Anyone on here want to comment on feeding grain

[ALLFARMER]

We have on hand some peas, a little barley and
some oats. We can buy slightly heated oats for
1.75/bushel. We are also considering feeding
alfalfa pellets. One local guy is feeding 7lbs/day
with free choice straw. The alfalfa pellets work out
to 80 cents/day which is much better than feeding
60$/bales. At least with the alfalfa pellets were
getting a consistent product.

[ASRG]

I fed over 100 cows in 2009 on basically 2 row barley straw (free choice on the ground) and 10 lb. whole barley dribbled on top from the tractor bucket. Just augered it into the bucket with a small electric drill fill type auger. The 10 lb. of barley was 75 cents a day (at $3.60/bu).
I think they did better than if I'd fed good quality hay. No calving problems. Decent hay that year was $160/bale, or about 12 cents/lb.

[ALLFARMER]

Ya ASRG looks like this year I am going to be
forced to try something new. The 700' of bunk
fence is going to come in handy.

So peas 12lbs/day Barley 7 to 10lbs/day. Any
idea how many pounds/day of oats they might
need?

[ALLFARMER]

Looks like we're going to have to feed grain for 66
days or so. Guess my herd of kids is going to be
on pail duty.

We have so much snow now a loaded log truck hit
the ditch and from what I heard very little damage.
The snow slowed it down and kept it from rolling.

[ALLFARMER]

Guess a new Farm King 180 roller mill is $6465
plus freight and set up.

[ASRG]

The trick is to balance energy, protein, calcium and phosphorous...and of course fiber.
I would think feeding 12 lbs of peas and 7 pounds of barley would put your protein and energy requirements way over what is needed? You would probably get some fat cows and big calves...not a good mix at calving time!
Somewhere I have a big binder that has all this info.....I'll try to look it up.
Someone who knows their way around the computer program "Cow bytes" could certainly figure out a good formula for you.
Whole barley as opposed to rolled barley has a lower feeding value, but surprizingly not that much lower (if I remember correctly about 85%)! I suspect with the high cost of barley this year rolling it would make economic sense.....when barley is cheap it doesn't (for animals on a maitenance diet as opposed to a fattening diet).

[ASRG]

One other note: Be careful if you are feeding a lot of straw from a rotary combine. It is chopped up too much and you could get an impaction problem. Straw from a conventional combine is much better.

[ALLFARMER]

Ya the straw is from a conventional combine I
believe. The guy we get straw from has both. I
only have limited oats, barley, and about
400bushel's of peas. So ya not going to feed peas
and barley at the same time. We have a big creap
feeder wagon that when you take the bottom
gates out of works perfect for pailing grain out of.
Plus because it's portable we fill it and put it
beside the feed bunks. Then we fill pails and
space them out infront of the bunks. When all the
pails are full and spaced we dump them all at the
same time so everyone get equal chance. It's
been a couple years since we did this. When we
had extra grain and hay we had feeders to finish.

[grassfarmer]

Why worry when it's only a hobby? Besides if your
property is really appreciating about $2k a week as
you claim that would buy you more $60 bales than
your herd could eat.

[ALLFARMER]

Just wondering grass if I still have more cows
than u? 109 here

[grassfarmer]

Not that its any of your business but we are running
50% more cows than you and we are backgrounding
all our calves as usual.
The last 80 cows just went onto full feed on Friday as
the snow turned to concrete on us and ended the
grazing season. So likely under 90 days winter
feeding on them.

[ASRG]

grassfarmer: How did your cows make out this winter grazing? This was a pretty tough year....did they lose more condition than say last year?
From previous posts, you said you feed silage? How many pounds/cow/day from here on in....how much does it cost per cow/day? How much straw?

[grassfarmer]

ASRG, the cows did really well actually because the
grass quality is the best we have ever had. It is still
really green under there as a result of it keeping on
growing later than usual. It was cold before Christmas
but snow conditions were fine. The last week or so
were challenging as it was getting up to my knees
then with the thaw it got hard pretty quick.

I have some pictures and a video I'd post if this site
wasn't set up by the Flintstones - Kato care to explain
the posting photo/video deal again?

We'll push the silage to them now as they are in their
3rd trimester. I always have straw available and that
lets me control how much silage I'm feeding. I'll
probably aim for 5lbs consumption of straw/day on
the heifers/young cows and 8-10lbs on the mature
cows as the silage is lower protein than usual.
Including yardage I figure $1.60/day to feed silage
but with the daily feeding/moveable
feedbunks/windbreaks this system uses that allows
us to cover quite a lot of ground in terms of land
improvement.

[smcgrath76]

AF - Based on your limited information
and guessing your cows at 1500 pounds,
the grain ration of 12 pounds of peas
and 8 pounds of barley would already
meet the protein requirements of the
cows, but would fall about 10 MCAL short
on energy (that is a bit of a guess
without feed tests). You would also
need a high calcium mineral although
your phos would be OK. Knowing the
roughage available would change things
dramatically and could knock the grain
requirement back a bunch and balance out
the calhos ratio quite a bit.

[ASRG]

For what it's worth, from the "Alberta Beef Herd Management Guide":

For a 1100 lb mature pregnant cow/mid winter

16.5 lb (7.5kg) barley or oat straw
3.3 lb (1.5kg) barley
1.1 lb (.5kg) of 32% beef supplement

All based on avg. nutrition values. Mineral and vitamin supplementation might be required.
They list barley straw at:
.93 mcal/lb 4.6% protein

They list barley:
1.7 mcal/lb 12.1 protein