| Byproduct Supplements Affect Stocker Performance |
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by Ryan Reuter |
Byproducts of industrial grain and oilseed processing have become increasingly popular as supplements in cattle diets. Many of these feeds have found utility in feedlot finishing rations and in grow-yard mixed rations. Some stocker and cow/calf producers have also now begun feeding these byproducts to grazing cattle. However, little is known about how different byproducts affect cattle gain on forage diets. Therefore, an experiment was conducted at the Noble Foundation to compare five byproducts as supplements for growing beef steers.
The five byproduct feeds used in this experiment. Clockwise from top left: corn gluten feed (CGF), wheat middlings (WMD), soybean hulls (SBH), barley malt sprout pellets (BMP) and dried distillers grains (DDG).
In each of three years, groups of steers were offered free-choice, medium quality (approximately 10 percent crude protein and 55 percent total digestible nutrients) grass hay for 84 days. In addition, each group received one of five different byproducts (shown in Figure 1). The byproducts were fed each day at the rate of 0.75 percent of the steers' body weight (average of about six pounds of supplement per steer per day).
As can be seen in Figure 2, the dried distiller's grains produced the greatest average daily gain (ADG) among the byproducts. Gain from the distiller's grains was statistically greater than the gain we observed from either the barley malt pellets or the wheat middlings. It should be noted that some of these byproducts (notably the distiller's grains and the corn gluten feed) can contain very high levels of sulfur, which can cause sulfur toxicity in cattle if they are fed at high rates. We recommend that producers test each load of byproduct they receive due to the variability in nutrient content.
Figure 2. Average daily gain observed from feeding five byproduct supplements to steers. See abbreviations in Figure 1.
It is interesting that, at the time this study was conducted, the dried distiller's grains were the most expensive of the five byproducts. Many producers would have been more inclined to use one of the other, cheaper byproducts as a supplement. However, because the distiller's grains produced the greatest ADG in this situation, they also resulted in the lowest cost of gain. The distiller's grains were the most expensive byproduct, but were also the most cost effective.
Each producer's situation is unique, and changing aspects of the feeding situation (e.g., hay type, cattle type, feeding period length, etc.) will certainly alter the results we observed. However, this experiment gives us a very good baseline from which to learn more about how producers can effectively use the different by-products available to them. We plan to conduct additional experiments to help answer the multitude of questions stocker and cow/calf producers have about byproduct feeds.