Margins are Tight

[cowman]

jendsen: Some of my neighbors think I am the local vet! I have a lot of hobby farmers/acreage owners who keep a few cows. They always overfeed and end up with very fat cows and big hard pull calves. I tell them again and again"Put away that damned feed pail"! A lot of these cows also milk like a damned holstein because they get so much grain which leads to a whole lot more problems. Better to keep them fairly lean and mean and then pound it to them three weeks before the bulls go out.
A lot of these cows lay about all winter in a small corral too. Better to let them walk a long way to water if possible.

[jensend]

i think the key is provide the requirements of the animal in a ration that doesn't inhibit the animals use of the nutrients. stay away from dust and mold and just let the cows eat and use the feed. i think the pellets with rumensin are a bonus. the cows have no coccidiosis and feed use efficiency goes up. the price of the pellets this year is 60% of last year so we can winter a cow for less than 65 cents per day in feed costs. we try to keep in mind that we are trying to produce a good calf not a fat cow. fat cows aren't worth a lot.

[pandiana]

Clearly, feeding straw is a viable alterative to high priced hay. I have neighbors who have fed straw and pellet rations for several years and have done well with them. However, the down side is if you don't make your own straw bales, the cost is creeping up. Straw bales in the yard cost about what hay bales did 5 or 6 years ago.
The cheapest I have found this year is about $23.00 /1000-1100 lbs. Grain producers more and more are valuing their straw in terms of keeping it on the feed to cut down on their input costs. Last year I heard a number of people had pretty good luck with canola straw. Will have to keep this in mind. Not great bedding though I've heard.

[Bruce14]

It takes about 3 canola straw bales to do the job of 1 wheat. Be careful feeding the canola though. We had a neighbor who had a real wreck. It can be done though with a bit of common sense.

[jensend]

i would like to know if anybody has tried swath grazing their oats or barley straw by top dressing with pellets along the swath. maybe wishful thinking but i would hope to get more use out of the straw and thought it migh work for late fall early winter feeding

[Bruce14]

We have done it with barley straw and had limited success. They root around and pick out the grain.

Swath grazing unharvested barley (semi ripe and seeded later works best for us). Never have had much luck getting cows to eat ripe oat straw. If you have a good fence and keep at it they eventually clean up the straw.