 So welcome to the video we're going to do today on the value of knowing what you are feeding. This is a second part of the hay testing video we did earlier, and just to introduce myself, I'm Katie Wert. I'm the Grant County Extension Agent in Ag and Natural Resources. And in the hay testing video, we did a fun little game with the prices right and talked about what it costs not to test your hay. We focus mostly on the assumption that a producer might over feed grain and add an unnecessary expense to his operation. So the other part of that is not feeding enough or not feeding the right nutrients that your animals need. So today I'm going to ask Kitter County Agent Penny Nester and livestock extension specialist Barbara about the cost associated with not feeding enough or the quality of feed that your animal needs. So let's go to Penny Nester first with Kitter County Extension. Penny, would you like to introduce yourself? Hi, my name is Penny Nester and I'm the NDSU Extension Agent in Kitter County for Agriculture and Natural Resources. And today I'm going to talk a little bit about nutrient requirements of the beef cow. Okay, Penny, what are the baseline nutrient requirements of a mature cow? Well, that's a great question, Katie. And it has a couple of different issues that you have to figure out before you can answer it. The first is the nutrient requirements are going to depend on a little bit about based on that specific animal in general. First off, what age that animal is, the month since that animal is have, her mature body weight, and her peak milk production. Those are just the baselines based on the animal. There's also baselines based on the environment that you're feeding that animal in. Temperature, wind speed, hair coat thickness, moisture, and mud in the pan are just some examples of environmental conditions that are going to change in nutrient requirements. So for most of us in this part of the region, our animals probably averaged about 1400 pounds body weight with about a 30 pound peak milk production. So for that, our baseline energy requirements for those cows are really going to repeat at peak milk production at 30 pounds of milk. And then they're going to really go down a lot at weaning time and vary and start to increase as that calf or that fetus is going to be developed in that cow. For your baseline cow requirements, you have three different stages of production. The first stage is your maintenance stage and your early lactation stage. Your crude protein at that time should be about 6% of your dry matter. That equates to about 1.63 pounds of crude protein per head per day per animal. For your energy requirements or your total digestible nutrients of dry matter, that equates to about 45%. And that will come out to about 12.24 pounds per head per day. Your dry matter intake, you can expect that cow is going to intake about 27.2 pounds. The next stage of production is going to be your last one third of gestation where your fetus is being developed. That cows crude protein requirements are going to increase at that point in time to about 8.8% crude protein required or about 2.45 pounds per head per day. Your energy is also going to increase with about 56.6% TDN which equates to about 15.62 pounds per head per day. And then your dry matter intake is going to pretty much stay the same because that fetus is taking up some capacity in that animal and it's going to stay at about 27.6 pounds of dry matter per day. The last stage of your nutrient requirement stage is going to be your milk production stage. So that's right after that animal calves. So your requirements do go up at that point in time to and your requirements actually peak at that point in time. So your milk crude protein requirements are going to be about 11.7% crude protein which equates to about 3.92 pounds per head per day. Your energy is going to increase as well to 62.2% of total digestible nutrients and then that will become about 20.7 pounds per head per day. And then your dry matter intake is going to increase as well to about 33.3 pounds per head per day. Thanks Penny. That's very interesting. In the beginning you mentioned that climate or environmental factors also affect the baseline requirements. What can you tell me about how our climate affects the nutrient requirements of a cow when we're feeding this winter? So with our environment we have some extremely cold temperatures in the winter and with those extremely cold temperatures we're going to have to feed more energy dense feeds to equate for that energy lost in maintaining body heat. So one rule of thumb that we try to recommend to producers is to increase your total digestible energy at least one pound for every five degrees below zero degrees Fahrenheit. So when we are looking at temperatures that are dipping below in those negative numbers we do want to start increasing our feed intake and increasing more feed with higher energy values. So that means that we are going to be feeding probably a more denser hay so alfalfa hay and for the grass hay and potentially feeding more grain in that diet. The other thing to keep in mind is that while those animals are in the extreme cold their intake can actually increase. So usually our