 Welcome to NDSU Extension. That's North Dakota State University Extension. We provide our programs for everyone. Today's program is Backgrounding Cattle Fall 2021, Series for Cattle Producers Looking at Backgrounding the Cattle. Today's talk will be Feeds, Alternative Feeds and Costs to Gain by Carl Hoppe, Extension livestock specialist located at the Carrington Research Extension Center apart at NDSU. Our new crop cabs in 2021 are on the ground and are being presently weaned and the weather has changed and we're looking forward to a new feeding season. Of course, that brings challenges. So that we have to consider what happened last year and I always have to comment that our feed prices continue to follow the corn price. It might even be higher because of the drought that we had in 2021. As you can see in this picture, our corn crop was pretty small and people even turned cows out on their field just to have something to eat. And it's been a challenge for us cattle producers in North Dakota, but we move on and I'd just like to go a little walk through history here. In 2017, our corn prices were actually less than $3 a bushel and that drug the rest of our other feeds down as well. I felt the hay was $80 a ton, grass hay was at 65, wheat neds are around 95. We had barley malt sprouts at that time and 115 or corn prices around $3, $30 a ton. The canola mill is a 186 a ton and dried distillers was on par at 113 per ton, all based off the corn price. That was in 2017 and near four years ago. So now let's for five years ago, now let's look at what happened in 2018. Prices remained almost the same. In 2019, corn price moved up a little bit, maybe 30, 40 cents and all the rest of the feeds increased accordingly. In 2020, feed prices remained somewhat the same. So just when you think you've got a trend going here of years of lower feed costs for cattle, 2021 shows up and our price of corn is $5.75 a bushel. That's because of national demand not because of the local drought, just because of national demand. Now, alfalfa hay has increased up to $175 a ton. Even some places it might be $200, $250 a ton depending upon the quality of the alfalfa. Grass hay is $120, $125 a ton. Wheat middlings, 190. Soy hauls is a new product available in North Dakota because the processing industries are making it more available and there's more of them in the North Dakota region and it's being priced at 165. Corn silage, $55 a ton just because our corn price has gone up. Canola meal is surprisingly somewhat constant for previous years, but dried distillage grains has increased correspondingly just like the way corn has. So this year our feed costs have increased. Drought makes it a difficult year and we have been struggling for feed for cattle producers that were out of feed. They probably sold cows, they weaned off calves early, fed them early. This particular program really focuses on the fall. Weaning cows, the ones that scraped by with enough feed worked on their harvest and now that the weather has changed somewhat in November, weaning is now progressing on these April May born calves. One thing I got to note in North Dakota is that we have a lot of different crop processing plants across the state. We have corn distilleries for making ethanol which creates the byproduct corn distillage grains located throughout North Dakota as well as into South Dakota. North Dakota also has quite a few wheat mills, wheat middling or wheat mills for making wheat mids and located in Grand Forks, Carrington, Minot, Fairmont. I always have to point out that the state mill and elevator in Grand Forks is the single largest mill in the world in one location. It just underscores how much wheat middlings have produced out of that plant and mostly shipped out of state. We have sugar factories processing across the state, mostly in the Red River Valley but some out in Sydney, Montana. These particular plants produce wheat pulp, usually wet. They can also produce wheat tailings but a lot of that's being now moved up to Grand Forks to the ethanol refinery that's specifically made for fermenting the sugars out of wheat tailings. And of course you have a couple of potato processing plants and we have a wet corn milling facility down at Waperton. We just have a plethora of processing co-products available in North Dakota. A lot of those are being shipped out of state but we do have some local demand and they create an opportunity for us for cattle feeders in North Dakota. I said earlier, here's a description of what we actually have. We've got five plants produced as tillage grains. We have five mills of produce wheat middlings. We've got one in-state plant that produces soy hulls. We have one plant that produces cordon gluten feed. These are all hype. A lot of our protein, anywhere from 18 to 30% protein, soy hulls are around 12%. And these are all have highly fermentable fiber. All the starch has been removed for the most part. What's left over is fermentable fiber. We do have, like I said, beat tailings and beat pulp and we do have a wide variety of mills available. A canola mill, linseed mill, sunflower mill, corn gluten mill and soybean mill available for feeds if we need protein addition to the rations. These are all co-products. These are things that are produced by our plants. Of course, we have protein sources that we produce on farm like soybeans or alfalfa hay or sunflowers. Those are all field peas and lentils are all play things that can produce protein as well as energy on farm and should be considered an aeration. Screenings, just a word of screenings. Be careful if you're bringing in screenings from out-of-state, the type of weed seeds they might have things like palmaram or ramp could be in those and you can definitely start a problem on your feed yard. If you're feeding that type of feed and allowing weeds to grow in the future. Let me just make a point here about our daily nutrient costs. I received an email this morning that talked about