Feeding Corn

[dfarms11]

Does anyone have any insights on feeding corn? Since barley availability in central AB is going to be non existant, where can a person buy some from and for how much? Does it pay to truck it from the states, etc. Thanks for your reply's.

[cowman]

There is an article in the Aug. 1st Western producer about corn. Apparently AgPro(sask wheat pool) is bringing in massive amounts of corn. 150 cars to Lacombe and 100 carloads to Killiam this week alone. They also have corn at Lavoy, Crossfield, Trochu, Vulcan and Wilson siding.
The feedlot operator at Lacombe was paying $166/tonne at the terminal and another $4/tonne to have it trucked to the farm. The operator says he can hardly find barley at $180-185/tonne. Also consider that corn has a lot more bang for your buck than barley. The down side is this corn might have some fusarium in it.

[SFIRTH]

I am assuming you are going to feed grain corn to cows. Below are two decent articles from the US. Our experience out east (we have had significant hay deficits 4 of the last 6 years) is that cows will do very well on grain and forage. They do stay hungry which can make feeding an entertaining part of the day but their condition stays well. Corn always feeds better than the numbers suggest.

[URL="http://www.wvu.edu/~agexten/forglvst/subsgran.htm"]Substituting Grain for Hay article[/URL]

<a href="http://www.ext.nodak.edu/extpubs/ansci/beef/coping/stock.htm" target="_blank">Feeding Grain to Stock Cows article</a>

[dalek]

For dairy, we have always used barley and corn interchangeably for our ration. There's a little bit of difference between good corn and good barley, but generally not enough to make it worthwhile changing your ration unless you're doing it longterm. I think we have slightly better bushel weights here than in the west though for barley.

[sinotte]

hello !!!!
here all we feed is corn silage and grain corn
we dont have good efiency in barley so we do hay silage and all the rest is corn
i mean in feedlots
but barley is a very good feed but only needs 10%more of barley than corn for the same energy but barley is higher protein
i dont know abt cow is corn would do a good job because of the higher energy maybe cows would get too fat and have hard time calfing