Analyzing & Implementing Feedstuff Alternatives
Shaye Koester 00:02
Hey, hey, it’s Shaye Koester and I’m your host for the Casual Cattle Conversations podcast where we connect you to ranchers and beef industry enthusiasts who can help you build a more profitable operation and improve your lifestyle. Are you looking for a community of ranchers who support and challenge you to be more profitable and proactive? Then sign-up for our monthly RancherMind events. RancherMinds are mastermind events for ranchers to come together once a month and find solutions for their own and the industry's challenges. Stay connected by following @cattleconvos on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter and never miss an episode or event update by signing up for our newsletter on casualcattleconversations.com/newsletter. If you get value out of this episode or any episode drop a comment or tip me by using the link in the show notes. With that let’s see who our guest is today and connect you to a new resource to improve your own operation and lifestyle. Alright folks today we are going to dive into some different feed alternatives for cow-calf producers with Dr. Karl Hoppe. Dr. Hoppe is based out of North Dakota and is going to share some key points to remember when adjusting your nutrition program, different feedstuff options and his take on how the industry can improve as a whole when it comes to cow-calf nutrition. Be sure to like, comment or rate this podcast on whatever app you are listening on and leave me a tip using the PayPal link in the show notes. I am also open to public speaking opportunities in 2022, so be sure to DM me or email me for info on that. With that, let’s see how our guest can help you increase the profitability of your operation! All right, well, thank you for hopping on the show today. I'm excited to have you on here. But to get started, would you share your role in the beef industry so that my listeners can better understand what you do?
Dr. Karl Hoppe 02:12
Well, awesome. So you've got a lot you're kind of doing there. So what is kind of your background? Or why are you interested in kind of beef cattle nutrition in the feed stuff side of things? Yes, I'm Karl Hoppe. I am an extension livestock specialist located here at the Carrington Research Extension Center, which is a part of North Dakota State University. I work for NDSU extension. I'm a beef cattle specialist, like I just said, but my expertise is nutrition and management both in cow calf and feedlot for our North Dakota clientele. Well, I always sum this up by saying my dad was a cattle feeder. My grandfather was a cattle feeder. My other grandfather was a cattle feeder. So I grew up in the industry as a corn farmer and cattle feeder coming out of Iowa. I got my degrees at South Dakota State University, both one in reproductive management or reproductive physiology for my masters and my PhD I decided cattle eat every day, they breed once a year, but they eat every day. So nutrition is where I want to focus on that's where most of our expenses are in a cow herd. And that's where we need to feed cattle correctly. And that's why I've been focused on the nutrition side. When I finished my doctorate, I wanted to get involved in extension work, consulting, extension, production management, really production type agriculture. And the opportunity here at Carrington, North Dakota came about and I've enjoyed the position ever since.
Shaye Koester 03:51
Well, that's exciting. So with your knowledge, I mean, I'd really like to talk to you about alternative feedstuff options. So many areas, were obviously faced with drought this past summer. And while that's already happened, it's not going to be the last drought we face. So when producers see that we're going to have a drought year, what are those first steps they need to take when looking for alternative feed resources.
Dr. Karl Hoppe 04:22
The first thing you need to consider is whether you're going to replace feed or supplement feed. So you need to decide if it's going to be a major feed source for the cow herd or if it's going to be in addition to whatever feed resources you already raised on your farm or ranch or have access around your farm or ranch. So we need to know what your your base feed programming is. So in other words, if we normally put up corn silage, we'd be looking for a little extra protein. We normally put up hay we'd be looking for some extra protein for normally putting up wheat straw we'd be looking for energy and protein. I usually the word protein shows up but for the most part we're always lacking in a energy content in our feeds. And so when we start looking for co-products, the real issue is what's located nearby so our freight costs are low and if it's competitively priced. Sometimes these co-products are high priced more than what other things are. And other times they're extremely reasonably priced. And you can afford the transportation to get it to your place. I bring that up because some of those are like beet pulp, if so, if you're in the Red River Valley, beet pulp is a nice replacement for corn silage. If you adjust for the moisture content a lot of our corn silage is 65% moisture level the beet pulp is 80% moisture. So you do the math you have to adjust but the crude protein is about the same energy content is about the same. The downside though is when you're shipping a 30 tonnes semi load of pulp someplace and it's 80% water that means you get sixty on the dry feed. How far can you haul extended dry feed before freight costs make it prohibitive. In other words, you can buy corn locally cheaper than what you could haul in this byproduct from previous years. It'd be like 100 miles away from the plants this year with double beat prices as normal. They wouldn't go 150-200 miles. Now the problem is the demand. There's a lot of demand for it. So the availability is tight. Now we got to look at other things like wheat middlings or soy hulls or the favorite one, it'd be distillers grains.
