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FAQ #29007

Have had several clients wonder if they can feed wet distillers to beef cattle running on cornstacks that are in third trimester. Is it cost prohibitive or are there other least cost alternatives? Another question was can you limit consumption with salt so they can feed every three days?

Related resource areas: Beef Cattle


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We have not fed wet distillers to cows grazing stalks. As long as all cows have access to their fair share, wet distillers should work. One of the challenges for the wet in the dead of winter is there might be "chunks" of the product and you wouldn't want many of those. The ground would need to be frozen, so distillers could be fed on the ground without much being lost. Remember that sulfur content can be high, so distribution is important - at rates of 3 to 5 lb of dry matter to cows grazing stalks late in the grazing period - sulfur would not be a problem. Phosphorus is high, so P supplementation is not needed, likely need to get some Ca into them. Self-feeding using salt is not an option for the wet product. We have some data on feeding distillers every-other-day and there is a slight numerical decrease in performance for calves, but not statistical. At level of 3 to 5 lb per head daily or 6 to 10 lb per head every-other-day, there would not be performance differences in cows. Would not recommend feeding over 1/3 of the diet on a dry matter basis - so 8 lb (if wet distillers grains is 35% dry matter = 23 lb as-is) per head dry matter is the upper limit if total dry matter intake of the cow is 24 lb/hd/da.

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