 Okay. So, you guys have already heard this morning a lot about we know the challenges that you're facing. Drought takes management challenges that already exist and just makes everything harder. Everything has an added challenge. You think, oh, I could go graze these, you know, graze my small grains. Well, you got nitrates. Oh, I'm going to kick them into this passion that we don't use very much. Well, you got water quality issues. So, everything is just harder and decisions are difficult. And so, it's really important to just sit down and take time and think about things and look at what your options really are. So, that's kind of what I'm going to talk about today. So, obviously one of the first consequences is we have reduced forage availability. That can cause a lot of different production limitations. Cows lose condition, reduce pregnancy rates, obviously impacts on milk production and weaning weights, right? Surprisingly, many times during a drought, the forage quality is kind of the main issue as you can get some actually pretty decent forage quality in a drought. That plant doesn't mature like it would normally and so the nutrients can be concentrated. How many of you guys have seen your cattle do good on short hard grass versus the tall washi stuff, right? So, you can get good quality but do you have enough of it to last through the grazing season? And usually the answer that is no and that's when we see these issues on production taking place. We talked a little bit about water quality and quantity issues. I'll talk a little bit more about that here in a bit and obviously increased expenses. You're looking at purchasing alternative feeds or more feeds than you would usually buy. We're also coming off of a really hard winter. So, you probably used about 150 times more hay than you thought you were going to do. So, hay supplies are short. Looking at hauling water or tapping into rural water, I mean, all those things cause more expenses. So, what are our options though? How do we deal with some of this stuff? And there are options. You just have to be able to, with the clear heads sit down and think about what they might be. Obviously culling is an option. Culling your open cows are ones that you might cull later in the fall. Just maybe moving that up a little bit earlier. How many of you guys have moved cows to town already? Quite a few. So, be sure though that you're looking at production records. I was talking to a vet at the West River Vet Services and he's really concerned because he's been doing a lot of early season preg checks and people are just getting rid of anything that's not pregnant. And you need to incorporate your production records because you don't want to get rid of your really good producing cows just because she wasn't pregnant to the first cycle. So, be sure you combine that pregnancy check data with production records of both cows. So, take a look at how do you use your existing feed resources efficiently? Reducing hay waste? We'll be looking at some alternatives and things like that. I understand later this morning someone's going to be talking to you about early weaning so I'm not going to discuss that much unless you guys have a specific question for me. Also, options of feeding in a dry lot. Any other things that you guys think of that you want to discuss? So, I have some handouts like I said. If you guys, if you didn't get one and you want one just let me know and I can email it to you or whatever because I do have some resources listed on there that you might find useful. So, one of the things that becomes particularly important during a drought is how you're managing your grazing. You need to be able to take a look at what your carrying capacity is and carrying capacity relates to how much forage is produced in a given unit. And that determines your stocking rates. And so, if you're not out there clipping and weighing and getting an actual number of forage production, it's really difficult to manage your grazing. So, there's some tools there through NDSU. If you like the good old fashioned paper copy of things, you can do that. That will walk you through, get using a range frame and clippers and taking multiple samples from across your pastures, making sure that you're representing all the different forage types and soil types and things like that. We also did our environmental stewardship specialist recently developed an app. So, you can just take your phone out with you. It can be used on both the Android and the iPhone devices. So, you can just go to the store and download that NDSU grazing calculator app and it'll tell you what your stocking rate should be and how many AUMs you have based on those clip samples. So, I know Rick and Marissa talked a little bit about analysis this morning. I have to say nitrates because that's just what we do. Watch out for your nitrates. We have seen lower nitrates than I would have expected based on lab tests that were sent off after we did a quick test that came back positive. There's a variety of reasons for that. One thing is these plants have been continuously stressed throughout their growing season. So, they started off in a stressful situation which might be a little bit different than if they're growing along in optimal conditions and all of a sudden the drop hits in July or August or something like that and things really build up. So, they may have adjusted a little bit to the situation that