Alternative animal feeds (feed store gettin all my money)

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I'm trying to plan ahead (for once :o). Can anyone tell me what are the best grains for different animals? Any alternatives I can produce from the farm here? I want to have as balanced a diet for my livestock as possible. I just don't like a lot of the stuff that is in feed now a days....not to mention it is just plain expensive! Chickens are pretty easy to feed so I don't need as much help there. The animals I really need help on are rabbits, pigs and a milk cow. Especially the milk cow. Even with buying my feed I get my milk pretty cheap but she still costs me a good bit. Thanks.

-- Amanda in Mo (aseley@townsqr.com), December 16, 2000

Answers

If you live near a feedmill which grinds or mixes feeds, you can have your own mixture made up. An excellent source of recipes is Feeds and Feeding by F.B. Morrison. Over 1,200 pages and is really more on how to properly raise livestock than anything else. I highly recommend this book if you can find a copy.

Here are some for a ton of feed (in pounds)for a dairy cow: 1) ground corn - 1,160, ground oats - 500, wheat bran - 200, soybean oil meal (or cottonseed meal) - 120, salt - 20. 2) ground corn - 1,130, ground oats - 500, wheat bran - 200, linseed meal - 150, salt - 20. 3) ground barley (or wheat) - 1,030, ground oats - 700, wheat bran - 250, salt - 20. 4) ground corn - 1,000, ground oats - 640, wheat bran - 200, ground gluten feed (or distillers' dried corn grains) - 70, soybean oil mean - 70 and salt - 20. 5) ground kafir - 1,400, ground oats - 330, wheat bran - 200, cottonseed meal (or soybean oil meal) - 50 and salt - 20. 6) corn-and-cob meal - 1,310, wheat bran - 500, cottonseed meal (or soybean oil meal) - 85, linseed meal - 85 and salt - 20. (You can scale down if you keep the ratios the same.)

Call and ask the price per pound of each ingredient and you can then compare them to store mixes.

Some have concerns about cottonseed or soybean meal due to the use of pesticides and herbicides, but exposure to them would be extremely diluted and remote.

Of course, there is also pasture, good hay (pigs can benefit from alfalfa hay), grass clippings, kitchen scraps and feed from the garden, such as trimmings, root crops and sweet corn stalks. For some reason hogs do very well when milk is part of their diet and fresh cattle manure has been found to be an almost ideal vitamin and mineral supplement for them.

I have square hay bales ground with ground corn, minerals, salt and dried molasses added. My heifers will lick the feed trough. There is no waste, even for poorer quality hay.

Also ask your feed source about buying broken bags of feed, those with mouse holes or those with weavels. I buy these at half-price. My hiefers are currently getting deer pellets. I'm wondering if their first calf will have forked horns, jump fences and have a spot of white under their tails.

You need to think ahead also on how you are going to get the cow rebred so you have milk next year.

-- Ken S. in WC TN (scharabo@aol.com), December 17, 2000.


Ken thanks for the grain mixtures. A lot of them list wheat bran.... could I use ground wheat instead? I have an old heavy duty (really big farm type) grain grinder that would be suitable for mixing up say weekly batches of grain. There is no feed mill around here. I also understand that soybean meal isn't whole ground up soybeans...but could whole ground soybeans be used? The area I'm in isn't a grain producing area so I may have trouble buying grains in bulk. I hope to grow as much as possible here on the farm.

-- Amanda in Mo (aseley@townsqr.com), December 17, 2000.

Amanda:

Yes on both, but...

Wheat bran is what is shifted out after the flour has been processed. Ground wheat would increase protein content and probably offset something like ground corn.

Soybean meal or cotton seed meal is what is left over after the soybean or cotton oils have been processed out. If you go with ground soybeans, it would also offset something like ground corn.

I don't have the background to specify mixtures for you. Try your County Ag Agent. Don't take duhhh for an answer. Make them keep bumping it up the line until you get a satisfactory answer.

The trick is to balance the protein content. You don't want too high, nor too low.

