HOW TO FEED
=Balanced Ration.= Cattle like variety in their feed. Not all cattle
have the same tastes and desires. When one cow refuses to eat her
grain, it is well to try her on some other mixture. A good feeder
usually has several grain feeds on hand at a time and is continually
changing and trying out rations. By checking his results at the pail,
he acquires knowledge that is more practical than any chemist can
impart. We know that a cow’s food must contain the necessary elements
needed for her bodily maintenance and the production of milk. We must
supply the substances needed. Rules for figuring values of feeds and
examples of balanced rations are given below, but we also let the cow
in on the discussion. We should not follow rules so closely that we
ignore her likes and dislikes or overlook the results that she puts in
the milk pail and the pocket book. There is probably no living creature
that has for its natural diet a balanced ration, unless it be a
carnivorous animal that eats its prey whole--feathers and all.
A poorly balanced diet may be fed for several months before any
results begin to show. Cattle do fairly well on the corn plant (mainly
carbohydrates), and they also do well on pure alfalfa (a protein feed).
They do better on a combination of the two, but the combination does
not have to be in just the right proportion. In deciding what to feed a
cow the good feeder uses his eyes more than his pencil. If the muscle
and body of the animal needs building up, he uses protein feeds in
large proportions. Cattle inclined to be too sleek and fat often milk
better if fed more carbohydrates in proportion. But we should never
pass up one or the other completely. Notice that I speak of only two
substances in food--protein and carbohydrates. There are others, but we
need not be concerned about them. All we want to know from the chemist
is approximately the amount of these two elements the feed contains.
Fat is considered the same as a carbohydrate but has more than two
times the value of carbohydrates.
Dairy cows should be kept sleek and thrifty, but lean while they
are producing milk. The dry cow should be allowed to get as fat as
possible, for the fatter and more thrifty she is the more milk she will
give, after freshening. To maintain the cow in the right condition, we
consider both the kind and the amount of feed. Many times we decrease
the grain ration to keep a cow from getting fat and going dry too soon.
Too much grain fed is a great waste. The right amount to be fed can not
be figured so much by the size of the cow as by what she does with it.
The milk pail contains the answer to most feeding problems. Increase
the feed slightly and if no more milk is produced, begin to decrease
and watch what happens. We have to do this for each cow just as we have
to adjust the carburetor on a Ford.
Elsewhere in this book, I discuss pastures and how to make the most of
them. I get grass that is tall enough for the cattle to eat to the best
advantage and I keep it from getting old and tough by using the system
of divided pastures described there. But in doing this, the grass must
be pastured off fairly close before turning the cattle into the next
pasture. If care is not taken, the cattle are having alternately a
feast and a famine by the change. To offset this, I usually feed as
much good alfalfa as the cows will eat all of the time. It does not
require much hay but it makes up for the variation in pasture. Even
when on fine pasture, cows like a little hay and should have it. I
usually pasture cows at night as well as during the day. By all means
feed cows at night if they are required to stay in the lot.
Where the heaviest records are made in milk production, they are nearly
all made at prohibitive costs so far as the value of the product is
concerned. This is because too large a proportion of the feed consumed
is high priced. We must take into consideration the price of grain,
the price of rough feed, and the price of milk products, before we can
determine the proportion of grain and other feed that should be given
to the dairy cow.
We can make milk out of rough feed without any grain under the proper
conditions. When grain is too much out of proportion in price, we can
safely do without it, if our rough feed happens to be good pasture or
good alfalfa hay and silage. If our roughage is too poor, it rarely
pays to compel good dairy cows to live on it alone, for their future
usefulness will be impaired by starvation. A drought in summer with the
resulting short pasture often knocks down the milk flow for all of the
next winter and makes all that year’s production more expensive. Starve
a good cow and she soon becomes a poor one, for she must adjust herself
to the new condition. The new condition she adopts is the same as that
of the scrub. The scrub is a product of starvation. She has been bred
to withstand hardships instead of using all efforts to produce milk.