they're in. The other thing is most of the plants have fairly shallow roots especially on our small grains and so they're maybe not taking up as much nitrate from the soil as they would usually take up. Obviously, there's other things besides the soil that impact that. Your fertilization management, the weather, you know, cloudy weather can make nitrates go up so can hot weather. There's really no way that we can tell you what's going to drive that. So, just you have to test. As long as you're sending in the nitrate test, you might as well get a sample at least for crude protein and energy so that we can help you balance a ration and figure out what your cows are needing and what they might be deficient in. This is going to be really important with all the small grade hay that's probably going to be fed this year. I have a friend over at Lemon. The first field of spring wheat that they harvested for hay was 19% protein. That is really good stuff, right? The next week it was 8%. So, from field to field and from day to day, that stuff is going to be really variable. It also depends on how much grain is filling in or not. So, make sure you're getting that stuff tested. CRP hay usually has a really low leaf to stem ratio. That stuff is probably going to be pretty stemmy even though you're able to harvest it a little bit earlier this year. So, those are things that we would probably blend off with a higher quality forage or maybe feed earlier in the season like fall prior to when nutritional requirements really increase later in gestation. Talk to a couple agents around the Southwest and one thing they really wanted me to get across was to please go and get a bale probe when you're collecting samples to send in. The results that we get you guys back is only as good as a sample that you bring in. So, if you grab a couple of grab samples from the windmill that's closest to the road as you're headed into town, it's not really going to tell us if that represents your entire field. So, if you're taking it out of the standing field, you need to walk in a zigzag pattern across the field. It might take a little time. Call your agent. They like to go out for a walk, right, Marissa? Yeah. It might take a little more time than getting a grab sample, but it's going to be a better sample and you're going to be able to more reliably base any kind of information on that, okay? Just an example. This little chart here came from the North American Feed Testing Lab. So, they just did an average of seven haylots and a lot is defined as taken off of a same field in a 24 hour period, okay? And they did grab samples versus 20 core samples in each lot. And you can see how the feed value was much lower in the grab samples than in the core samples. And that's just due to when you grab a sample, you're probably not getting the right ratio of the stem and leaves where that bale probe is representing around 65 to 70 some percent of the variation in the bale. So, it's just a really, it's more accurate way to do it. So, here's a couple of pups that talk about how to sample feed for analysis and then how to interpret the results that you get back. These labs will be pretty variable on what they get back if they give you any recommendations or not. So, these are just a couple publications that can help you with that stuff. Anybody have any questions yet? Right, exactly. Because if you have, if you did the grab sample, you think, oh my gosh, we don't have enough, we don't have enough quality here, we probably better get a supplement. And with the core samples, you might decide we're good to go, we don't need to buy any additional feed this year. Good point. So, once you have your feed analysis done, really important to sit down and do a feed inventory. Okay, so we need to look at how many animals are on hand and what type and class those are because requirements are going to vary obviously for your calves, your pregnant cows, dry cows, whatever it happens to be. Take a realistic look at feeding rates, how many pounds per day do you need to feed? How long is the feeding period going to be? It's going to be longer than you want it to be probably this year. We're, like I said, we're already short of hay and we're looking at heading into fall and winter. It's not far away, you guys know how fast it's going to come up. So, it's smart to start thinking about your needs now instead of getting to October and thinking, oh my gosh, I have no idea where I'm going to get stuff locked in. I did hand out, or did you guys hand out the sheet with the by-products? Okay, so the by-product feed sheet came from Dr. Carl Hoppe at the Carrington Research Center and he called around to all these places in North Dakota that that offer different kinds of alternative feeds and he got prices on most of them. There was a few that they weren't sure about prices yet or he didn't get a call back but the phone number is listed there so you can give them a call and and see what they might have at least get on their list if you're thinking about some of those alternatives and I'll talk about those a little bit later but that's a pretty good resource to just go through if you're thinking about some distillers or something like that it's got a list of contacts for you and also probably some current prices. Okay, so once you know what your feed needs are going to be you need to look at what you have on hand obviously so all feed resources that you could