Im working with my ration for feeding out dairy steers and beef cross steers. I have a Gehl 95MX mill. Currently I am mixing about 3400-3500 lbs of ground ear corn, 200 lbs of distillers, 200 lbs of oats and I have been throwing 50 lbs of molasses in there lately too and seeing if that does anything. They also get some 2nd and 3rd crop alfalfa fed in a feeder. With the exception of the distillers this is our old ration that we have fed forever and I am wondering if I need to modernize it a bit. We are starting to offer direct sales meat off our farm and at the local farmers market and we are marketing it as a grass fed grain finished meat.
Im also looking into any minerals I should be adding?
The ground ear corn weights are a bit speculation as I do not have a scale on the mill.
I used to often have problems with the ground ear corn heating up or getting moldy after grinding it before it got used up. Even ear corn that seemed to be sufficiently dry would do this in hot humid summer time.
I would get an additive from the local feed supply store that was a mold inhibitor. I don't recall the brand name but I think it was dry proprionic acid (it smelled like vinegar) I'm pretty sure it was something that would be classified as "natural" and not some chemical that would cause alarm to end consumers.
One time I tried dumping a few gallons of vinegar in the top access door of the mixer, cheap, but not sure it really helped. I was just winging it and hadn't researched any amount per ton or ratios to use.
Like you, I used to add molasses. Sometimes dry bagged, or when available would get it in liquid form of Blackstrap in a 5 gallon bucket and just pour it into the supplement hopper and then run some protein supplement or bean meal in after to help push all of the liquid on into the mixer. Your oats would probably work for that.
As far as mineral supplement, we usually just gave them free choice access to a vitamin/mineral/salt pre-mix in a mineral feeder.
Jim, we start the little calves on maybe a gallon per head per day of straight ground ear corn, and all the hay they want until the pastures are ready for grazing. We used to fade in a little oats to get them started, but it just seemed to amount to more work and a separate oats production/storage operation for little discernible results. We just haven't had any issues starting calves on straight ground ear corn. After a couple of months, we start to feather in shell corn in the mix, starting with about 2 to 1 ear corn to shell corn (by volume). Once they are on full feed, we have them up to nearly a 1 to 1 ratio. Full feed would be roughly 2.5 gallons of that feed mix per head per day (we feed with buckets). They are on pasture until the last 2 months or so, then free choice hay to finish. Ours have free choice salt and mineral all the way through. We only grind 1 to 2 weeks worth of feed at a time, so we have not had many issues with mold. I don't know if it helps the mold issue or not, but we try to time our grinding for the 3rd or 4th dry day in a row. Keeps down the ruts, too.
Not very exact or scientific, just what we have done for decades. It seems to work. We alternate between Hereford and Angus bulls (currently on Hereford). We have a mostly closed herd, with 40-some-odd cows descended from breed lines going back to my great-grandfather's generation. The breed mix is mostly Hereford and Angus with a smattering of Charolais and Red Poll. We spring-calve (April 1 at the earliest, unless the bulls have a jailbreak), and wean between Thanksgiving and New Year's. We sell probably a quarter to a third of each year's calf crop direct-market to individual customers, and have built up a fairly loyal customer base. We use the same butcher, whose family has been friends with ours for 4 generations.
I see I forgot to reply to this subject. Thanks for the replies. I think eventually I will have to get some shelled corn storage and mix that into my feed.
Now if I can get some hay up without it getting rained on!
Jim, Pop and I started putting up our family's first drier bins about 10 years ago. The first one was a well-kept government bin (~3500 bu) that we moved in 2 pieces about 7 miles onto a slab that we poured ourselves. That cost about $4500, mostly for concrete, a drier fan, and electrical service to the new bin site. Half of that price was the electrical service expenses. The second one was a used ~6000 bu bin that we had to disassemble to move. It cost a little more, but has nearly paid for itself. We now have more bins, but used bins have worked for our operation. If you are able to do the work, don't mind smaller bins, and already have a site close to electricity, used bins can work well and cheaply. We dry our shelled corn for feeding down to 12-13%, then auger it into a gravity wagon about 150 bushels at a time. The shelled corn keeps pretty well at that quantity and the speed with which we use it. I had a semi-trailer-style tarp made for the top of the wagon to keep out rain and pests. Just some thoughts.
Jim, Your original recipe sounds very similar to what we fed to our dairy cows. I would say our recipe didn't have the distillers in it but had 200 lbs of a dairy pellet from the feed mill and a little more oats. In the latter years, we would occasionally add vegetable oil at the end of grinding. But we were top dressing the cows' ground ear corn with a mixture of cotton seed, roasted soybeans, soybean meal, sugar beets, rice hulls, a variety of minerals and vegetable oil. It sure was a sweet smelling recipe and the cows LOVED it!! We were using a feed service, Agri-King, that had tested our cows and feed supply to improve their health and increase milk production. In the fall-winter-spring hay was free choice for the cows, and they were on pasture late spring through early fall. We had set aside approximately 16-18 acres for the dairy cows to pasture during May-October. So the dairy cows had 7-8 pasture lots and got their exercise. We had good production and healthy cows. Dairymen marveled at the idea that our dairy cows all went out to pasture each day, but that was the way it was done for all the years my dad grew up and farmed so that's all I knew.
If you are wondering how to modernize your recipe, have your local feed mill analyze your ration and see what you are missing or lacking. They should have a nutritionist on staff that could test your feed and maybe tweak your feed. Good luck and keep us posted on what you have done!