Never let a good cow go hungry for pasture or hay.
=Water.= A milk cow requires about twelve and one-half gallons of pure
water per day. In summer it should be fresh and cool water. In winter
it should be fairly warm. The water should be as accessible as possible
at all times. Twice a day is not often enough for milk cows. Especially
when cattle are on dry feed, the more water they can be induced to
consume, the more butter fat and milk solids it will put into the pail.
In the winter we usually water cows three times a day in the barn with
water no colder than comes from the well, and slightly salt their feed
so that they will drink water in abundance. I do not know just what
effect stagnant, dirty water has on a milk cow, but do not think I
would want to drink the milk that is made up largely of such water.
Also if cattle wade in infected water and get their udders and teats in
it, the milk will to a certain extent be infected as is the water.
=Calf and Heifer Feeding.= In raising calves by hand there is more
danger of overfeeding than of underfeeding. There is also danger in
feeding milk that is too cold. In feeding an average young calf we
usually take about two quarts of the first milk that is drawn from the
cow, which is low in butter fat, and feed the milk fresh and warm with
the animal heat in it. After three weeks, skim milk may be substituted
especially if it is warm and fresh. If the milk is artificially
warmed it should be fed at a temperature of at least eighty degrees.
Do not dilute milk with water. Let the calf have what water it wants
separately. A calf should have milk until at least three months old
but at the end of a week it will eat shelled corn and oats. These
grains should be fed liberally to calves that do not have enough milk
for a complete ration. After a calf is one month old it may be raised
on milk made from dried buttermilk or condensed buttermilk or on skim
milk of any kind, provided it is not fed too much at a time nor fed
milk that is too cold. No changes such as from sweet milk to sour
milk should be made suddenly. If feeding condensed buttermilk the milk
after being diluted should be tested for solids with a lactometer. Some
manufacturers of such products give directions for reducing it with
water to such an extent that it would look like ordinary skim milk
but have only half its value. This may make it appear that the feeder
is getting a lot for his money, but he will not long be fooled by
directions of that kind if he is watching the cost of his feed and the
growth of his calves and knows what results he should expect for his
money.
People sometimes tell of stunted calves that turned out to be good
cows but I do not think that a calf can be stunted a minute without
being affected. If a stunted calf makes a good cow, which seldom ever
happens, certain it is that if the calf had been well nourished the cow
would have been even greater. Animals do not grow all of their lives.
They grow while they are young. Every minute of that youth period that
we lose for growth is lost forever. Growth is the natural development
of bone, muscle, nervous system, circulation, etc., that the animal
needs for hard work when mature. Breeders of pure bred cattle, who
expect to make records with their young stock, feed them grain every
day. I do not think this is necessary or practical for the farmer to
do, but certain it is, that no promising heifer should ever be allowed
to get thin. She should have good pasture during all of the summer and
should have plenty of well-cured feed, corn fodder or corn silage, and
a fair amount of alfalfa every day during the winter.
=Chemical Analysis.= A chemical analysis of some of the most commonly
used feeds for dairy cows follows:
Total Dry Digestive Nutrients in 100 lbs.