potentially get or that you already have figure out what those are and then take what you have and what you need and figure out what you have to get these feed resources can be valuable for more than just planning your nutritional management. How many of you guys have bankers that might ask for something like this? I know a couple can also be useful if you're going into the FSA office I would say would you guys find this valuable if your producers maybe knew how much they had on hand it's also good for tax purposes too okay so how do you figure out how much your cows are going to eat there's a lot of factors that can affect forage intake obviously weight, 1300 pound cow is going to eat more than 1100 pound cow forage quality can play a huge role in this so just for an example we'll look at intake of wheat straw wheat straw has around four percent protein 40 percent TDN okay so they can eat that around one and a half percent of body weight they don't stop eating wheat straw because they don't like it most cows like it pretty well they stop because all of that fiber in the wheat straw is bulk in the rumen so they're just physically not able to consume as much as the cow would like to consume whereas you look at something like corn silage it has around 70% TDN they're going to be able to really increase intake of that because it's high quality passage rate is sped up in the room and it doesn't take up as much room and they can eat two and a half percent of their body weight so that will impact how much the cow is able to eat obviously stays in production whether she's dry or lactating it's going to impact that and then if she is lactating how much milk she's producing is going to influence how much she's taking in and then environmental factors temperature things like that they're going to eat less when it's hot and more when it's cold so this is just some guidelines of how forage quality can impact intake so you look at the low quality forage which we consider at less than 52% TDN um they can eat a dry cow can eat less than two percent of her body weight in those forages and the lactating cap need a little bit more and that's typically the case even as as you go up in quality a dry cow is going to eat a little bit less lactating cows are going to eat more and I put an example down there at the bottom if you have a 55% energy forage 90% dry matter and your cow weighs two hundred fifty pounds you just take the 1250 times the you go over and it's two and a half percent of body weight so that's 31.25 pounds divided by the 0.9 and that gives you 34.7 pounds of dry matter makes sense let's look a little bit at how the nutrient requirements of beef cattle change based on the class and type of animal and stage of production so your growing heifers are going to need to gain around a pound a day from weaning until breeding in order to get to that 60 to 65 percent of mature weight right so that heifer is limited physically by how much she can eat so only around 14 some pounds per day but if you look at the pounds of protein requires and the pounds of energy she requires on a percentage basis it's a lot higher than most other classes of animals okay so that animal is going to need less of a higher quality feed so this can come into play when you're when you're doing your feed resources you're going to want to save that higher quality feed and kind of group these animals and feed them according to groups because it's going to be a more efficient way to use your feed resources that you have on hand you can also look that next group has first calf heifers second trimester requirements and then late gestation and then into lactation you can see that the protein requirement doesn't change a lot from second to third trimester but the energy requirement goes up dramatically that's mostly due to fetal development okay so and they're also growing still need lots of energy for that and you can see how much lactation bumps up all requirements approximately 35 percent from mid gestation to lactation so huge increase in requirements so when's the best time to put weight on your cows okay yep after weaning in the fall not right before calving right you it's pretty hard to get weight on cows prior to calving you can do it but it's sure going to cost you question we're reading your chart there uh dry matter intake right that's kmi does that mean a cow only has to be 31 pounds of hay at 1,250 pounds that's yep so that's good quality hay thank you so the dry matter intake requirement yes it's based on a good quality hay it will go it it could go up if it was based on a lower quality and so that's why we look at the percentage of the nutrients that's required and not just the percentage of nutrients that were that's required but the amounts so the dry matter intake can really vary that's just a that's just a ballpark to kind of give you an idea of what i'm talking about but the important thing is how many pounds of energy and protein they need because that doesn't change i have a question i see you have a first gap ever weighing 850 pounds uh they don't sell them anymore they don't buy them then church should probably start at 1050 and then go up on the first count ever to them well if you i was figuring a 1200 and some pound cow so if you figure that she's at 65 percent of mature weight up breeding and then gaining about a pound a day in the mid gestation she'd probably be 850 to 900 pounds it sure could be more