions and mustard are poisonous.

Lots of folks plant turnips with their rye and graze cattle on them.

[sim.-ang.king]

Cabbage turnips onions and mustard are poisonous.

Lots of folks plant turnips with their rye and graze cattle on them.

Guess my cows have iron stomachs!

[colleen]

All our cows were eating this flower/weed. One cow had a serious reaction and the others it didn't bother at all. May be the same with certain vegetables. I just googled vegetables poisonous to cattle and those came up on some agriculture site. It something to keep in mind, I guess. I have a garden that I plant in all those mineral tubs we pile up. After the plants died I was going to throw them over the fence. I looked up plants poisonous to cattle and a lot of the plants came up as dangerous. But growing up we gave everything that was in our garden to the horses and cows. Never had a problem. I can't get our cows to eat anything like vegetables or melons. I have given them watermelon, apples etc and they won't touch them!!