All in one feed tubs.

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Medic24

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I know, I know,,,,,,no doubt been discussed here some where lately but I surely missed it..........

Our local feed co-op fed us 'stupid' cattlemen the other night, and tried to get us all to sign up to purchase these all-in-1 feed tubs that seem to be getting popular....or are they?

Say's it's not just a protein tub anymore, but will be used to substitute for ALL concentrates........so no more grains or other protein tubs needed.....just fresh water and fair to good hay..............I was a bit busy eatin the free (well almost free) food they were giving us to pay much attention to the speaker...that is until he mentioned that they cost us $97.00 EACH for a 250 lb tub......yow! :eek: :shock: :shock:

Does this mean I can sell my corn for biodiesel now instead of feeding my livestock?



Ummmm, not that I am to interested, but any one have any remarks about them? Good or bad? :cboy:
 
lol.. that "$776/ton" should pretty much say it all. They are selling the ease of one feed product, not the cost. For weekend and absentee producers, it may be one of the few options they have.

However, there are better options if you have the time and can feed your cows by hand.
 
Medic24":3bhbfiu4 said:
Yup, guess thats right, I prefer to feed by hand when I can,
lets me see any problems up close before they become REAL problems...... :cboy:

Guess I will stick with the home grown feed then.


Medic

On to the real question.

How was the food?
These companies usually put on a good spread when they are trying to screw you.

MD
 
You can feed Sweetlix 16% Tubs and spend about 380.00 a Ton, or Feed quality Hay, and good free choice Minerals and scatch the Tubs completely.

Even being in the Feed business, I'm going to try and feed as few a number of Tubs as possible this year.

I'll report back in March, on how we did...
 
Aahhh, had a long chat with our state livestock nutritionist today, and he seems not to be a great fan of any of the tubs really. I fed alot of Purina blocks in the past, and he really was not happy about them, as they can be eaten within a matter of hours or days, causing alot of accute intestinal problems, as they are simple a block that can be bitten with no way to force them to lick instead.

Definately NOT the "Feed in a tub" things either, as one already pointed out, they are way expensive per ton.

He suspects that the protein tubs are good for folks that don't go and hand feed or see their cattle on a daily basis.

He is all for fair or better quality hay with a good loose minerial and vitamin mix as well as feeding energy such as grains or in my case, ground corn.

Our hay tests out between 8% digestable protein on the low side, and 13% on the high side of the best rolls. So the protein is mostly covered.
 
Those Sweetlix natural protein tubs are full of chicken feathers. I don't like that concept. Several of the local Tennessee Farmers Co-ops sell a 20% all natural protein tub for less money plus the protein is all coming from grain products.
 
Medic, there's quite a bit of data available that shows if you simply feed a pound or two of ground corn (or shelled corn for that matter) to a brood cow you actually decrease the amount of energy that the cow will get because you slow the fiber digestion and lower dry matter intake. When you feed a protein supplement you actually increase fiber digestion and dry matter intake. That's what makes a protein supplement work profitable. You get your cows to eat more of a fair quality forage and do a better job digesting it. You can choose from several options to provide the protein, adding SBM to your hand feed, protein tubs, liquid feed, etc. If you have really poor hay or very short on hay you can overcome this by feeding as much as 5 to 6 lbs. of grain. This should be done incrementally and not overnight since you have to make the rumen population shift from fiber digesters to a combination of fiber and starch digesters.
 
kyblockhead":1kw4sm4w said:
Medic, there's quite a bit of data available that shows if you simply feed a pound or two of ground corn (or shelled corn for that matter) to a brood cow you actually decrease the amount of energy that the cow will get because you slow the fiber digestion and lower dry matter intake. When you feed a protein supplement you actually increase fiber digestion and dry matter intake. .

I would like to see the data you mentioned on feeding 1-2 lbs of corn. When I took ruminant nutrition (it has been more than a couple years ago) I was told that feeding corn at .1-.2% or body weight (1-2 lbs for a 1000 lb cow) actually helped fiber digestion but at levels over .3% you began to get the decreased affect from the starch digesting bacteria "crowding out" the fiber digesting bacteria.
 
One of the papers I read on the subject discussed the efficency of the rumen microbes (both fiber eaters and starch eaters) as a function of the rumen PH level which is affected by the DM vs. CP ratio. In short, maximum rumen effeciency is obtained when there is a "proper balance" (not an equal balance) of the 2 different types of microbes. Some research suggests that for forage based diets this occurs with a DM/CP ratio of about 6:1 to 8:1. If the forage ration yields lower than this ratio then additional energy (i.e grains) can be added to the ration which well result in better rumen efficency and hence better ADG. If the forage ratio is higher then CP should be added to the ration. Adding energy to a ration that already has a high DM/CP ratio results in further decreased rumen efficency and energy "substitutaion" at less than a 1:1: rate. That is, they eat less forage due to the grain substituting their energy needs, BUT, since the rumen is now less efficient their overall energy uptake is less and hence ADG can fall off.
 
We put out 200# tubs of 24/5 costs $44, works good in the winter.
 

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