this is just kind of an example but there are people that look at this and they're going to feed their first count of efforts 17 pounds of feed in the start because they're happy to do that well obviously so then that that would increase according to weight right yeah so you have to look at the weight the the weight is going to impact requirements yeah just an example okay i'm getting into a mature cow looking at the requirements increase from mid gestation to lactation protein requirements are going to double during that time obviously lots of protein needed for milk production and that's also going to impact the quality of colostrum so it's extremely important to get good quality protein into those cows energy requirements also go up not quite not as much but definitely almost double sorry tdn is total digestible nutrients so that's just a measure of energy that we have there's actually no direct measure of energy that you can get in the lab because there's so many things that contribute energy in the diet so you get energy from protein you get energy from fiber you get energy from starch and so basically what the lab does is calculates fiber protein and all the things that contribute energy and they have an equation and so that's a calculated number that you get back from the lab but it's a pretty standard number that we use when we're balancing rations thank you i got a question you're basing it on a 1250-pound cow and that 31 columns works out to two and a half percent of the body weight is that correct um this so this table was taken out of the nutrient requirements for beef cattle um it may or may usually between two and three percent i don't know what exactly they used here 50-pound cow if you multiply that by the two and a half percent that should give you a dry matter intake correct depending on the quality of the feed yeah yep yep it can it can vary a little bit like i said i mean the the quality of the feed will really impact how much she's able to you're basing this off of a balanced diet i mean that yes you know that's why you're testing all your different kinds of feed correct yep so how much water do different classes of livestock require lactating cow this is this is based at 90 degrees which is we've been hitting that pretty frequently lately so 18 to 20 gallons um a little bit less for dry cows and heifers obviously they're a little bit smaller um growing cattle actually require quite a bit of water again it's based mostly on weight and we talked a little bit about this this morning but the water quality we are seeing a lot of issues heard from some producers across the southwest that have lost cattle tds levels of 21 000 and sulfates over 5000 those will definitely tip something over um water quality will change throughout the season so you may not have a problem now but as things continue to evaporate those nutrients are going to get more concentrated so be sure you're keeping an eye on that and watching for any kind of i mean a lot of times you can just tell by animal performance if they kind of start to get loose stools or maybe not be as efficient in gaining the water can really impact how they utilize feed so be sure you're looking at water quality and getting those things analyzed so now is a really good time during drought to think about how you're managing your feeding and there might be some things you can do to kind of change things up explore some different options i know nobody likes change right we all want things to be better but we don't have to actually want to change to do it um but there are some locally available feeds we're lucky because we live in north dakota where there's a lot of byproducts so don't be afraid to try some of that stuff talk to your nutritionist talk to your extension agent um see what information you can get on those and see how you can possibly incorporate that into your current feeding strategy it's important um when you're using a forage-based ration if you do or if you do happen to have range resources still um or you're using some type of hay low quality hay or hay that was purchased earlier make sure you're getting the right supplement for those cows out on the range i talked a little bit earlier about how a lot of times we can actually have fairly decent forage quality you're not going to know that unless you get an analysis done right but many times during a drought i i see a lot of people feeding cake okay and cake is mainly a protein supplement it will also supply a little bit of energy but anything over about 20 protein we can kind of consider that a protein supplement what is protein supplement due to forage digestibility anybody know um such as like the soy holes or distillers grains um those high fiber feeds won't have the same negative impact on forage availability and digestion as the high starch feeds okay so you can actually use energy supplements with forage that aren't going to have that negative impact if you're using the fiber-based feeds obviously i i mentioned this before feed your highest quality feeds to animals with your higher requirements um and then save your better feed for when when future requirements are highest so just a kind of a rule of thumb a pound of grain or concentrate can replace two to three pounds of hay just depending on the type of hay that you're looking at if you want to look at substituting some of your forage um if the cow is getting the majority of her nutrients from forage