how high the protein content was in this creep feed and wanting to have exceptional gains in the calves. And while protein's important, the most important part is the energy cost. We spend more in energy costs per day than we do protein costs. It takes energy from animal fiber, starch. Even some proteins are metabolized for energy. It takes energy to put growth on an animal. So if we just look at things in general, say that I did some math here, it takes around 14 pounds of PDM, which is a measurement of energy content to put weight gain on a 700 pounds steer. This would cost about a little over a dollar a day in energy costs. Like a protein costs, there would be almost a dollar a day. However, we don't pay for all the protein. We buy the energy first and then a lot of protein comes along free. For another words, corn is 9% protein. We buy the corn for the energy content but we get 9% protein basically for free. So what we need to do is buy additional protein to boost up that corn so it has enough protein to maintain the gain we want. There's a lot of words to say, but really we're feeding that type of ration. We need to provide another six tenths of a pound of crude protein. And if we do the math that costs per pound of protein at 42 cents, that means we need to provide an extra 25 cents a day in protein costs. So it costs a dollar a day for the energy and another 25 cents for additional protein. And then of course that pales to the water cost can be all means, that's water costs per day. Please consider your water quality and water availability that some of the cheapest gain you can have on a particular cow herd. I'd like to look at some math here when it comes to feed value. We've got four different feedstuffs. Canola meal, wheat mids, corn grain and distillage grains. Canola meal is known for its crude protein at 38%. Wheat mids is 17%. Corn is low at eight and a half percent. Distillage grains is around 26.6% or almost 30% on the dry matter basis. They all have different energy calculations. Distillage grains is actually high since it's got some fat in it, more than what corn grain would. And the rest of these feeds all are, you know, not considered as any resources like corn is. There's different costs we see canola meal is $255 a ton, which hasn't changed. Wheat mids are now up to 190. Corn grain at 206 and distillers at $230 a ton. So if we're looking cost per pound, our cheapest feed is gonna be this year, wheat mids. Look at cost per pound of protein, our cheapest feed, obviously is canola meal. That's what we buy it for is for its protein. But if we look at cost per pound of energy, our cheapest source, again, is wheat midlings. Although corn and distillage grains are ranked right in their side by side as being somewhat competitive as an energy source. That's why distillage grains is used as a high percent, a lot of our rations. Please let me talk about feed issues for fall 2021. Our biggest issue this year is how drought affected our feeds. Nitrate accumulation has occurred, may have decreased, but be sure to test your speeds for nitrates, the forages. The grains you don't need to, but the forages certainly do. The co-products probably don't need to measure those as well, but any forage that you were raised on farm should be tested for nitrates this year. And if it's over 1500 parts a million nitrate nitrogen, it should be decreased, it should be diluted with other feeds that are lower nitrate nitrogen. High nitrates can lead to basically death. And in pregnant cows, it can lead to aborted fetuses. So nitrates are not to be ignored when it comes to rations. Be sure to do a feed test to find out where yours are at and try to feed under 15. So the average of the ration delivered to the cattle is under 1500 parts a million nitrate nitrogen. If you're using a bell ring, then your haze in that bell ring should certainly be under that 1500 parts a million nitrate nitrogen for calves. Or otherwise, I know some calves prefer to eat grain and not come over and eat, prefer to eat hay and not eat grain. Of course, if the nitrate nitrogen was quite high and that's all they're eating, you would end up with death loss. So the other thing a person should do is sample feeds for feed, just for, you're doing a feed analysis, a feed test on them. With the drought, there's been very, a lot of variability in the type of feeds we have out there. So feed testing is always important. And this year, it's a big deal. Some guys have been putting up haze or forages that have a lot of weeds in them. Try to limit that to your calves just because intake is driven by palatability. Some of these weeds aren't very palatable and calves may not eat them afterwards. So our corn seemed to have matured for people that were actually able to get corn grain. That seemed like it was a heavy test weight. So that'll ensure that there's some good energy content in our corn. For guys that put up corn silage early because of the drought and the plants just did not grown, there is a higher percent water than them. So be sure to do a feed test so you know what type of moisture content is added. So we can adjust the dry matter consumption accordingly. Actually dry matter is going to remain the same but we'll have to increase the amount of corn size based on the higher water content. As I mentioned earlier, our haze are highly variable between fields when it comes to feed tests. So using book values or even just one test on one particular load of feed just really doesn't show what could be out there. So there's a lot of variability out there. I encourage you to feed test and know what you have especially when you're trying to do rates of gains for calves. Our feed costs are quite a bit higher this year. I talked about that earlier. It's 70% higher compared to the last few years. Availability appears to be okay. However, if you're in demand for quite a bit of feed you should probably figure out how to get that locked up. Some places might need a