Why do you buy cake?

I don't live in the Nebraska sandhills but I can see them from here and I've always wondered why you buy cake. Doesn't it cost way more than alfalfa? Wouldn't it make sense to feed 20% protein alfalfa for half or maybe even a third the cost of cake?

I can see feeding cake if you are still grazing dormant grass but once you start feeding meadow hay why don't you supplement with alfalfa? Maybe some of you do, I don't know.

Big Swede said:

Why do you buy cake?

I don't live in the Nebraska sandhills but I can see them from here and I've always wondered why you buy cake. Doesn't it cost way more than alfalfa? Wouldn't it make sense to feed 20% protein alfalfa for half or maybe even a third the cost of cake?

I can see feeding cake if you are still grazing dormant grass but once you start feeding meadow hay why don't you supplement with alfalfa? Maybe some of you do, I don't know.

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I guess I buy cake for the same reason I calve in the winter, put up hay, and still ride horses. It is long-standing tradition. What little non-traditional spirit I have did allow me to stray away from the Hereford breed. :roll: :wink:

Seriously, it is a lot easier to haul in cake and feed it than it is to use alfalfa. It would sure be over a hundred dollars per ton for alfalfa delivered in, so if cake can be bought for under two hundred dollars per ton, it would seem to be the better bargain. If I buy hay, meadow hay gives me more bang for the buck than does alfalfa. A ton of meadow hay goes a lot farther in filling up a hungry cow than a ton of alfalfa does. As far as using alfalfa for supplement, my limited experience has shown more scour problems in the calves when I have used it. Another reason I cake is that a cow doesn't have to quite get all the hay they can eat if they are being supplemented with cake. Besides, feed salesmen can be pretty persuasive.

What is the cake made out of? Where does the protein come out at and how small of an auger is on your dispenser? Does the cake bridge in the bin? I had all those burning curiosity question beating around my hard drive. Thanks in advance I really enjoy visiting your ranch through your photography.

The reason we buy cake is that feed stores don't give it away. :wink: This is the first winter we haven't caked in a long time. We were fortunate enough to put up a lot of hay especially oat hay and we fed a lot of that the last couple months.

The reason why we cake is because usually we end up feeding carry over hay that is two, three years old or older. Supplementing alfalfa hay for cake is an option but a semi load of cake lasts longer than a semi load of hay.

Per we put our cake on a cement floor of our Quancet. We load it with a skid steer from the side of our pickup (the caker is on a hinge and swivels over to the side of the pickup.) Our caker doesn't have an auger it has an apron system.

have a cold one

lazy ace

Well I've always been told I'm a bit different. :shock: Maybe we do different things for the same reasons, or the same things for different reasons? :wink:

I don't usually feed cake, ear corn, or lick tubs to the cow herd for maintenance purposes. Since I don't calve in winter my Herefords (and the black cows!) can rough it through winter pretty well on dormant native pasture and mediocre quality old hay. I keep mineral out year round for the cows and let them decide to eat it or not.

By the time I start calving in about a month, the grass should be starting to green up. I might get some mag cake then to get some magnesium into the cows as insurance against grass tetany. Also helps as a daily check to get those cows lined up for easy inspection of any impending problems that might come up.

In summary, I'm not saying feeding cake is right or wrong. Do what works for you in your own operation. If you can honestly pencil it out and make it work for you, what anyone else thinks doesn't matter.

But Soapweed, aren't you buying cake for the protein? If cake costs $200 and alfalfa costs $100 and you are getting the same amount of protein in both of those tons purchased, you could buy 2 tons of hay for the same dollars as 1 ton of cake. Or is my math wrong?

If you feed 3 pounds of cake per head per day, a bale of alfalfa would supplement 500 cows their protein requirement along with meadow hay.

I have always wished I had a neighbor across the fence with an abundant supply of grass hay or meadow hay. That way we could trade hay for each others needs. In my case, I way overfeed protein because I have so much good alfalfa and my neighbor would need some alfalfa to supplement his poorer quality hay. With the price of freight these days hauling hay very far back and forth would be cost prohibitive.

I'm not trying to run your outfit, it's just something I have always wondered about.