If you buy in 50-pounds bags you can use your grinder to make your own mix.

You didn't indicate how much of a need for milk you have. If it is a good cow, she might give you all you need on pasture, good hay and maybe some grains as a treat while milking.

-- Ken S.in WC TN (scharabo@aol.com), December 17, 2000.


Amanda Soybean meal has a protien content of about 44% and it is a processed feed, I think it is a byproduct when extracting oil from soybeans, and not something you could easyly do on a farm. Mixing corn and soybeans would not be high enough in protien for maximum growth and production, milk or eggs, you are looking for a protien content in the 15% to 20% range and almost any combination of grains and protien supplement that gets you in that range would be OK.

I make the assumtion here that we are talking about a homestead type of setting with the animals not in confinment but being allowed access to pastures or yards where they can obtain the necessary trace elements/minerals,if the animals are kept under factory farming conditions than you had best feed premixed feed. I feed a corn/soymeal mix (4 corn to 1 soymeal) that is about 16% protien and it cost about $6.50 hundred#.This can be fed to all your animals except rabbits and I'll let the rabbit experts on here advise you on them.

I know that by tailoring the feed formula to a specific animal you can get better results(faster growth,more milk)but this should give satisfactory performance.................................JAY

-- JAY (JAY@TOWNSQR.COM), December 17, 2000.


Try stretching your grain with beet pulp and/or dried beans. You can take a 5 gallon bucket, fill it 1/4 - 1/3 full with beet pulp and add water. It swells up in a few hours - less time if you add hot water. Then mix it with the cow grain. To get grain cheap, you've been given some good advice in other posts. Many feed stores, especially the ones that cater to horsemen sell their expired grain for cheap.

We get our dairy grain for just over 7 cents a pound (last week's price) by purchasing it in bulk with a dairy farmer - we drop off food grade barrels and the deliveryman shoots grain into them. I feed a little of that grain to my poultry (and let them free range).

The pigs basically get pot luck - I usually buy bread for them (in the winter a 35 dollar load lasts nearly a month, it spoils rapidly in the summer so I buy more frequently) and only grain them the last two months before slaughter.

The rabbits get good hay and I will buy them rabbit food (in bulk), but if I ever run short, they get horse grain. We keep pretty tight records, and our grain bill for two horses (one's a clydesdale), 8 rabbits, 13 cows, 3 goats, and uncounted chickens, 3 pigs, and two turkeys ran us $235 last month. Unfortunately we ran out of beans - those run about $40 a ton and we'll be picking up a year's supply shortly. Two tons of beans last us about a year. Frankly, the dogs cost more to feed then the cows.

-- Anne Tower (bbill@wtvl.net), December 18, 2000.



This year is my first experiment with squash, feeding it to my ewes. They love it. I bought Hubbards and Bananas in the field for $.04 per lb, so I got a ton. They are not keeping well, but I've had them since mid-October stored in straw on a dry barn floor. I smash one up every morning with a mallet and a machete into bit sized pieces. They like the seeds best. Former years I would have started alfalfa pellets and COB about mid-October when the grass is gone for good. This year I haven't fed anything but squashed-squash and grass hay and whatever browse they can pick up - blackberry bushes for the most part.

On another note - if you feed molasses (such as in diary mix or COB) it is more economical to add it yourself. If you buy wet COB or diary mix you are paying for molasses by the pound. Livestock grade molasses is available in 30 gallon tubs or five gallon jugs. I put it on hay that's a little dead-looking and mix it with feed for an animal that might not be eating well. Also put in the water tub for the ewes - encourages them to drink and also helps keep the water from freezing.

-- Maggie's Farm (elemon@peacehealth.org), December 20, 2000.


I am a student at the Faculty of Veterinary Science (Onderstepoort,South Africa).We have a seminar on "Grain as a byproduct for animal feed". I will be very grateful if anyone can e-mail some information to me regarding this subject. Thank you Johann Oberholzer Pretoria,South Africa

-- Johann Oberholzer (s98070178@op.up.ac.za), March 07, 2001.

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