Just what do they feed cattle in the feedyards?

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whitewing

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My question sort of folds into a decision making process I'm going through at the moment.

I've been planting grain sorghum and love it from the standpoint of ease of producing it. My cattle love it....my hogs, not so much.

This year I'm going to be sprigging a lot more of my place in bermuda so my available land for planting grains will be greatly reduced. Weight-wise, I can probably produce 5 or 6 times the grain per hectar with corn than I can with sorghum. Of course, for me it means a lot more work to cultivate a good corn crop and I'd need reliable rainfall. That's always a crapshoot.

Anyway, so just what goes into a decent cattle feed? I'm assuming that a significant percentage would be corn. Am I right?
 
Corn is the most reliable way to get a proper finish fast-
But......... you can get a finish with other grains/starches
We use (or past tense, I didn't finish any last year) very little corn , we don't get the ADG that others get with high levels of corn- but our cattle still finish great and yield great.

The local dairy used to grow sorghum over corn because it was more reliable here too. It needed to be cracked or ground to get full feed value, so when they switched to a TMR they switched to corn.
 
Howdyjabo":2sucawp7 said:
Corn is the most reliable way to get a proper finish fast-
But......... you can get a finish with other grains/starches
We use (or past tense, I didn't finish any last year) very little corn , we don't get the ADG that others get with high levels of corn- but our cattle still finish great and yield great.

The local dairy used to grow sorghum over corn because it was more reliable here too. It needed to be cracked or ground to get full feed value, so when they switched to a TMR they switched to corn.

We run our sorghum through a grinder and basically end up with a rough sorghum flour....we then add water and molasses. The cattle can't get enough of it....but like I said, the hogs are less impressed with it.

From the standpoint of producing sorghum, seems to me it's about 25% of the cost and only about 10% of the work to cultivate the same area with corn.
 
Whitewing I remember the pics of your growing sorghum from lasst year. Looked like it was grown in very dry weather as it hardly made a head at all. Don't know about your area but around here sorghum (milo) is much less expensive than corn to plant, is much more foregiving and you will always get a crop. Aflatoxins are also not a probelm with milo and has been a real pain in the butt with recent corn crops. The only downside is that milo sells a little cheaper than corn. BUT if you get much higher production down there at a lower cost with corn I'd go with it. I'd still run it thru the grinder mix it at a a minimum of 12 pounds per head per day along with a good roughage source, vitamins, minerals and a protein source. As it mixes add plenty of water. I wouldn't bother with the molasses.
 
TexasBred":1qhcoipv said:
Whitewing I remember the pics of your growing sorghum from lasst year. Looked like it was grown in very dry weather as it hardly made a head at all. Don't know about your area but around here sorghum (milo) is much less expensive than corn to plant, is much more foregiving and you will always get a crop. Aflatoxins are also not a probelm with milo and has been a real pain in the butt with recent corn crops. The only downside is that milo sells a little cheaper than corn. BUT if you get much higher production down there at a lower cost with corn I'd go with it. I'd still run it thru the grinder mix it at a a minimum of 12 pounds per head per day along with a good roughage source, vitamins, minerals and a protein source. As it mixes add plenty of water. I wouldn't bother with the molasses.

Thanks for the input TB!

To be fair, most of those pics were taken during the driest part of the year....some was actually second crop sorghum, and some was sorghum that we had to germinate using our irrigation system. For that reason the heads may have appeared small. Sorghum planted earlier tends to do really well in my zone.

Now, if you can, teach me about aflatoxins. ;-)
 
WW aflatoxin may not be a problem for you in Venzuela. You know how our gov't is. Gotta set standards for everything. But the limit is pretty high for corn being fed to animals held in confinement (finishing). 300 ppb I think so it shouldn't be a problem. Up here for dairy cattle it can't be over 20 ppm. It's just a microscopic mycotoxin that keeps gov't employeeing people to check for it. It doesn't even transfer to the meat in cattle fed corn high in aflatoxin, however, it does transfer to milk. A few warnings about "potential" dangers but nothing that has every truly been confirmed.
 
TB,

I've actually been in the states since mid-March and will probably be here for another three weeks or so. When I left the ranch we were using sorghum stored temporarily in open bins for our cattle feed. At the same time we were filling and sealing sorghum in those steel drums I mentioned previously. Back at the ranch, they're now getting started on removing sorghum from those drums. It'll be interesting to see what condition that sorghum is in having been stored in what I believe (and hope) are air-tight drums.

I mention this because with whatever corn we plant this year, we'll probably be going the steel drum route with it as well. Getting the grain dry enough is likely to be a challenge. I'm hoping the zero-oxygen conditions will prevent any serious problems with spoilage or toxins.
 
WW you may get some mold growth on the corn stored in drums but it won't be aflatoxin. Aflatoxin exists on the corn even before it is harvested. As I said y ou can't see it but it's probably there. Hope the drums work well for you.
 

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