How we've handled the droughts

[Rajela]

I can live with that. Most here are grown adults and like it or not everyone has an opinion and the group is very diverse in regions and methods. Just because some question and state they would not do it your way is not saying your way is wrong. It's just your way may not.work in their operation.
Back on topic. You say you don't need minerals when you feed litter so you have my ear. Would you mind sharing the feed analysis with the breakdown of the trace minerals in it.

http://www.akey.com/ruminant/beef_brief ... cattle.pdf

 

[M5farm]

I can live with that. Most here are grown adults and like it or not everyone has an opinion and the group is very diverse in regions and methods. Just because some question and state they would not do it your way is not saying your way is wrong. It's just your way may not.work in their operation.
Back on topic. You say you don't need minerals when you feed litter so you have my ear. Would you mind sharing the feed analysis with the breakdown of the trace minerals in it.

http://www.akey.com/ruminant/beef_brief ... cattle.pdf

Thank you, good info on it. I hope I never have to feed it cause I ain't got a PhD needed to figure out the do`s and don't`s when feeding it.

 

[Kingfisher]

What we get is a fine powder, occasionally there is a chunk, but its mostly powder and smells like chocolate.[/quote]
Just out of curiousity.......why do you think it smells like " chocolate?"

 

[Kingfisher]

Alrighty then, so what are ya all eating today?

Home made Cajun food.....don't you know!

 

[branguscowgirl]

I can live with that. Most here are grown adults and like it or not everyone has an opinion and the group is very diverse in regions and methods. Just because some question and state they would not do it your way is not saying your way is wrong. It's just your way may not.work in their operation.
Back on topic. You say you don't need minerals when you feed litter so you have my ear. Would you mind sharing the feed analysis with the breakdown of the trace minerals in it.

http://www.akey.com/ruminant/beef_brief ... cattle.pdf

Great info about feeding litter! Thanks Rajela!

 

[branguscowgirl]

Alrighty then, so what are ya all eating today?

Home made Cajun food.....don't you know!

Lucky you! I am jealous, been eating salads for weeks! That chicken litter is starting to even sound good to me! :lol:

 

[cowgirl8]

You could open a container of hershey baking chocolate and a tub of good ole chicken poopie (cured feed grade). I could blind fold you and you would not be able to tell the difference. GO get some out of your pantry and smell it(chocolate not poop), that is what cured chicken litter is suppose to smell like. I find this so funny, i tell everyone, smells like chocolate. Why and how it ends up smelling that way, i dont know. We fertilize with chicken litter (not cured) and that smells like what it is, maybe worse. But when i go by the curing barn i dont hold my breath. Your choice of words in your question asking me why i 'think' it smells that way. Have you smelled it before Kingfisher?

 

[greybeard]

Don't ever let a chunk of metal go thru that hammermill. Had one on a job that was driven by two 100hp elec motors and a 1"X 3 3/4" bolt destroyed it in the blink of an eye. Sounded like a bomb went off.

 

[cowgirl8]

Don't ever let a chunk of metal go thru that hammermill. Had one on a job that was driven by two 100hp elec motors and a 1"X 3 3/4" bolt destroyed it in the blink of an eye. Sounded like a bomb went off.

I can imagine, we worried about it because he saw metal in some of they hay. We ran the hay thought the tub grinder and hoped that any metal would find it way somewhere else. Not sure what we'll do with that machine. The switchgrass field was sold this year. It was our emergency field that the Indian Nation granted my husband only. They found him honest and did what he said he promised to do. Apparently they had leased the grass out to people who said they'd shred areas that couldnt be cut for hay and didnt, but my husband did. We got the hay back in the 2005 drought too. This hay is the only thing that kept us from having to sell out. Now its gone so, we need to come up with a alternate plan just in case we get another year with a hay shortage. We had 2 years of hay baled last year, but the winter was harder than usual and we fed a lot of it up. I think he said he's got 200 bales left. SO, we hope for a good hay year.

 

[TexasBred]

I can live with that. Most here are grown adults and like it or not everyone has an opinion and the group is very diverse in regions and methods. Just because some question and state they would not do it your way is not saying your way is wrong. It's just your way may not.work in their operation.
Back on topic. You say you don't need minerals when you feed litter so you have my ear. Would you mind sharing the feed analysis with the breakdown of the trace minerals in it.

http://www.akey.com/ruminant/beef_brief ... cattle.pdf

Raj noone was questioning the value of chicken liter. Only whether it was the smart thing to do. It does have potential to cause problems and a few were pointed out in the link you posted. There will be some minerals present in it, mostly residue from the wasted feed and pass through from the chickens themselves. Being an unknown factor I'd always recommend keeping out a high quality free choice loose mineral. And cowgirl8, the fly control mineral works very well. Nothing nor any combination of things will get rid of all the flies but it will at least limit them. It helps if your neighbors also make some effort to control flies on their animals. Wish you could have had your hay tested. It would have given you a better idea of exactly what you had and how much it actually needed to be supplemented. (something to think about next time). Not all long course forage is low quality. I fed maize (milo) stalks this year. Probed about a dozen bales, mixed the sample and sent it to DairyOne Lab in New York. Amazingly it tested over 12% crude protein. Only supplement I fed was what I wanted to give them for a treat occasionally.