it's important that you don't exceed 0.4 percent of her body weight as that concentrate um because she will be able to get less out of the forage if you exceed those levels just because of what i talked about there's different kinds of microorganisms in the rumen there's bugs that like starch and there's bugs that like fiber and if you're feeding a lot of starch the ones that digest fiber which is most of your forage resource those are going to decline in population and so then you're going to have hard time using your forage um if you're looking for another substitution for forage if you have some alfalfa hay put four or five pounds of alfalfa hay out there and that will decrease forage intake because they'll be filling up on that good quality alfalfa it's an option for some people so when you're looking at feeds it's important to break it down on a cost per pound of nutrient i saw some wide eyes there for a second don't worry i'll walk you through it so um also you can look at the comparing value of feed stuff publication that's listed at the bottom there um so basically we're just trying to get this to where you're comparing things on a similar level so we're taking out the water content um which can really be misleading when you look at certain feeds and we're looking at the concentration of the nutrients that you're interested in primarily protein and energy right so let's just walk through an example dollars per pound of crude protein from wheat mints so we'll say it's 75 um dollars a ton the dry matter is 90 percent so 0.9 and then you take that times the nutrient so it's 14 percent crude protein and then you divide that by 2 000 pounds to get 30 cents a pound for crude protein provided from wheat mints and then doing the same calculation for canola meal um to 237 dollars a ton contains 36 percent protein and it's 37 cents a pound of protein so if you looked initially though at the wheat mints at 75 and that canola 237 you would think that's crazy why would anybody get canola when you look at how much more it provides in terms of crude protein maybe you can afford that extra seven cents per pound of protein because you're going to have to buy less of it right so it's important to sit down and calculate that out and figure out what your overall feed expenditures will be but that helps you do this and compare things on a basis that will not be misleading also obviously need to figure your transportation costs in there just put in the regular cost of shipping and get it on a cost per pound of your feed that publication is really good at just walking you through the steps it has a blank worksheet you can go through and everything so one of the things that isn't often considered in grazing situation is ionophores have any of you ever used ionophores before in grazing cattle a couple of people so they're approved for all use use in all segments of the industry from grazing to feedlot and they are regulated by FDA because they are an antibiotic they do not fall under the new rfd so there's you don't need to get a prescription from your veterinarian to use that most that so but they are managed by the feed companies so you can't you can't do on-farm mixing with ionophores okay but you can buy dry or liquid supplements you can also get them in loose mineral mixtures so that way the intake is controlled and we're talking like 150 milligrams per head per day so it's a very small amount so that's why it's important to manage that so carefully lots of benefits of using ionophores coxidiosis is controlled better it's controlled in your cows that also reduces incidence in your calves it has good impacts on bloat and acidosis so if we're talking about feeding some grain to cattle or maybe not used to it it's a really good way to kind of protect yourself against some digestive issues also get an added benefit of increasing your average daily gain and also increases feed efficiency so ionophores work by basically reducing gram-positive bacteria in the rumen that produce waste products like methane and so the production of those waste products goes down and the rumen just overall converts feed more efficiently so that's how they work there's no withdrawal period really just a lot of benefits to using these so something to think about so a couple other options i'm looking at maybe if you have some low quality forage on hand how do you maybe increase the quality of that and there's a couple things you can do i know some people you've probably done this before maybe throw some blasts on there seven to ten percent of your bale weight has anybody ever ammoniated forages before you know nobody's going to tell me if they did obviously you have to be a little careful with this use an anhydrous you can get really good results as far as increases in crude protein also increases digestibility kind of breaks down some of those fiber bonds and will allow them to increase intake of the low quality hay so they're getting more nutrients out of it don't use this with medium to high quality hay or small grain hay toxicity can happen so you don't want excess ammonia in the in the diets again a resource that kind of walks you through how that works basically you cover a stack of hay with a six to eight mil plastic insert the anhydrous hose you apply it at around three percent per ton so around 60 pounds per ton of dry forage and then basically you let it sit right now with our temperatures the way they are