How Much Alfalfa to Feed a Beef Cow
Determining How Much Forage a Beefiness Cow Consumes Each 24-hour interval
April 2013
It's April and for cow/calf producers in the Northern Great Plains the majority of the cows are calving or are virtually to start calving. Moo-cow/calf producers during this time menstruation are typically feeding harvested forages. A frequent question from producers is "how much will my cows swallow on a daily basis"? Producers want to meet the cows' nutrient requirement, but sure don't want to over-feed expensive forages. With the dry out conditions this past summer and harvested forages at a premium, closely estimating the amount of feed needed to become through the winter and early on bound volition be of import to incorporate cost.
The Difference Between Intake on a Dry Thing and As Is Basis
This can be a challenging concept to explicate – what the difference betwixt dry matter and equally-fed – particularly when nutriments for beefiness cows are on a dry matter basis. Intake on a dry affair footing ways that the forage doesn't include moisture. Still, we know that the forages contain moisture and non all forages incorporate the same amount of moisture. So if forage intake can be determined on a dry matter footing, it can easily exist converted to an "equally is" or "equally-fed" footing.
As an example, if information technology were determined the daily dry thing intake of a group of i,200 pound cow eating an boilerplate quality hay is 24 pounds per head and the hay that they are consuming is 88% dry out matter, these cows would consume about 27 (24 pounds/.88) pounds per head per day on an as-fed basis.
If the same group of ane,200 pound cows are fed a ration where office of the ration chosen for corn silage to exist fed at 10 pounds per head per day on a dry matter ground and the corn silage is 35% dry affair and 65% moisture, the pounds of corn silage in the nutrition would be 28.5 (10 pounds/.35) pounds per head per day on an as-fed basis. Think that of the 28.5 pounds of silage, xviii.v pounds is water and 10 pounds is silage.
What Determines Daily Forage Intake
There are a number of dissimilar factors that decide the daily intake of a cow. The chief factors are moo-cow weight, forage quality, and stage of production (gestating or lactating). When feeding the same forage, cows that weigh 1,300 pounds will consume more on a daily basis compared to lighter weight cows that counterbalance 1,100 pounds. In addition, cows that are lactating will consume more feed than cows that are not lactating.
Provender quality impacts dry out matter intake of cows. As the forage quality increases, indicated equally an increment in TDN content of the provender, the amount of the forage that the cow can consume besides increases. Every bit forage quality increases, there is more than leaf as compared to stem. When quality is low, at that place is more stem, therefore more cell wall contents that are not equally easily digested - the forage does not laissez passer through the rumen very fast.
In addition, as forages increase in maturity, there is an increase in lignin content. Lignin is non digested past the rumen microbes.
A good example of how forage quality impacts the corporeality a cow can eat daily is wheat straw. Wheat straw is low in protein and energy, 4.0% rough protein and xl% TDN. When cows accept full access to wheat harbinger, they don't quit eating wheat straw because they don't like it, they quit eating information technology because they can't stuff anymore into their rumen. Straw has such a low digestibility that it takes extra time in the rumen for it to be digested and passed through the rumen earlier more can exist consumed. Daily intake on a dry affair basis may be 1.6% to 1.eight% of her body weight. In comparing, corn silage will typically be most seventy% TDN and lactating beefiness cows can hands eat two.5% to ii.7% of their body weight on a dry matter basis of this feed.
There are some "pollex rules" to assist judge daily feed intake of cows on a dry out affair basis consuming forages of differing quality when they are either gestating or lactating.
- When forage quality is low (52% TDN or less) and cows are not lactating, they will consume 1.8% and lactating cows about 2.0% of their weight on a dry out matter basis.
- If the forage quality is boilerplate (TDN content between 52% and 59%), not-lactating cows will consume most 2.0% to 2.1.% and lactating cows about two.3% of their trunk weight daily on a dry matter basis of this forage.
As an example, if the forage were 55% TDN and lactating cows on the average weigh 1,200 pounds, then it could be estimated that they would swallow 28 (1200 pounds 10 0.023) pounds of hay daily on a dry matter ground. If the hay were 88% dry affair, on an "every bit-fed" basis, cows would consume about 32 (28 pounds/.88) pounds daily. If there were 200 caput of cows in the herd, it would take well-nigh 3.2 ton of this hay per solar day [(200 head x 32 lb/hd/da)/2000lb] not bookkeeping for whatever waste.
Estimating daily feed intake of your cow herd is the first pace in determining the corporeality of provender that is needed to be on-hand for a harvested forage feeding program. When forage availability is tight similar it is during drought, being able to make up one's mind how much inventory needed will help enhance the profit potential of the cow/calf enterprise.
Rick Rasby
Beefiness Specialist
Academy of Nebraska
Source: https://beef.unl.edu/cattleproduction/forageconsumed-day
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