ROCKY MOUNTAIN HOUSE, Alta. – It is common practice on the Prairies to feed dry baled hay to cows on the ground.
However, losses due to processing and cows pushing feed around can be costly.
In 2004, Alberta Agriculture initiated studies at Lethbridge and Lacombe to measure the amount of nutrient and volume losses that occur when feeding dry hay, either processed or unrolled on the ground, versus providing processed hay in portable feed bunks.
“If you feed onto the ground with a bale unroller, you can pretty well expect a 12 percent loss of quantity. If you feed with a bale shredder, you’ll have a 19 percent loss,” said Ken Ziegler with the Western Forage Beef Group based in Lacombe. He spoke at a cattle producers’s day at Four Clover Ranch near Rocky Mountain House.
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For the experiment at Lacombe, hay was rolled out onto black tarps covered with snow.
Fifty-five heifers received 1,250 pounds of meadow brome hay daily, or an individual allocation of 22.7 lb. of hay per day. This was 90 percent of their regular ration to ensure they cleaned up all available feed.
On four different occasions, snow, ice, manure and wasted feed were collected 24 hours after feeding. The material was separated and measured.
“Most of the feeds were in the 60-40 split with 40 percent fines and 60 percent long material after it had been processed. Alfalfa was the reverse after the processor had done its job,” he said.
While feed was lost because the small pieces fell through, no feed was lost when cattle were fed from a bunk.
They also measured the quality of what was lost and found the fine material had a higher level of energy and nutrition that the cattle lost because they could not get at it.
Rations may need to be adjusted to compensate for that loss. Losses of magnesium and calcium in the fine material could lead to winter tetany, a metabolic condition with weight loss, nervousness, staggering, stiff gait and perhaps paralysis or cattle going down.
If it appears about 12 percent of the feed is lost after processing, Ziegler recommended increasing feed by 19 percent to accommodate losses in quantity and quality.
If shredding feed, the cattle would need 25 percent more.
“Considering the boom and the bust in the feed industry, some years you would definitely be short,” he said.
Part of the study involved developing a portable, sturdy feeder to accept shredded feed so there would be no losses.
Researchers came up with a bunk eight feet wide and two feet high that could hold a 1,400 pound bale. Nineteen cows could eat from either side. They found if it was slightly higher at 2.5 feet the cows did not crawl into the feeder. Also, if it was only seven feet wide they could easily reach into the middle to get all the feed.
This winter the experiment will be repeated using high moisture silage and oat greenfeed.
