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How do you feed your cows?

3

3 M L & C

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Location
Kansas
I have been reading about some studies on how to ruduce waste when feeding cows in the winter. Most say some form of a bale ring or feeder is the best. This is about the exact opisit of what happens with my cattle. Our biggest source of winter feed is forage sorgum. If you put a bale in a ring the cows pick through eat the leaves and stand on the stalk for the most part. Also how do you know how to limit the intake when using a ring. There is no way that many cows can get around one ring for one bale a day for example. If you had a bunch of rings and left them there for so much time the boss cows would always get way to much and the shy ones not enough. The studies also showed that rolling out a bale was second and a bale processor was the worst. I use a bale processor and I waste way less with it than rolling out or using bale rings. I feed it in portable bunks unless its real muddy then I just pick a new spot every day in the pasture. I also have a hydra bed so I have done all three. Maybe with different feed results would be different? I don't know wandering others oppinion.
 
i vote for the processor, it will make marginal hay more palatable and removes a lot of dust. Feeding leafy hay through them is not a good deal, but i think rings are the worst thing you can use.
 
I use bale grazing until calving and then will unroll bales for them, as the calves like to nestle in by the bales and have had some get tromped to death. it works for me and not much waste.
 
I don't believe there is a perfect system. So many things can change, weather etc. I use bale feeder trailers some. They are easy to move and if a bad storm is coming I can move them into shelter for the cows.Right now I am mixing ground feed and I wish I had some portable bunks to feed in.
One ? with your sorhum, do you use BMR sorghum seed? cattle eat it a lot better.

Mel
 
we sort 1rst & 2nd calfers into 1 bunch they get bale feeders till calving the old cows hay gets unrolled & they get moved everyday .I use bmr sorgham they eat everything .
 
We would totally agree with what you posted, 3ML&C.

Who wrote the article that you mentioned? Some people are merely
writers and don't know what they are talking about, sad to say.

Those bale rings are the WORST for wasting hay. Even two horses eating
out of them waste hay terrible.

And it's hard to manage what you can't measure and using bale rings
makes it hard to know what they are eating on a daily basis. Plus it really
is better for cows to clean up forage, as to have it available 24/7. When
cows get a 'hay belly' that seems to be why. They just stand there and tank
up. They need a time for digestion. We like to feed enough
hay that in the afternoon they can go back and pick a little. With the bale feeders, it seems
like there is competition on who can eat the most. :P
 
There were two i belive, and others that took the infro from them. One I believe was from canada where the guy said there was 0 percent waste with a bale cone. Are you kidding me? Even if you stood there and fed the cow one handful at a time there still wouldn't be 0 % waste.
 
We used bale rings for years and years and I always thought there had to be a better way. 3 years ago we bought a truck with a hydra bed and now I unroll the greatest percentage of our hay. We still have rings but they are generally in small lots or corrals where calves are.

I don't think any 1 way is perfect but some methods are definitely better than others.
 
Hire a tub grinder, mix shirt hay and good hay and feed with chuckwagon or kelly ryan in turned tractor tires.
 
We use Hydra-Bed pickups unless the snow is too deep. If so, we use front-wheel-assist tractors and processors. To my way of thinking, we get more "mileage" out of the hay by rolling it out. It seems to take less pounds of long-stemmed rolled out hay to fill up a cow than by using processed hay. In bitter cold winter weather, this difference is about thirty pounds per cow per day of long-stemmed hay versus forty pounds per cow per day of processed hay.
 
We graze grass into January,, graze swaths into Mar.April and Bale graze after that most years. The swath grazing is just like rolling out bales, we just don't roll them up first. All thee approaches basically involve working for about 2 hours per week to feed cows/weaned calves/bull battery, etc.
I know the Canadian study you are referring to and they rolleed tarps out on the ground and fed using different methods on the tarps. After they rolled the tarps and collected all the leftovers. One of the problems with processors was they knocked all the fines off the good hay (eg: alfalfa leaves). They were using long feeders shaped like a rectangular soup bowl that held 5 or 6 bales I believe. Our experience with controlled grazing is that we have very little waste and the weaker cows have a good chance to compete around the edges and in the off peak times for feed.
 
To my way of thinking, we get more "mileage" out of the hay by rolling it out. It seems to take less pounds of long-stemmed rolled out hay to fill up a cow than by using processed hay
Click to expand...
I have found that too. They did a study in Lacombe and decided rolling hay out wasted less than a bale processor unless you put it in a trough. I use a hydra bed also after grazing stock piled grass. If I had troughs set up I would like to feed my calves with the processor though.
 
