bale injecting liquid supplement

[jasonf]

I was considering injecting liquid supplement into my straw bales. Has anyone had any experience with this??

[chalmers]

Liquid supplement injected in bales does two things, first it can add protein to a diet that may require additional protein and secondly it helps with encouraging straw intake. My suggestion would be to feed test your winter feed supply to see if you are short protein and if so how much and then you can decide how much of that you want to supply through the liquid supp in the bales. If you are not short protein and just want to encourage intake of the straw then you can play around with amounts. Remember that liquid supp will run out of the bales if you add too much. Usually producers set the bales on end add the supp let them stand a while and then turn them on their sides to reduce the run out. They usually only do a week or so ahead of feeding, so you don't have 200 treated bales sitting. Hope this helps.

[kato]

First check out how the prices work out. The last time we considered this, we discovered that a bit of grain with concentrate on the side turned out to be cheaper than the liquid supplement. We had very good luck with this..but wouldn't feed first calf heifers this way. We like to see them get 'the good stuff'. Balance the ration properly, and make absolutely sure your minerals are up to snuff. Liquid supplement alone, according to our feedmill won't completely replace grain. (They said that, even though they sell the liquid)

[undin]

Assuming that you are talking about a supplement along the lines of promolas I have found that it works very well to increase palatabilty of straw and therefore consumption. The method that I used was to tip the bales on end and pour the supplement into the bale using a large pitcher apply 3-4 gallons evenly over the bale. Leakage out of the bottom of the bale can be a problem for long term storage especially for soft core bales. I solved this problem by stacking the 'treated' bales on top of untreated bales that I plan to treat later, therefore, limiting the waste. To feed I simply used large round bale feeders designed for 3 bales. Due to long stemmed straw you may notice the cattle pulling straw out of the feeder as they eat and wasting a portion of the bale. This may be due to feeder design. I would suggest usage of a bale processor to thoroughly mix the supplement in the straw and to chop the straw and reduce waste. In a perfect world a cattleman would have all the perfect equipment. On a small herd you can get by going to town with a barrel or pails with lids and dipping with the pitcher instead of having the bales injected. Those dealers like to do a lot of bales when they do come out. Also consider supplementing with grain getting close to/during/after calving and in very cold weather those cows need a little extra at those times. Hope this helps and is not overkill.

[overbye]

I think some of the guys were right in saying that it increases palatability. But I read up on some mineral info. I think it was from east man feeds. Now they were of course biased, but some of the facts were hard to deny. With the liquid supplement, the energy is released quickly and also passed on through before the cattle get the full benefit of it. Whereas good dry mineral rations release the supplemnet at lower rates, therefore alowing the cattle to get full use out of the product. There was a graph showing the liquid peaking fast and high, then disappearing. With the dry it peaked a little slower but stayed at the higher level for a longer time. Hopefully this will help.