It would take a pretty good spreader to spread 1 bale of hay for 500 cows.

Would a couple of you guys that feed cake please put a picture of the rig you use to spread it.Thanks!Not fimiliar with cake.

You could feed them 2 bales every other day then or 3 bales every third day. There are lots of options when supplementing protein to cattle.

Big Swede, I agree with you. I'm no expert at supplementing, but alfalfa has always seemed like the best thing to me. I only roll it out every other day. I've always felt like the more actual matter there is, the more evenly it gets consumed. A cow can eat 1 or 2 pounds of cake pretty awful fast and then move on to her timid friends' portion. If they have to eat 5 or 10 pounds of hay, it's going to take them substantially longer and I believe that the timid cows get a much fairer shot at getting all of their portion that way. Plus, it seems to me to that those 10 pounds would go farther towards their "filler" requirements.

As far as the scours go, I've never supplemented cows at the same time of year as when they're calving. I do calve on graze-out wheat, though, and can tell you that there is "scours" all over the place. It has never been a problem and I think that it is stricly a "nutritional" thing vs. an actual bacterial scours.

Alfalfa is readily available in my area, though, and I would suppose that would make a big difference. I've only had to give $60 a ton for it. I don't buy a lot, so, like I said, I'm no expert.

We don't buy cake out here unless it's chocolate! Seriously though, we just don't have the option to ship it that far. We either run them on winter range and they earn their way alone or we feed hay and supplement with tubs of protien or blocks. I have heard of some of the previous generations talking about feeding cake out of the saddle bags on tough winters. We put up all the hay we can including meadow and grass hay. Good alfalfa is getting pretty high price wise, and a lot goes to the horse folks if it's put up right. We bought hay at $100 to $130 a ton last year and that sure hurts the bottom line. (Although it is sure nice for the folks raising hay!) But poor, skinny cattle are a sure fire way to become an ex-rancher. I keep wishin' they'd install a brewery or ethanol plant next to me so i could feed thier by products. But since we have the population of under 300 i think i'd best keep feeding hay! :wink:

Blkbuckaroo said:

Would a couple of you guys that feed cake please put a picture of the rig you use to spread it.Thanks!Not fimiliar with cake.

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Blkbuckaroo, I don't have any way of posting a pic of my scoop shovel and 5 gal buckets! :wink:

Seriously, IMO, if I were feeding cake every winter to a lot of cows a cake feeder and overhead bin would be a worthwhile investment. For you guys who do have a cake feeder, is belt conveyor better than auger?

The pickup I haul feed with has a 8' combo box on it. I can get 2 tons of cake and just leave it on the pickup. Fill buckets if feeding in bunks or if feeding on the ground just turn the pickup loose and feed out the back end counting scoops. :wink:

I had saved an article from Western Beef Producer on this very subject. For some reason, I can only find the second page of the article.

That page contains a graph on "Cost per pound of protein.

Table 2 shows per-pound price comparison of actual NATURAL protein in supplements (interesting that all the nutritionists I know include only that portion of the NPN that can be utilized by the ruminant. For comparison purposes SUBTRACT the NPN from the natural protein source--anyway we aren't discussing NPN here ) commonly available to many Western beef producers. In this example, 17% crude protein alfalfa hay at a cost of $100/ton was the most economical protein supplement. The 29-cent cost per pound of protein was nine cents cheaper than it's closest competitor. Producers could pay up to $134 per ton for alfalfa hay before the other feeds become price competitive per pound of natural protein.

In it's enterity this was an excellent article. I have kept it for many years and I'm sad that I can't find the rest of it. I will contace WB Producer and see if I can't get the complete article.

We have many customers that have switched from cake to feeding alfalfa hay--not as a complete feed but as a supplement. On grass they feed 5 to 10 lbs. of alfalfa. The cattle also get some dry matter when feeding hay as well.

I appreciate the way Soapweed runs his outfit. In some cases, it just isn't feasible to feed hay when you are set up to feed cake.

One thing I cannot urge enough...get your hay tested :!: :!: :!:

Spending $25 on a hay test can save you thousands of dollars in supplement. In Montana, in 14 years of testing hay, we only found one sample that was too low in protein that it needed something with it. 10% protein hay is good enough for range cows. Just make sure you feed enough of it.