FEEDING STUFF Matter in Crude Carbohydrates
100 lbs. Protein Fat Total
Alfalfa Hay 91.4 10.6 39.0 0.9 51.6
Timothy Hay 88.4 3.0 42.8 1.2 48.5
Prairie Hay (Western) 93.5 4.0 41.4 1.1 47.9
Clover, Sweet, White 91.4 10.9 38.2 0.7 50.7
Sorghum Fodder, Dry 90.3 2.8 44.8 2.0 52.1
Corn Silage 26.3 1.1 15.0 0.7 17.7
Corn and Its Products
Corn, Dent 89.5 7.5 67.8 4.6 85.7
Gluten feed 91.3 21.6 51.9 3.2 80.7
Hominy 89.9 7.0 61.2 7.3 84.6
Wheat and Its Products
Wheat 89.8 9.2 67.5 1.5 80.1
Bran 89.9 12.5 41.6 3.0 60.9
Wheat Feed (Shorts
and Bran) 89.9 12.9 45.1 4.0 67.0
Rye and Its Products
Rye 90.6 9.9 68.4 1.2 81.0
Rye feed (Shorts and
Bran) 88.5 12.2 55.8 2.9 74.5
Oats and Its Products
Oats 90.8 9.7 52.1 3.8 70.4
Oat Hulls 93.2 2.0 45.2 1.3 50.1
Emmer (Spelt) 91.3 9.5 63.2 1.7 76.5
Linseed Meal 90.4 31.7 37.9 2.8 75.9
Cotton Seed Meal 92.5 37.0 21.8 8.6 78.2
=Rations for the Dairy Cow.= Haecker’s standard for the feeding of
dairy cows is as follows:
DAILY ALLOWANCE
Crude
Prot. Carbo. Fat
lbs. lbs. lbs.
For Maintenance of 1000 lb. cow 0.7 7.0 0.1
For each pound of 3% milk 0.047 0.2 0.017
For each pound of 3.5% milk 0.049 0.22 0.019
For each pound of 4% milk 0.054 0.24 0.021
To illustrate the table there follows the allowance for a 1000 pound
cow producing 25 pounds of 4% milk daily:
Crude
Prot. Carbo. Fat
lbs. lbs. lbs.
For Maintenance 0.70 7.0 0.10
For 25 pounds of 4% milk 1.35 6.0 0.52
---- ---- ----
Total 2.05 13.0 0.62
Below are given some balanced rations commonly fed to dairy cows:
Total
Dry Digestible Carbohydrates Digestible
Matter Protein and fats Nutrients
lbs. lbs. lbs. lbs. lbs.
No. 1
Corn 10 8.95 .75 7.24 8.57
Corn Stover 10 8.10 .21 4.31 4.61
Alfalfa Hay 12 10.97 1.27 4.78 6.19
No. 2
Corn Silage 40 10.52 .44 6.28 7.08
Alfalfa Hay 10 9.14 1.06 3.99 5.16
Wheat Bran 2 1.79 .25 .89 1.21
Corn Meal 6 5.32 .41 4.35 5.08
No. 3
Corn Silage 35 9.20 .38 5.49 6.19
Alfalfa Hay 10 9.14 1.06 3.99 5.16
Ground Corn 5 4.43 .34 3.62 4.19
Wheat Bran 5 4.49 .62 2.23 3.04
Linseed Meal 1¹⁄₂ 1.35 .47 .61 1.13
At the Nebraska State Fair in 1920 there was in the Dairy building a
large Holstein cow designated as the champion cow of Nebraska for 1919.
She is owned by Chris Stryker of Red Cloud. I copied from the records
the amount of feed she consumed in a year and the amount of her
production. They are as follows:
Feed Returns
lbs. lbs. lbs.
Corn 1790 Beets 9645 Milk 26,721.5
Oil Meal 1352 Dried beet Butter 1,066
Barley 463 pulp 1254
Bran 2312 Hay 4068
Oats 498 Silage 4680
---- ------
Total 6452 Total 19,647
It will be noticed that she consumed a little less than 18 pounds
of grain per day on an average throughout the year, that the grain
consisted of five varieties, and that the rough feed was of a high
order, which makes it more expensive than most of us can afford to use
as a regular feed. Beets are chemically about equal to corn silage, but
in actual results in feeding they are considerably superior. I have not
fed dried beet pulp, but I have fed it fresh and it is a very good milk
producer. Cows milk down thin on it. If we would increase the figures
on the dried beet pulp to what it would be if the pulp were fed fresh,
it would bring the beet ration up to at least three times the amount of
the silage ration.