Feeding Fresh Alfalfa

[Stickney94]

Ran into an issue earlier this week -- while trying to make baleage some alfalfa/grass mix got dry on me while baling (100 degrees/35 mph wind). Anyway, the driest bales deformed while wrapping them with our single bale wrapper. They would fall off the wrapper and the net result was that I have a dozen aborted, partially wrapped bales.

As a kid we put up alfalfa silage and we started feeding it right away (shoveling out of a silo). This hay is sorta silage at the moment, but will start to mold soon.

What risks will we encounter if we start to feed to some yearling fat cattle? They have been eating last years baleage for several months.

Thanks!

 

[Richnm]

Is it first cutting ?

 

[Stickney94]

Is it first cutting ?

First cutting on 2nd year alfalfa.

 

[SBMF 2015]

Are your putting it in a TMR? If so you should be ok. You can limit how much they eat. If the bales are not They may not eat it real well.
I suppose bloat is always a concern when your switching feed stuffs or feeding fresh alfalfa.
We used to feed a lot of haylage. I wouldn't worry to much.

 

[Richnm]

If it was in bloom stage that will help, the protien goes down and fiber increases. Free choice worries me with first cutting. I have a good customer that feeds high rfv 180 alflafa to his cows and hasn't had a problem . He feeds 20 pounds per head a day, mainly first cutting and his cows have been ok. He also puts a bloat block out. If it was dry that helps a lot. feeding to much is the danger.

 

[Stickney94]

Sometimes you just need some second opinions -- so thanks! I don't have a TMR, but I can feed it in stages (ie, have my kids fork feed, good exercise, builds character, haha)

Speaking of character building, my teenage daughter and I manually "wrapped" a half dozen of the failures last night. By the last one we "almost" had them looking like a machine had done it ;-)