Our experience has been great with placing calves on http://faq.extension.org/my/add_watch/28997byproducts in controlled studies at receiving. 30 percent distillers grains has worked well with a mixture of forage and grain. We normally recommend 35 to 40 percent forage, 30 to 35 percent wet disatiller grains plus solubles (WDGS), and the remainder as corn and supplement (dry matter, DM basis). If these are wet distillers, this amount will be much more than 30 percent on an as-fed basis because you have to add more to overcome the water. At times, newly received calves will have an aversion to fermented feeds, such as corn silage or high-moisture corn. So we do not recommend fermented feeds that are high in moisture. However, we have had excellent response with starting calves on either WDGS or wet corn gluten feed, despite them both being high in moisture and from a fermentation process. As a general rule, these are very palatable products that cattle consume readily. You may see them take a day or two to overcome an initial shock. The adaptation is very dependent on whether they are freshly weaned calves that may not know how to eat well anyway. You can certainly feed a little less (on a DM basis); but on an as-fed basis, this could be 30 to 50 percent because you will have to add more due to the extra water. Dried distiller grains plus solubles (DDGS) works very well for receiving cattle as well. We have had excellent success with starting cattle on all of these byproducts. The only time it can be quite challenging is taking cattle off of the feed, especially if you have to replace with corn.

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