Soybean Hulls and excess saliva

[haymakers4]

I recently started feeding soy hull pellets to my stock cows. They are receiving about 4 lbs per cow. I have noticed with some of the cows, they seem to develop a frothy saliva while eating and/or soon after eating these hulls. A few of the cows have had a large amount of emesis containing these hulls and lots of phlegm and then continue to have frothy saliva for a while after eating them. I am also feeding orchard grass hay. We have had an extremely dry summer.The cows look and act fine and are not ill. Has anyone else had the same happen to them? Is this to be expected? Any help or suggestions would greatly be appreciated. Thank You

 

[TexasBred]

Your cattle are throwing up?? Maybe they're trying to eat them too fast. Cattle typically simply wet and swallow pelleted feed. Not a lot of chewing done. The saliva production assists in this and is a natural buffer for the rumen. Just keep an eye on them. Doesn't sound serious.

 

[redcowsrule33]

Sounds like they are "choking", or getting wads of pellets lodged in their esophagus from eating them too fast. Horses do this all the time on dry pellets but don't have the advantage of being able to regurgitate them back up like a cow could. I have seen cows do this on silage. I would suggest wetting the pellets down first until they start to break up then feed them, see if you have the same result or not.

 

[haymakers4]

Thanks for the replies. I will try wetting them before feeding to see if this helps.