you let it sit for about a week and you're good to go and then you just take that covering off there's also some other treatments calcium hydroxide and calcium oxide i'm sure maybe some of you have heard of sodium hydroxide that a lot of these treatments have been around for a number of years there's some safety issues with them we used calcium hydroxide on some wheat straw that we were feeding in a research trial at South Dakota basically it it kind of does the same thing kind of breaks down the fiber bonds and makes it more available increases digestibility we're feeding that at about 50 dry matter so it needs to go in a bag or in a bunker just like silage fairly palatable the cattle seem to have no trouble eating it and then we use some energy feeds like glycerin and some and some corn supplements to kind of supplement that so that's another option ADM used to have an entire product that was devoted to calcium hydroxide treatment i don't know if they're continuing that anymore it's called second crop so they actually have a truck and they'll come over and and you get a tub grinder and they apply it at the designated rate and you and basically stick it in a pile you let it sit for a couple days and then you put it in a bag or in a bunker little more intensive with the calcium hydroxide so nobody likes to see their cows go in dry lot understand that but it's an option to look at there's lots of lots around the area that are taking cows now lots of different diets that can work for those situations particularly if you're incorporating early weaning can use low quality rough it is the byproduct feeds that i talked about corn corn silage lots of other things and pound cost per pound of energy is going to be lower on most of these type of diets than with your forage based diets hay is just the most expensive per pound of energy than most other most other feeds and you can figure that out because you're going to use the little thing that helps you determine cost per pound of nutrient right so if we are looking at dry lotting those cows still need to have adequate forage in order to keep room and function going so feeding at 0.5 percent of body weight is usually kind of the the general recommendation starting them out on a low level concentrate and as much roughage as they'll want and then kind of just increasing the amount of concentrate while slowly decreasing the amount of roughage until you get them where you want them and if you've never done this before it can be pretty hard to believe that a cow can get by on four or five pounds of forage and 10 or 12 pounds of grain so realize that she's not going to be getting everything she wants to eat they're going to act hungry right if any of you guys have ever done this you need to have good fences and good facilities because they will be hungry and sometimes it's painful for people to think their cows are hungry but if you look at condition their needs are being met so it's just a a different way of looking at it if you're going to do this management is really critical need to have adequate bunk space to avoid rushing the bunk because you can get those digestive disorders so 28 to 36 inches per head is what's recommended and then again using an ionic forward to help decrease bloat nasa dosis intake limiters there's lots of different intake limiters out there that are provided by different companies that can help you if you're maybe looking at a free choice situation out on range to make sure that they're not over consuming grain okay you don't want to get into that situation it's a good idea to kind of back them down yep it will change the microbial population per se they won't actually be able to keep the balance of top and actually correct so you can see lots of conditions correct it's not as critical switching them off of grain and back on the forage as it is when you're starting to increase levels of concentrate can you free choice drop what's that to you could fill it if you have it available you sure could would you mix that in or would you be the good feet separate and then just free choice um so it just depends on what you want to do i actually think maybe in my next slide so there's some data in Nebraska where they actually mixed wheat straw with different cold products and and stored it in a bag and that worked pretty well but you could also use your for you know you could also just have some feeders with with bales in it and let them pick away at it just to kind of get rid of that give them a little more fill make them happier right yeah so this with kind of some interesting data they actually mixed wet distillers grains with 70 straw you do want to shoot for moisture content of 65 to 70 percent with the with that much straw it's going to be tough to get moisture even at 50 percent so you might need to add a little bit of water as you add water your nutrient concentration goes down so we might need to do some more adjustments with supplementing that back up but they've actually found that this mix of the 30 70 can actually replace forage at 50 to 100 so when feeding out on the range and it and it doesn't have to be fed in a bunk you can feed it on the ground pretty high quality feed and can help you kind of save on your forage resource here's another one down below just a different mix found that kind of the same thing when it came to performance really good performance on both those right best to store them in a bag and yep