 

[TexasBred]

Don't ever let a chunk of metal go thru that hammermill. Had one on a job that was driven by two 100hp elec motors and a 1"X 3 3/4" bolt destroyed it in the blink of an eye. Sounded like a bomb went off.

GB when I was a kid my dad and I took a pickup load of ear corn to the feed mill. Old man was shoveling it out of the truck into the hammer mill and seems I had left a claw hammer in the bed of the truck. It too sounded like a bomb when it hit that mill. Guess it ground it fine enough the cows didn't get hardware disease. :lol2:

 

[TexasBred]

Alrighty then, so what are ya all eating today?

Home made Cajun food.....don't you know!

Better if the chikens have been feed "rice". ;-)

 

[Kscattle]

I've got that same feed grinder ( hammer mill), it's a bear cat brand. Mine has the swing auger to bring grain up into the mill, but they look the same. Those are good machines. I've never been around a tub grinder, do they grind a bale very fast? It's good to hear that you kept everything thru all that drought and I hope it's over, but it's very dry here now. Pray for rain

What do you do with your feed grinder? Is it something you use regularly?

I grind corn and pellets, mix in a little mineral for a ration to feed my cows every once in a while. I blend creep feed in summer months for calves. Mine does NOT grind hay very well, I've tried it several times and it plugs up behind the blower.

They make a high powered magnet for those to grab any metal before it goes in the mill. I added an extra magnet in the tank just in case.

 

[cowgirl8]

I can live with that. Most here are grown adults and like it or not everyone has an opinion and the group is very diverse in regions and methods. Just because some question and state they would not do it your way is not saying your way is wrong. It's just your way may not.work in their operation.
Back on topic. You say you don't need minerals when you feed litter so you have my ear. Would you mind sharing the feed analysis with the breakdown of the trace minerals in it.

http://www.akey.com/ruminant/beef_brief ... cattle.pdf

Raj noone was questioning the value of chicken liter. Only whether it was the smart thing to do. It does have potential to cause problems and a few were pointed out in the link you posted. There will be some minerals present in it, mostly residue from the wasted feed and pass through from the chickens themselves. Being an unknown factor I'd always recommend keeping out a high quality free choice loose mineral. And cowgirl8, the fly control mineral works very well. Nothing nor any combination of things will get rid of all the flies but it will at least limit them. It helps if your neighbors also make some effort to control flies on their animals. Wish you could have had your hay tested. It would have given you a better idea of exactly what you had and how much it actually needed to be supplemented. (something to think about next time). Not all long course forage is low quality. I fed maize (milo) stalks this year. Probed about a dozen bales, mixed the sample and sent it to DairyOne Lab in New York. Amazingly it tested over 12% crude protein. Only supplement I fed was what I wanted to give them for a treat occasionally.

Great advice......Although, i've never known anyone around here who needed to test their hay unless they are buying from an unknown source. The only person i know of is the guy at the feed store who buys his hay from out of town if he cant get it local. He says he test it, not sure if anyone wants to see proof or if he's going by what the seller says. I'm guessing if you buy your hay, maybe wanting to know how it test would be important..We have the luxury of having our own hay fields. My husband knows exactly how good the hay is because he's tended it from sprout to bale. He knows how long it set after cutting, he knows if it was rained on and whether its been fertilized. He can look at a bale and tell you if its good or poor. He also takes note of how fast the cows eat it. He does all the custom baling in our area, he's baled some really good stuff, and some really bad stuff for other people. The switch grass he baled in the drought, he could see it was tall and sticky, it had been baked in the sun standing. And although baled before it sat on the ground too long, he knew it was going to be less quality than our good hay fields. I'm going to guess that since we lost only one old cow who got stuck in a pond and kept over 200 cow with calves alive on this mixture, we did good or i guess you can even say we got lucky, thats fine with me. Unless there are obvious reason to believe our hay is low quality or our weaning weights plummet, we start losing cows to deficiencies.. In other words, if it aint broke dont fix it. But i do appreciate the advice. Maybe you should be talking with my husband. Like i've mentioned, i deal with calving issues, sick cow/calf problems, i rotate the herds, and i'm the gofer(i run to the parts store when needed)...I just want to point out that you to assure you that our cows get the best possible care.
I'd really like to move on past whether feeding litter is good or bad. Its worked really well for us and again, the cows only get it in the dead of winter and are cut off a month before they calve. We feed it along with creep to our yearling heifers in the dead of winter. But technically our cows eat hay baled off our fields from Nov to March, during that time they may get supplemented with litter, the rest of the time they eat grass. No calf we take to the sale barn ever sees chicken litter.