Shaye Koester 06:30
Okay, so you mentioned some alternatives there but so were everything you just mentioned, would you say those are all alternatives for protein or what would be other supplements for those producers who are feeding silage on a normal year?
Dr. Karl Hoppe 06:45
Well, if we look for silage is going to be a little bit short of protein. Question really depending on what type of calves or if you're feeding calves or cows or lactating cows, as you increase the production demand, you're going to have to increase the protein content the ration as well. So things we might use with corn silage would be the cheapest one out there or most reasonably priced is going to be distillers grains, whether it be wet, modified or dry. They're all priced accordingly to whatever the dry feed whatever the dry value is. And that's usually, quite frankly, you get the energy for for whatever the corn price is, and the protein comes along, basically at no additional costs. So you get about 30% crude protein in the ration, which means you could provide four to six pounds of dried distillers grains to provide a pound of crude protein well. Otherwise, you'd have to feed two pounds of soybean meal or two pounds of canola meal. I'm kind of going in different directions here because there's so many options you can use to supplement a corn silage hay based ration, that it just comes down to availability, and then price. And right now price wise per pound of nutrient. If you're going to do it for energy or for corn, the cheapest one is usually distillers grains.
Shaye Koester 08:15
So I think that's a great point that, you know, there's a lot of different avenues you can take. And it does come down to availability and price. So then looking at that, what resources or where should producers go to really make sure they're finding the best option to feed their cattle if they're looking for alternative feedstuffs?
Dr. Karl Hoppe 08:35
Well, I've been putting together a price sheet with phone numbers and coproducts available in North Dakota for the past 20 years. And I share that with our county extension staff or extension agents and every county in North Dakota has one. So the first thing I do is encourage the producer to go to the county extension office and ask for this list of coproducts available in North Dakota then at that point, you start looking at what's local, and making a few phone calls and find out what the most current prices are, what type of price they have for you. And then once you've done that and know what your prices are now you got to do the quick math, which is knowing the price of the of the feed stuff. And then you need to know the percent protein of the feed stuff or the energy content, the feed stuff and do the math so you end up with a cost per pound of energy. And be sure to include freight rates in the calculation. And now you figure out which is the cheapest one to home almost reasonably priced one. So the next consideration is storability. And some of these feed stuffs you can store for a long period of time. Others have a little bit of moisture and they don't store very well. Others have some higher levels of fat content. So while they're good and fat has extra energy in the ration, they'll tend to bridge up or cake up and now it becomes a real challenge getting that out of some type of storage. I always smile, because when I go on to some farms I know if they're using dried distillers grains, I usually look for the sledgehammer that's located at the bottom of the grain bin, because they've had to pounded and beat on it in order to try to get the grain bin empty. So some of these things, it's easier just to put it on flat storage, and scooping up cover with plastic or whatever, and scoop it up that way and put it in your mixer wagon.
Shaye Koester 10:26
So let's talk about options for producers who aren't feeding that TMR. What about the producers who are mostly just bale grazing, putting hay out for those cows, what would be some of those options that they could potentially look into if their normal hay crop wasn't there?
Dr. Karl Hoppe 10:46
Self-feeding proteins are always a challenge, it usually comes at an extra cost. Some of these proteins like licktubs or liquid supplements that cattle can lick on a wheel that they're self-fed. Regulating intake is a real challenge. I'll pick on licktubs for just a second. I can because I use them. So consumption needs to be watched. And they usually eat about eight ounces per day, which is a half a pound and do your math accordingly. And you find out that they're usually formulated for that type of consumption. However, if you take a 30% crude protein licked, and they're eaten half, half a pound of lick a day. 30% of a half a pound is about oh, doing the math in my head about two ounces of protein, they need a couple pounds of protein a day, not two ounces of protein a day. So if you're short on protein in the ration. Thanks for the BandAid, but you didn't solve the problem, you need to provide more. So how do we do that alfalfa hay is a nice thing to go out and shred and provide that to the cows or they do have alfalfa pellets depending on where you're at. Or you can provide a cake. And I use that term is a large diameter pellet that's 20-30% protein, which is similar to lick tub, except when you go out and feed the cake, you don't feed just a half a pound, you go out and feed 3,4,5 or 6 pounds, even up to 10 pounds depending on how much is needed. But that's one way to add some extra protein by going that way. That's a self-feeder. The next thing is if you got a small cowherd go out and bucket feed, tame down your cows get used to feeding out of a feed bunk requires a little bit exercise and energy on your behalf. But you can do that. I've seen other places where they've got motorized dispensers in the back of their Ranger or four wheeler. And they can just go out click on the switch and unloaded into a feed bunk that way. Again, that could be a ground feed or a pelleted feed or cake. I just like to make a point though, is sometimes when we want to go supplement on these like bale grazing cattle, we want to feed out on the ground, I seen some data that talked about using distillers grains as a dried product, putting it on the ground, and maybe only half of that being available, actually to the animal because it disappears into the ground. I mean, it's less, you're gonna have your cattle lick the dirt off the ground and then go into the ground licking dirt, it's really hard to have them consume that or get what you haven't consumed what you delivered. So the next challenge is to put out feed bunks for him or something, so they're not eating off the ground. Now things like cakes, large diameter pellets are made to be fed on the ground. So you know, they come at a cost.
