Livestock producers will need the skills of a juggler to balance a livestock ration and their financial bottom line with this season’s pricey feed, says Alberta’s beef and forage specialist.
Barry Yaremcio said feeding a cow straight hay through the winter can cost slightly more than $1,000, while a straw-grain ration will drop the feed price more than $250.
This year’s cattle feed options look like a mix and match sale at a mattress store. Few farmers have enough traditional hay to feed their livestock through the winter. Instead, many are looking at a combination of slough hay, hailed canola, greenfeed, silage, chaff piles and grain to feed livestock through the winter at a reasonable price.
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“The critical point in all of this is knowing what your feed inventory is, how many animals will that feed supply carry for the winter, proper feed tests and how it all can work,” said Yaremcio.
The late summer rain that helped rejuvenate pastures and hay crops gave some farmers breathing room to delay feeding hay to cattle.
It also created havoc with cereal crops. Seed that didn’t germinate in the spring sprung to life in August, leaving farmers wondering what to do with their crop.
“What do you do with a canola crop that is 50 or 60 percent early bloom or pod stage and the rest of it is starting to be ripe, or 80 percent in the full bloom this time of year when you know it is not going to make a crop,” Yaremcio said.
“A lot of those have been taken for greenfeed or silage.”
Most hailed out or frozen cereal and oilseed crops can be used for livestock feed, but it will take work to balance the ration to get the animals through the winter.
He said farmers need to know what feed they can use, how they can blend it and what changes they need to make to vitamin and mineral levels depending on the feed combinations they use.
Yaremcio recommended working with agriculture feed specialists or feed companies to balance a feed ration based on feed tests. Most counties and feed companies have feed probes for testing hay and other feed.
“These three steps should be done no matter what you are doing,” he said.
“Figure out what your carrying capacity is for cows over the winter, keep your economic production unit as long as you can, so that you have a chance to make some cash next year instead of selling everything off.”
Yaremcio said farmers should consider using an ionophore such Rumensin or Bovatec, which can improve the digestibility of what’s expected to be poor quality feed this winter.
Yaremcio estimated that every $1 spent on ionophores returns $5 in feed efficiency in most years, but he believes the return will be closer to $6 or $7 this year because of the low-quality feed that producers are expected to use.
Research done at the University of Alberta’s Kinsella ranch in 2002, when feed was also short, showed that cattle did well on a feed limiting diet.
Researchers fed the cattle about three-quarters what they would normally eat if they were on a free choice diet.
“The cows made it through no problem,” Yaremcio said.
Cattle producers will need to watch the condition of their cattle and add grain to the ration to increase energy if the weather becomes severe.
It’s all a balancing act to keep the feed costs in line, he added.
Yaremcio estimated that feeding cattle straight hay for 225 days, plus a mineral and vitamin supplement, will cost $1,023. Feeding a grain and straw ration from fall to calving and then switching to hay after calving will cost $684.