Granted the cost per lb of protein may be cheaper for alfalfa, but wouldn't the cost of feeding it be higher ? One guy with a pick up feeder can cake ( we call it cube down here) a lot of cows in 3 or 4 hours. If you were trying to supplement 1000 cows spread over a lot of country with alfalfa, seems to me it would be a full time job for one man and what kind of equipment cost are involved ?

Faster horses said:

Spending $25 on a hay test can save you thousands of dollars in supplement. In Montana, in 14 years of testing hay, we only found one sample that was too low in protein that it needed something with it. 10% protein hay is good enough for range cows. Just make sure you feed enough of it.

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There is such a wide variety in our hay, some clover/timothy and a lot of swamp hay including pure bull rushes, that I have never had our hay tested. Even in the same meadows from the same bale yards, there would be no "normal." Cake is easily hauled in and fed. By feeding a couple pounds of 20%, my conscience is somewhat cleared if they don't quite get a full feed of hay. They still look pretty good.

This reminds me of going to a feed-sponsored free supper one time. Of course, we had to see a slide presentation and listen to a spiel to justify the free supper. The speaker said that this certain cake would make the cows eat more grass, and another kind of cake would get them to eat even more grass. I timidly raised my hand and asked, "Do you have any cake that will make them eat less grass? Grass is what I am short of?"

The speaker smiled and answered, "You know, in all honesty, that is where giving some ear corn would be beneficial."

Just on the opinions of you fine folks, I might look in to feeding alfalfa as a supplement next year. Does anyone want to buy a slightly banged up but pretty good overhead cake bin? :roll: :wink:

You're right efb, if your cows are out ranging in the fall or winter, caking cows makes a lot of sense to me too. They need protein to utilize the dormant grass they are eating.

I guess my original thought was when you were snowed under or when you where calving and feeding hay anyway, feeding alfalfa then would be more economical since you were feeding your meadow hay already.

In my case grazing corn stalks, feeding some alfalfa every third day gives the cattle enough protein to utilize that roughage which is very low in crude protein. I tried DDG's mixed with a lot of salt and mineral but it cost more than alfalfa too so I quit that.

Just looking for ways to winter those ol' girls as cheaply as possible but still get them through in good shape.

John SD, scoop and shovel works for me to,But i prefer carrot cake knife and fork! :lol: :lol: .Seriously i was reading what you guys are paying for hay,it's almost like thier giving hay away in your neck of the woods.It's about $150 for cow hay per ton,if you can find it!And from $200 to skys the limit on horse hay in Cali, don't enen want to tell you about alfalfa go figure right.Never seen anyone in this general area cake,does'nt mean they don't,just have'nt seen it,must be real spendy though!

Again it goes back to what works for the situation.
I have some older cows and Hfrs. wintering a couple miles away and I run over every other day and process some alfalfa bales out. I have a stack yard right there and it stretches the grazing.I also bring a couple bales in on the processor when I am coming home and feed the bulls. On the other hand I have the mature cow herd winter in the badland on the north end of the ranch 5 miles at least thru the ranch 15 miles around. Cake wouldn't even work very good because I don't see all the cows every trip up. I haul up a Canola meal and salt mixture with my mineral added and I feed this by using a cake feeder and putting it into tubs. It is about 5 times cheaper then lick tubs. I go usually twice a week .

Hey Big Muddy, how much salt were you mixing in your recipe? In my short experiemnt I was feeding so much salt to limit their intake I thought it might be unhealthy. My vet said as long as they have plenty of water it shouldn't be a problem, but it didn't look good to me.

Big Swede said:

Hey Big Muddy, how much salt were you mixing in your recipe? In my short experiemnt I was feeding so much salt to limit their intake I thought it might be unhealthy. My vet said as long as they have plenty of water it shouldn't be a problem, but it didn't look good to me.

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My mixture for a metric tonne was, 300kg salt,680 kg canola meal, and 20 kg canola oil. The oil was addded mainly because the meal was light so it held down the dust but it does add a bit off energy. Sure keeps their coats shiny.
To convert Kgs to Lbs multipy by 2.2. Your ton will end up at 2205lbs.