contract other places might need money paid for the contract up front to guarantee supply. But this year having it on hand might be the best route to make sure you actually have the feed. Feed costs and freight is always an issue when you're hauling feed around. But this year with the feed transportation programs we're available within North Dakota and the USDA there might be some subsidy going on there or help in paying for the transportation costs for things bought outside the normal. Grain is high. That's not a localized drought demand. That's a national demand. And of course whenever grain prices go up hay prices go up as well. But when you're in a drought hay prices because of how difficult they are to transport long distances they go up as well. So that becomes a big challenge. Trying to find haze at a reasonable price with eating cattle. I'd like to go through some rations now. I've got 12 different rations to discuss on this particular slide. You look at these rations we first started off with a grass hay supplemented with some wheat mitts. We're looking at two pounds a day gain. It'd take around 13 pounds of grass hay and supplement seven pounds of wheat mitts and it would cost a dollar 48 per day with a feed cost per pound of gain at 74 cents. Now if you wanna pick up our gain from two pounds up to 2.6 pounds we're gonna have to throw in a little alfalfa hay for the protein and energy and increase the wheat mitts up to 10%. Also we have to increase the calcium in the ration. We did that with the alfalfa hay. Well our feed cost went up another 20 cents a day because of this ration. But our feed cost goes down 10 cents per pound of gain. Now the same thing holds true when we start looking at using grass hay and wheat mitts at a higher amount at 12 pounds. We're looking at 2.8 pounds per day gain. We have to include the limestone doffs at the high phosphorus content of wheat mitts. And you'll see that it costs almost the same as the previous ration with two tenths of a pound better gain which means our feed cost per pound of gain actually went down. You'll see this in the next slides too where our feed costs go down as our gain increases. Now remember on this particular ration we're talking a dollar 66 a day. Let's look at some other rations now. Here's an alfalfa hay corn silage ration. You got the king of forages in corn silage and the queen of forages in alfalfa hay it'll blend together at that amount. You give at eight pounds of alfalfa hay and 29 pounds of corn silage. You give 1.8 pounds per day average daily gain. That cost you a buck and a half a day but the feed cost you at 83 cents. Now if we add a little corn grain in there and some wheat mitts take out the corn silage put it alfalfa hay so six pounds of grass hay four pounds of alfalfa hay, two pounds of corn and eight pounds of wheat mitts will give you 2.6 pounds per day gain. 65 cent cost gain to dollar 69. Boy that's very similar to that other ration that was provided earlier. Now if we go with one that looks for a little bit better average daily gain at three pounds we'll find out that where you're feeding four pounds grass hay, four pounds of alfalfa six pounds of corn grain and six pounds of wheat mitts. In other words we went from two pounds of corn grain up to six pounds. Our feed costs went up accordingly to a dollar 80 but our feed cost per pound a gain is now the lowest at 5.96. Another ration we have here is just a dry ration of alfalfa hay and corn grain. 13 pounds of alfalfa hay with seven pounds of corn grain gave us a 2.3 pounds per day gain at 77 cent cost gain to dollar 86 per day. Ooh, that's getting kind of expensive. Well, now let's look at a ration that we don't have much for grass hay or other feeds. We're just gonna use alfalfa hay and corn grain and when we're feeding that amount of corn grain we have to provide an additional protein supplement and a bagged feed works quite well for that. 3.2 pounds per day gain which has pushed these calves along pretty good. Our cost of gain is 6.99 cents which is competitive but our costs per day are now $2.32 and 23 cents. Again, we're over three pounds a day gain. Now if we wanna increase that gain a little bit higher and feed less alfalfa hay and more corn grain are at 3.5 pounds per day gain we're gonna end up with our two and a quarter per day feed costs which is just a couple pennies more for the 3.5 average day of the gain versus 3.2 and our feed costs are the lowest at 64 cents per pound a gain. Things to remember, feed costs decreases energy increases, excuse me as a grain increases or I should say the average day of the gain of the ration that provides from the ration is increased. Well, okay, now let's look at grass hay with a little bit of distillers grains to be added as protein and energy. Now this is a 1.7 average daily gain only it's the cheapest is about a buck and a half a day but our feed cost is at 82 cents. Now if we just put a little corn into that ration at four pounds and take out some of the hay we're gonna get 2.8 pounds per day gain $1.73 a day is what the cost is with a 61 cents cost gain. Definitely workable but not our one of our cheaper rations. If you want a little bit better gain at 3.4 we're using grass hay, corn grain, distillers grains and limestone 3.4 average day of the gain. Find out this is one of our lowest cost feed per cost to gain and at $1.86 per day and that's 3.4. In the earlier slide we're at above three and it was over two, two and a quarter a day for feed costs. So in this particular example you can see that going from just a little bit of corn grain up to a little bit more and just changing the dynamics of the ration really improved our feed conversion or increased our average daily gain quite a bit. But just a small difference of adding three more pounds of corn grain and taking out the grass hay. And of course we had to include limestone to increase the calcium content of this ration because the distillers grains is high in