Collected at harvest | Bunch grazing may be more time consuming, but some say it’s worth the effort
RED DEER — Cattle producers should look back at their grandparents’ operations to save money.
Instead of spreading chaff and straw evenly across the field at harvest, it should be collected and used as inexpensive cattle feed, cattle producers said at the recent Western Canadian Grazing Conference.
Greg Selzler estimates he saves $200 a year in feed costs, saves 35 to 40 percent in fertilizer costs, spends less money on minerals and has healthier cattle, just by collecting the chaff and straw from the combine.
His inexpensive chaff collector looks like a giant pitchfork and bolts to the back of his combine. It dumps straw and chaff into neat 65 pound bundles throughout the field.
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“The cows head right to the piles to get at the chaff,” said Selzler, who farms near Mayerthorpe, Alta.
Selzler rations cattle access to the straw and chaff piles in the winter using electric fences, which he moves every five to seven days. When it’s cold, he adds an alfalfa and rumensin mixture to the top of the straw piles as an energy supplement.
“When it’s a cold spell, they’re reluctant to go into an open field.”
Duane Thompson of Kelliher, Sask., has adopted a similar approach to collecting straw and chaff to feed his cattle and save money in his mixed cattle and grain operation.
Thompson attaches a small box to the axle of his combine to collect the chaff. The box tips over when the weight reaches 40 lb. The cattle can eat the piled chaff in the field during the winter, or it can be taken back to the feedlot and mixed with rations.
The chopped straw is either blown into a feed wagon or put in long windrows where it’s collected into hay wagons and fed to cattle on hilltops in winter.
“It baffles me how a mixed operation wouldn’t make use of this resource,” said Thompson.
“In my opinion when I am out combining, I’m putting up feed.”
Thompson said few people have the patience to put up feed during the busy harvest season, but he believes the money savings are worth any lost time.
“Every once in a while it will hold you up at harvest. I have no trouble shutting the combine off to fix the chaff wagon,” he said.
Thompson’s cattle are constantly moved through the winter grazing fields to put them on a level plain of nutrition. He culls cattle that don’t do well foraging through the fields.
“Not every cow is made to work for a living.
“I want a barrel on legs and not a lot of daylight underneath,” said Thompson of the kind of old-fashioned cows that do well grazing throughout the year.
Selzler said saving money by collecting the straw and chaff to use as a supplemental feed has put the fun back into cattle production and helped regain equity lost during the BSE years.