We save standing grass for all of the May/June calvers and they don't get any hay all winter unless the snow gets to hard for them to break through it. The Feb/March calving cows and bred heifers are grazing fields and saved pasture right now and hopefully that will last until December. After that we just unroll year old grass hay to them. We don't feed much alfalfa to them as they seem to waste it more than grass hay. If you don't overfeed them and the grass hay isn't to coarse they will clean it up good. During calving for the Feb/March calving cows/heifers they get fed with the feed wagon, only because their isn't enough room and they waste to much to feed on the ground in the calving lots. Most of the feed we feed the cows is purchased, so we try not to waste or over feed.
 
I save more grass than many, but I cake & grass as long as I can. Some years until calving, other years, if there is less to pick, I will feed half, and let them pick half until calving. When I feed, I unroll sorgum bales. When calving gets going, I will feed enough hay to keep them full, and enough cake to keep them milking adequatly. It seems too much cake will encourage enterotoxemia. Too much protein before calving seems to encourage big calves. When I use bale rings, I use the Tombstone (tapered) feeders. They are lots better than a straight sided ring. I've wondered about the cone?? They may be alright. Different years require different plans.
 
GM88 said:
To my way of thinking, we get more "mileage" out of the hay by rolling it out. It seems to take less pounds of long-stemmed rolled out hay to fill up a cow than by using processed hay
Click to expand...
I have found that too. They did a study in Lacombe and decided rolling hay out wasted less than a bale processor unless you put it in a trough. I use a hydra bed also after grazing stock piled grass. If I had troughs set up I would like to feed my calves with the processor though.
Click to expand...
That makes sense, as part of the "advantage"of a processor is that it reduces particle length and increases intake. For example a cow might then be able to go from 2.5 to 3% of her bodyweight in intake. With poor feed that might mean enough extra nutrients to make do. With good feed, it seems to me to be a pretty expensive proposition. It was interesting, today Dad was talking to a neighbour who feeds the same number of cows as us (no calves though) and spends as much time per day with a tractor and processor as we do per week using electric fence. He's happy and so are we, so I guess we both know what we are doing, and the other guy is definitely crazy.
 
Mr. FH used to get so frustrated rolling out hay so we bought a processor.
He loved it, would hate to feed without it. (tho we don't have cows any more). We fed a lot of grass hay and he liked the fact that he can make the windrow real narrow or wider. For the calves, he liked the narrow windrow. Anyway, to each his own. Good thing we don't all think alike. :D
 
To my way of thinking, we get more "mileage" out of the hay by rolling it out. It seems to take less pounds of long-stemmed rolled out hay to fill up a cow than by using processed hay. In bitter cold winter weather, this difference is about thirty pounds per cow per day of long-stemmed hay versus forty pounds per cow per day of processed hay
Click to expand...

Just because the hay is processed dont mean you have to feed 40 pounds to get what a cow needs. Main reason a cow will be satisfied after 30 pounds of long stemmed hay is becasue there rumen is full. A cow can eat more processed hay because they can digest it easier. With processed hay you can add more condition to cows if needed. I roll out hay with a hydra bed on stalks when the snow gets deep but there is no way i could afford to roll out hay for the 60 days I feed in March and April. My cows wouldnt eat straw and crap hay if its rolled out, they will if its ground with alfalfa, grass and sudan.
 
We'll keep rolling bales out to the cows until we get brave enough to try bale grazing. :D

The older unroller that our local "Sparky" built for us in 1990 will now amortize out at about $50 per year counting the cylinder we replaced about 4 winters ago. Don't think they've made a processor yet that can compare with that. :wink:

Calves and other little bunches are fed in bale rings for convenience sake. We move the feeders a few hours before we fill them again and most gets cleaned up. A little bedding saves on feed too.
 
Question for BRG, have you ever put the pencil to your two different herds and figured the difference in feed costs? When feed is cheaper I would guess it is more profitable to have older and bigger calves. But with high priced feed I'm pretty sure the May June herd is more profitable. I think there was an article in Working Ranch mag recently to that effect. Not having to feed a lactating cow saves an incredible amount of feed.
 
We use a processor to feed with it. We used a dew ez for years before we went with the flail hammer type. We can take lower quality hay and lay it out first the come back with some better hay and lay it down on top. We try to feed in the harder ground to keep cows from stomping the hay in the ground. You still get waste but no where near like you would with bale rings. Probably the only way to feed with no waste would be to buy a verticle mixer to dump the bales in whole and then feed in a bunk.
 

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