phosphorus and corn grain is high in phosphorus as well. Let me just make a few comments on rate of gain goals. If we're looking for a roll of sending cattle to the grass market making stockers out of these cattle and backgrounding them at less than two pounds per day gain that's what we call low rate of gain. Medium rates of gain usually two to three pounds. I like to call these as your grow cattle without adding extra fat to them or putting on condition. They just have a nice growth in frame. Once you go brighter than three pounds per day average day of the gain if you do that more than 45, 60 days you're gonna end up with calves that got a little bit more flesh to them. And when that happens you may reduce subsequent feedlot performance and cattle buyers know that. So they will discount accordingly. However, if you know the genetics behind the cattle they can do this type of gain without any loss of performance. You need to know what you're buying and know the best way to do that is know the historical performance of cattle and go that direction. If you're on a feed cattle I always encourage you to target the gain with a balanced ration. The set earlier as you increase the protein and energy you get better feed efficiency embedded at average day of the gains. So one of my examples here is to if you want three pounds a day for 60 days that'd be 180 pounds or we can do it a different way and that is we want to get a pound on a half day gain for 120 days. It really depends upon what your market weight and date is going to be and how you wish to feed cattle. Sometimes there's changes in the market that allow you to run cattle at a lower average day of the gain to pick up a higher price. So even though the feed costs might not be as efficient the market gain will more than offset that and provide an opportunity for you. And if this is all home raised feeds then again the cost might be quite a bit lower than it would be if it was purchased out on the market. Just opportunity costs would be what you'd have to consider that. I'd like to have people think about the co-products and I talked about where they're located in North Dakota. If you need an info sheet of where they're sourced at and prices and phone calls to call please contact your local county extension agent. They should have a list that I put together that they can provide to you and that's your local county extension agent in North Dakota. If you can contract fees usually there's summer lows that you can work around. Anytime you have to haul it long distances that really reduces your price competitiveness. Although this year with the transportation assistance program that might make a little bit of difference on what your cost might be. Usually we look at high fiber, high fiber and actually they're good in protein as well when we background cattle. Things like wheat meds and distillage grains work quite well in the background in ration for adding a little extra protein and since it's not starch baits they provide extra fiber in the ration as well which can somewhat limit the gain that we're looking for. Always encourage you to do a great job of feeding management that means feed bunks that don't have too much feed left in them but aren't empty as well. Provide some bedding on cold days that'll make a nice environment for calves. We've got research of the Carrington Research Extension that does affect your feed efficiency in marbling and cattle depending upon how their environment is while they've been growing. Clean water is always a must. If you're gonna put calves on feed please try to reduce the amount of moldy feed you have because that might discourage intake. Obviously healthy calves grow better than sick calves. Try to look at ration changes slowly use step-up ratchets as an example. Be sure to balance the ration for the weight and type of cattle that you have. And of course, like I said earlier consider your rate of gain goals. Caves that gain three pounds per day gain may not show any discount at the marketplace while other groups of calves might. Please consider the type of calf when you're looking at your rate of gain goal. If you're trying to improve feed per gain with cattle look at ionophores that'll increase your improvement that'll improve the feed efficiency by five to seven percent. The ionophores, rements and obovatech are the trade names. You can use implants do the same thing five to seven percent unless you're in increase in average daily gain and your feed efficiency will improve seven to 12% if you're not in a natural program implants work well. And there are feed additives like rements and obovatech dequinate, corrid, that can control coccidiosis. So if you've ever had coccidiosis outbreak in a calf crop you certainly wanna avoid that at all costs because that can certainly ruin your growth and feed to gain when you have a coccidiosis outbreak. And coccidiosis is a stress related disease. So coccidia are always in cattle but when there's enough stresses they can come pathogenic then you end up with your bloody scour issue or nervous coxie issues. Of course those can be real problems in a feed yard. Just like to summarize here that this year we've got higher feed prices. It happens every year though but that's higher average daily gains usually have lower cost per pound of gain. Be sure to consider what feeds you use because there's lots of different options out there. And as I did earlier on some of these examples some of these feed costs are priced quite a bit lower. So sometimes a corn grain ration is not your cheapest average daily gain or cost per pound of gain. It might include a co-product. Obviously co-products are high in protein and fiber and can help our nice addition to a ration. You start feeding too much though you'll have to make sure the ration is balanced for calcium phosphorus just because high phosphorus loads concentrations that are in co-products. And of course good management always leads to great calf gain.