if you yeah if you could treat it kind of like silage and you should even be able to pack it if you let it sit a little bit and let it kind of settle should be able to pack it just like you would silage and so i'll just mention creep feeding i think there's there's a lot of opportunities to creep feed this year may or may not be one of those you cannot obviously use a lot of different types of feeds things that you have on hand or commercial feeds typically people will see increases in weaning weights that's pretty consistent however a lot of people tend to think that that's going to help reduce your forage intake and it might reduce forage intake in your calves but it's not going to take the pressure off that the cows are putting on the pasture okay so early weaning will be talked about later that's a different option for that so creep feeding will also not reduce your milk production by your cows okay because the calves are going to want milk production first creep second and forage third so again it might reduce how much range they're eating but it's not going to decrease any of your pressure on your cows then just a rule of thumb for price of creep and your selling price in order to make it economically viable so i guess then just kind of wrapping up trying to cope with drought just being realistic about the alternatives you have like i said before consulting with people that you trust and and people that can give you some input talking about your options don't be afraid to try something new and step out of the box a little bit this is the time of year to do it trying to develop some options rather than sending cows to town if you can there's always things that we can help you try to figure out so stay aware i mean a lot of times with byproducts and small grains and all these things there's always issues there's always things you need to be aware of so be watching condition and heard health and monitoring that keep in a close relationship with your vet is important in times like this too and then i guess just on the personal side um all this stuff can add up to a lot of stress right i mean we're talking about really some hard decisions that have to be made when you're talking about sending cows to town your livelihood um and how all this impacts you and i was around for that lovely drought in the late eighties that my grandpa and my dad went through and i was a kid and i will tell you these even as a kid i was very aware that something was very wrong and it's stressful and i still remember a lot of those you know whispered conversations and difficult talks that we're going through about selling cows selling land equipment auctions i mean it hit everyone pretty hard so be talking to your family talk to your spouse go talk to someone at fsa just talk to somebody don't let this um get so overwhelming that you just can't deal with anything because you have a lot of important decisions to make right now so i think that's just an important thing to think about is is your own personal mental health too you're corn is good um it it will help you replace a portion of your forage if that's what your goal is but again try not to feed it at at greater than that point four percent of body weight so just figure out what your you know you know that your cows weigh and just try to stay around that three four five pounds um you could it's probably going to kind of settle out so unless you have some kind of a binding you know some something to kind of bind it together where you're feeding more of a tmr so you can you could probably just feed it by itself in a bunker on the ground i was a little confused earlier when you were mentioned that you know protein increases the adjustability and i knew that but then you said too much protein they're going to go out and consume more it can it it can increase what we did no six and it actually worked really well is we ground straw and put in about five six pounds of distillers okay and then added about a lot of water and dry lot it and they didn't like it to begin with but after a while they and they did fine yep so i guess i was mostly talking about on in a range situation where you're feeding just start doing it pretty quick yeah where you're just feeding um whether they just have access to range and they're eating a protein supplement they will still go out and hustle up forage but when you're feeding wheat straw and you've got that fill factor that's kind of limiting but distillers is distillers is by far best buy for protein and energy yep it's both it'll it'll provide you both so you can use it in a lot of different ways yep and adding water definitely helps irration be way more palatable and consume it better yes yep i was a little confused by that too so cake isn't necessarily the best thing to try to stretch your grass with right okay yep now it can't you can get high energy cake that maybe has a little bit lower protein levels and it also depends on what the main ingredient is in the cake so if it's like a plant-based product or wheat mids or something like that you can be supplying both but again it's really good to get a nutrient analysis on your forage so that you know if you're short protein or energy or both and then pick your supplement based on that don't just assume that the supplement you used last year is the best one this year because it changes with these different conditions especially in drought the forage quality changes so much