 

[TexasBred]

cowgirl, have friends over in ET in the dairy business. They TRY to do everything by the book and coastal hay will never test over 8-9% crude protein and it all looks great in the bale. Lime, fertilize, cut on time, no change in quality.....waiting longer will give you more bales. Only way to know for certain is a good farage test. Well worth the small amoutn charged and removes all doubts. There are a few unscrupulous hay sales folks that will get one good test and then use copies of that for every bale they sale so gotta watch out for them. (Not implying your husband is one of these guys at all) They can give everybody a black eye.

What did I do for the drought?? I sold out !!!!!!!! :cry2:

 

[cowgirl8]

cowgirl, have friends over in ET in the dairy business. They TRY to do everything by the book and coastal hay will never test over 8-9% crude protein and it all looks great in the bale. Lime, fertilize, cut on time, no change in quality.....waiting longer will give you more bales. Only way to know for certain is a good farage test. Well worth the small amoutn charged and removes all doubts. There are a few unscrupulous hay sales folks that will get one good test and then use copies of that for every bale they sale so gotta watch out for them. (Not implying your husband is one of these guys at all) They can give everybody a black eye.

What did I do for the drought?? I sold out !!!!!!!! :cry2:

Duly noted.

 

[Dave]

This whole alternate sources of feed brings up a memory. Back in college I was involved as a under graduate (grunt labor) with an experiment in raising beef steers on news print and urea. It worked. The steers actually grew on that diet. I don't believe it was economical but it worked. It took some molasses to get them to eat it. So if you had a source of recycled paper or cardboard, the means to grind it up, some non protein nitrogen (urea or composted chicken litter), and some molasses to get them to eat it........ the rumen is an amazing thing.

 

[Rajela]

I can live with that. Most here are grown adults and like it or not everyone has an opinion and the group is very diverse in regions and methods. Just because some question and state they would not do it your way is not saying your way is wrong. It's just your way may not.work in their operation.
Back on topic. You say you don't need minerals when you feed litter so you have my ear. Would you mind sharing the feed analysis with the breakdown of the trace minerals in it.

http://www.akey.com/ruminant/beef_brief ... cattle.pdf

Raj noone was questioning the value of chicken liter. Only whether it was the smart thing to do. It does have potential to cause problems and a few were pointed out in the link you posted. There will be some minerals present in it, mostly residue from the wasted feed and pass through from the chickens themselves. Being an unknown factor I'd always recommend keeping out a high quality free choice loose mineral. And cowgirl8, the fly control mineral works very well. Nothing nor any combination of things will get rid of all the flies but it will at least limit them. It helps if your neighbors also make some effort to control flies on their animals. Wish you could have had your hay tested. It would have given you a better idea of exactly what you had and how much it actually needed to be supplemented. (something to think about next time). Not all long course forage is low quality. I fed maize (milo) stalks this year. Probed about a dozen bales, mixed the sample and sent it to DairyOne Lab in New York. Amazingly it tested over 12% crude protein. Only supplement I fed was what I wanted to give them for a treat occasionally.

M5farm asked about the minerals so I grabbed a link from the net and posted it.
I see where you sold out hmmm. A lot of folks make there living on cattle and selling out might not be an option for all.
Cowgirl8 and her husband probably figured selling 200 head at pennies on the dollar and then buying back at a higher price was not an option that they were ready to entertain.

PS
Why do you always have to try and show that everyone else is wrong and your right. Are you trying to convenience us or yourself. :2cents:

 

[TexasBred]

cowgirl, have friends over in ET in the dairy business. They TRY to do everything by the book and coastal hay will never test over 8-9% crude protein and it all looks great in the bale. Lime, fertilize, cut on time, no change in quality.....waiting longer will give you more bales. Only way to know for certain is a good farage test. Well worth the small amoutn charged and removes all doubts. There are a few unscrupulous hay sales folks that will get one good test and then use copies of that for every bale they sale so gotta watch out for them. (Not implying your husband is one of these guys at all) They can give everybody a black eye.

What did I do for the drought?? I sold out !!!!!!!! :cry2:

Duly noted.

That was three years ago. Still got your "Chicken Ranch"???

 

[TexasBred]

I see where you sold out hmmm. A lot of folks make there living on cattle and selling out might not be an option for all.
Cowgirl8 and her husband probably figured selling 200 head at pennies on the dollar and then buying back at a higher price was not an option that they were ready to entertain.

PS
Why do you always have to try and show that everyone else is wrong and your right. Are you trying to convenience us or yourself. :2cents:

Selling out is always an option if you have equity. Please go back and read all the comments on this thread before you start wit your remarks. Shouldn't we all strive to be correct as often as possible as well as educate those who might be shootin' from the hip or make a comment that might be might mislead someone even if done out of ignorance? With every post I make you have an opportunity to agree, disagree, or simply do nothing. The choice is yours. I seldom say to much I'm not real sure of but if necessary I too have "Google". You can then prove me wrong and we can have a beer together. :mrgreen: Loosen up a bit and enjoy the place.