Pellets or coarse feed and why

[OvertonAngus]

Do y'all prefer pellet feed or a coarse/ground feed and why for both. I've used a coarse feed for a while because it seemed like my cows had squirt issues on pellets and the coarse seemed to "stick to their ribs a little more" as some of the old farmers told me. Keep in mind I'm not running a feedlot but I know y'all are experts on the matter so I figured this was the best place to ask. Thanks in advance.

 

[dun]

Coarse feed is digested slower, most pellets are made from rpretty much dust and leavings. Some stuff only comes in a useable form as pellets, DDG, soybean meal, etc. Ours is a mixture of whole cotton seed, soybean meal pellets, and chopped corn.

 

[wbvs58]

Nutritionally there should be no difference but as Dun said they can hide a lot of pretty ordinary looking biproduct in it. It does press that biproduct into a form that may be more acceptable to the cattle and otherwise useless.
I must admit that I like to actually see what I am feeding them.
Ken

 

[TexasBred]

Do y'all prefer pellet feed or a coarse/ground feed and why for both. I've used a coarse feed for a while because it seemed like my cows had squirt issues on pellets and the coarse seemed to "stick to their ribs a little more" as some of the old farmers told me. Keep in mind I'm not running a feedlot but I know y'all are experts on the matter so I figured this was the best place to ask. Thanks in advance.

Depending on what the feed is intended for some pelleted feed will be fine as long as the crude fiber is 10% or less. This would indicate a fair amount of grain in the mix as well as higher quality grain by-products. On the list of ingredients look for "roughage products". This can be many different things (mostly worthless). Another indicator is simply price. If it's cheap it's probably pretty worthless. Like the others, I prefer a ground feed or a textured type feed where I can actually see the loose grain. I don't mind seeing a little corn in the manure. (It only looks like corn) Even on it look for low fiber content. Only exception would be if they include soyhulls as the roughage product. These are high quality roughage but also very expensive compared to the fillers.