As Canada contemplates an anti-dumping countervail duty on American corn, cattle producers could contemplate a largely ignored, domestically grown alternative feed ingredient.
There is no reason why cattle shouldn’t eat peas, say researchers at North Dakota State University.
So far the pulse crop has only made inroads into swine, poultry and dairy rations but four years of data show there is also a promising home for the ingredient in cattle diets.
“We have determined that peas are an incredibly palatable, very digestible, highly productive feed ration for cattle at any age or stage of production,” said Vern Anderson, principal investigator in a series of pea studies conducted at the university.
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He came to that conclusion after analyzing data from multiple feed trials where peas comprised 15 to 40 percent of cattle rations.
Anderson is excited by the prospect of using peas in receiving diets.
“This is really stupid because I tell people what we observed and they think I’m lying,” he said.
When peas were used in rations for weaned calves, the animals gained five pounds a day within three weeks of going off mothers’ milk.
When those same calves were taken off peas and put on a basic corn finishing diet, they continued to gain at least one-half a pound a day more than calves that had been fed traditional corn rations at the freshly weaned stage of development.
It is a preliminary result that has yet to be verified but if it holds true, it is “incredibly powerful information,” said Anderson.
“The market for peas is going to just go through the roof for feedlot starter rations.”
Janette McDonald, executive director of Alberta Pulse Growers, agreed that Anderson’s findings could spark an enormous market for peas in her home province.
“It would be big. It would be really big. There are so many cattle here, if it was even two percent of the diet it would be huge.”
But she said there is a reason peas haven’t found their way into feedlot diets.
“Cattle rations usually look for very cheap sources of protein and energy.”
McDonald said there is a good market for peas in swine and poultry diets partially because those sectors place more value on some of the micronutrients found in peas and are willing to pay a slight premium.
However, when it comes to the cattle industry, peas would have a tough time competing with feed wheat and feed barley prices, she said.
But Anderson said once cattle producers discover how productive the ingredient can be, they will realize the legume is a nutritional bargain.
A number of ranchers in North Dakota have switched to peas and the same should be happening in Canada, home to 15 million head of cattle, said Anderson.
A few Canadian cattle producers like Ken Eshpeter have experimented with peas. The Daysland, Alta., farmer has been feeding peas to his backgrounder cattle since 1992 until, he sold his 80 cows last year.
He used up to three pounds per head per day in combination with barley and straw. He fed whole peas to his cattle but the pulse is most effective when it is dry-rolled, a process that breaks the seed into small, more easily digestible pieces.
“You can get very acceptable gains at a very affordable cost,” said Eshpeter.
He figures peas are a good alternative to subsidized American corn, which could soon become the target of a Canadian anti-dumping countervail duty and become more costly or unavailable.
But Eshpeter worries that feedlots are so stuck in their ways that there won’t be much of a market for the pulse. It is a shame, he said, not only because of the nutritional gains in feeding peas, but also because peas fix soil nitrogen and provide farmers with important crop rotation options.
But findings of Anderson’s latest study may help convince feedlots to switch.
Earlier this month he conducted a blind taste test with a panel of trained experts that concluded beef from animals that were fed peas in finishing diets is tastier than that from corn-fed cattle.
“Everything we fed peas to had higher juiciness, tenderness and flavour in the beef.”
Anderson is excited by the results of the feed trials and taste test and is shocked there hasn’t been a similar research effort on feeding peas to cattle in Canada, where growers seeded 3.5 million acres of the crop, more than four times what went in the ground in the U.S.
McDonald said the point is well taken.
“We have certainly focused our attention on swine diets and maybe we need to expand that and work with the cattle producers to look at how they fit into their diets,” she said.