intake for an average size cow is about 2.5 percent of their body weight in extremely cold conditions that can increase to up to 3.5 percent body weight for those animals. So those animals are going to need to eat more and eat a higher quality feed to stay warm in the winter. The other thing that you don't want to forget is you don't want to forget about waste. Usually animals will waste more in the winter just because they like to use that waste for bedding as well and it's also good to supply bedding during those cold temperatures. Well thank you Penny I really appreciate your input on the nutrient requirements of our mature cattle. I also have a few questions about body condition scoring. I know Farah has done a lot of body condition scoring on livestock so maybe Farah would you want to introduce yourself? I sure can and thanks for having me as part of this Katie. I'm Farah Brummer I'm the NBSU Area Extension Specialist in livestock systems and I'm based out of the Central Grasslands Research Extension Center here just north of Street or North Dakota. Thanks Farah. So could you tell me is there any evidence of reduced conception rates with low body condition scores? Yeah there sure is Katie and so we do have research that shows that really the best inception rates that we can hope for are going to be at body conditions for five for mature cows and for heifers who want them a little heavier but the body conditions for five for mature cows and that is something that has been documented. So when we look at breeding cows that are in lower body condition score is it possible for her to conceive? Sure but you're not setting her up with the optimum rate for success. So it's really quite a lot of energy that's required to get her up and productive and so if we try to skimp and try to breed her at body condition score or maybe we're going to get a calf maybe we're not there's no guarantees that we're going to get a calf at body condition score five but the chances are a lot higher. Okay thank you Farah the you know the ultimate cost of not supplying enough feed or the correct nutrients on our feed is losing body condition score and reducing conception rates. So you know in on the other side of things could you talk about the cost in dollars for producers to increase the body condition score from say a four to a five where they might have the best setup? Sure yeah it gets expensive you know once we start trying to feed up especially in the dead of winter but to start with I'll talk about some numbers that that I just ran here and this is current prices so we're looking at the fall of 2015 here when I give these prices. This is looking to upgrade a mature cow from a four to a five in a 60-day window so about two months pretty pretty moderate increase. We look at a 1200 pound cow and then a 1500 pound cow it's kind of the parameters for what we might be working with here and we look in terms of corn addition that the second row which describes corn costs there on the slide in front of you and then drop down to dry distiller grain cost and then the last row there which is alfalfa hay cost and you'll see that in today's markets they're all pretty comparable for that 60 day window per cow it's going to cost you for your for your 1200 pound cow approximately $15 ahead and for your larger cow your 1500 pound cow it's going to cost you about $18 $17 to $19 ahead that is not including yardage so that is not including the delivery cost of for that feed every day with alfalfa you'll save on that cost because you can feed every third day but in general it's going to cost you one way or another to upgrade that cow now that's in a perfect case scenario we know from the from what penny talked about that winters here are very cold and so those costs are actually going to go up because we are dealing with very cold we're dealing with wind and so our energy requirements subsequently also go up relative to the weather and so you can expect to be paying up to three times the cost if not more of what I've shown on this slide here again it's going to vary on the environmental conditions such as whether it's wet or not what the wind chill is and it's also going to vary on the type of windbreak and shelter belt that you might have available the bottom line is it's expensive can you upgrade a cow in the middle of winter to from a four to a five yes you can but it will cost you well thank you far and penny for helping to summarize for me what the baseline nutrient requirements of our cattle are and the the proper body condition scoring and how to increase that and what that costs you know ultimately I hope this will help you realize that hay testing is a cheap investment in properly managing your livestock and that not knowing the quality of your feed could cost you in more ways than just one you know like I said again in the first video we talked about overfeeding here it's more about underfeeding or not feeding the right quality of hay so we hope this will take producers to the next step to test their hay and take that cheap investment and make it real again this is Katie Ward with the Grant County Extension Service and if you have any questions you know Farah, Penny and I would be happy to help you out.