Shaye Koester 13:38
That's an excellent point. And something that producers are always trying to be aware of is, you know, maximizing the feed they have because like you said in the beginning, it is one of the biggest expenses to any herd. So you've really talked about different options for feed stuffs things to be aware of when you're changing the diet. But what mindset do producers need to have when they go into trying to change their diets or looking for alternative feed source? What's the mindset they need to have?
Dr. Karl Hoppe 14:10
Well, one of the actually, the very first thing you need to do is do an inventory of how much feed they have. And then try to estimate how long that's going to last for them based on how they've been feeding. Then the next thing to do is to do a feed test on your different feeds to find out what you actually have. I was pleasantly surprised by a group of feedstuffs that a producer shared with me the other day, and basically whatever you wanted to feed was good because they're high energy and high in protein. I wanted to give him award the good quality of putting up feed for him during a drought. I was really surprised. Then I heard out he was blending that in with some low quality stover and forages I got a little bit more disappointed then because now you need to be very careful in how you're going to mix the bad stuff and with the good stuff. He had some good stuff. Good feed is what I'm saying when I say good stuff. He had good feeds. And if that's all you had to feed to the cows, you wouldn't have to worry about supplementation. But he was blending that with the poor quality feeds and making a ration. So now the next question is, now we got to add whatever's lacking. So if we don't have 7,8 or 9 percent crude protein in a gestating cows ration we need to add extra protein. If our energy content isn't high enough, we need to add extra energy. Now I can list off things like TDN values and energy values needed for a cow herd. But quite frankly, you need to look at your cows and look over cow body condition scores and if you don't like that term, look and see how fat the cows are. If you can see backbones on your cows, they are deficient in energy. Don't try to kid yourself that they are all thrifty. They're in good rig, they're looking pretty good. Now, if you can see the sharpness of the spine over there back, those cows are under fed, they need more energy in the ration. And you just usually can't pick that up in a month, it might take two months or three months, the feeding extra energy, it's a lot easier to take the fat off their back than it is to feed the muscles and fat back onto the cow. So that's a slippery slope, you need to watch what the condition is. Everybody that has cow herds have been feeding cows last year in the year before and I find out they tend to do the same thing next year as they did last year. So if your cows are thin we need to address how to get more feed into the cows. Maybe it's the drought year and you just have poor quality feed again, then it means supplementation, great. supplementation can usually always need a little protein, you actually need a little bit of energy. So with those wheat mids, soy hulls, corn gluten feed, distillers grains, even beet pulp or beet tailings, there's a lot of feeds that you can buy for protein, as well as holding energy as well. Now, there are some pure protein feeds available in North Dakota like soybean meal, canola meal, sunflower meal, linseed meal, and those can be fed. They just don't carry as much energy as those other coproducts that I've been talking about. Mostly because they are protein sources. And if they do carry the energy, then the the price of those protein sources are actually quite a bit higher because of the high protein source because of the protein content. So it's kind of a challenge. When you start mixing these things together what you need, it comes back to ration balancing. So I'll just put in a plug for extension, if you don't have an idea of how to do ration balancing, contact your local county extension agent or your specialist, or reach out to your feed company and put faith in that salesman or representative or nutritionist that they are looking out for your best interest and that product availability available for you. Actually, these commercial manufacturers, they provide a good service for us. Because there's things like minerals, ionophores, extra things, we can add into the ration that you don't deal with coproducts. And quite frankly they buy the coproducts, mix additives with them, whether it be minerals, or supplements or extra protein or whatever and then they formulate a product that works quite well with the feeds that you have, it comes at a cost because they got to make money off the feed too. So a lot of times when I talk about coproducts, we're taking out the middleman and just going directly to the cow's mouth from a factory that produced the coproduct. But those are not balanced rations. Usually, you need to look closely what you have in balanced ration. So while I usually talk about protein and energy, the additional vitamins and minerals is definitely something that needs to be considered as well.
Shaye Koester 19:01
Well, thank you for going into more depth on that. And I mean, you brought up a lot of different options you went through whether they were more protein or energy sources and offered resources for where producers can go to get more help. So kind of switching gears a little bit. From your side and your role. You see a lot of different producers and you know people feed differently. So you see a lot of different operations and how they're going about feeding their cattle. If you could change one thing about how most producers feed their cattle, what would that be?
Dr. Karl Hoppe 19:37
Oh, I think we've already done it over the years We've gone to totally mixed rations, the TMRs the vertical mixers, graining, hay and mixing silage. So we've created a balanced ration for everybody and it works really well. You know where your feed delivery is, you know what the weights are of the feed that you delivered. You can monitor how the cows are doing based off of how much feed is delivered to your cows. You know that type of technology really works well. The downside is it costs money to buy a mixer wagon, it costs money to have another tractor running, it costs fuel to run those things, and it takes time to use them. But if you're short on feed a totally mixed ration works really well. You don't see the dairy cow industry, having an ala carte here, go eat a round bale, eat some hay go out and graze, we're gonna milk you might do that, and you'd get a quart of milk. But if we feed them the way they need to, we get, you know, 100 weights to milk out of a cow in a couple of days. So it's, you know, production takes good nutrition is the answer. So, now, you look at that thing, and you go we're up in Canada during the BSE problems many years ago, and they had cow herds that they couldn't slaughter, nor could they afford to feed. So they had to think of different ways to feed their cow herd that can be cheaper. And that deserves a lot of discussion and consideration. And that means we've opened up the issue for cover crops, grazing feeds in the wintertime, without harvesting feeds, somehow trying to feed a cow herd without using equipment to feed the covered. It doesn't come without challenges, because you know, the cattle got to provide a good ration tour and work accordingly. So you got to be a good stock person to make that whole thing work, but it certainly can't. And then you got to have if you're going to graze throughout the wintertime, you need to have a plan B. In other words, when you have six feet of snow and everything out there that they're supposed to graze through is covered. You need to have a feed resource and the opportunity or availability to actually be them something different. Or however long it might take might be a couple days might be a couple months, we just never know how severe. Now a way to get around that is to swath graze or put the hay into swaths, swaths, and then let the cattle go out and graze the swaths, which means they're usually cows can be, they'll figure it out, they'll bust through the snow layer and eventually find that windrow of hay and then they'll start eat through that. Of course, if you're a January calver that may not be a good deal. If you are calving in April and May, you've definitely got some effort the cow can work on in the wintertime trying to rustle up some feed. Some cows figure it out other cows may not. Maybe those other cows need to go to a different home, if that's your situation that you're working on with the cow herd.
Shaye Koester 22:30
Well, thank you for all of that today, you've really hit on all the questions and topics I wanted to ask you about. But do you have anything else you would like to add? Or share with the audience today?
Dr. Karl Hoppe 22:43
Well, you know, I had some young gentlemen working with me yesterday, and we discussed different types of sheep. And a lot of times when you're looking at animals in the in the show world, they like to have them trim and thin and not much belly to them. And I was trying to make the comment that if you look at a lot of our purebred breeders in the beef cattle industry right now they look for depth the body really deep ribbed animals, animals that take care of a lot of capacity for ages. That's what we need to look at in our industry animals that have capacity to eat all types of forages because that's what our cows are. They're really based on forage consumption. So look at the design of your cattle. And if they can't consume enough forage, you need to look at a different design. That's my thoughts for today when it comes to, you know, something different than feeding. Look for cow type and intake and, you know, sometimes we think that really tight get it animal looks really good looking and athletic and great, but you know, you need to have some guts to them in order to eat a lot of feed. So that would be my my parting comment.
Shaye Koester 23:59
I think that is an outstanding parting comment and thank you again for being on the show to today. If anyone listening to this has questions, is there a way they could potentially contact you a specific email? Or would you prefer they go to their normal extension agent?
Dr. Karl Hoppe 24:16
Well, it's always good to go to your frontline county extension agent and discuss with them because we did put I put on trainings with the county extension agents, and they're always available. I'm here at the Carrington Research Extension Center part of North Dakota State University so they can always call our Carrington Research Extension Center emails, I get a lot of them. So I would prefer that you call the main office and have it routed to me the call or whatever, and that we can converse there. Or we can send an email. It's just sometimes I get lost because of the sheer volume of emails a person gets.
Shaye Koester 24:53
Well, awesome. Thank you again, Karl.
Dr. Karl Hoppe 24:55
Oh, anytime.
Shaye Koester 24:57
And that’s a wrap on that one! Folks, thank you for tuning in and be sure to let me know if you have further questions or want more episodes related to this subject matter. Take care and have a great rest of your day!
