 All right, so Today, I will be talking about how much Corn silage a calf can eat and this is kind of an interesting question because Have some conversations with people and they say well he can eat an awful lot of it And they just go from there before I go down that path too terribly far I like to show people random things that I came across And I was out shopping with my wife the other day in a store in Fargo and I Couldn't help but take a picture of this particular Tag that was on one of the Clothing pieces there, so I'm not exactly sure how this works But a hundred percent vegan leather where no animals have been harmed in the making of this garment So it was classic on to corn silage Big topic first we're going to talk about the product We're going to move in to talk a little bit about the calves and specific goals that we have for those calves and then use those Answers to get to the whole root question of how much silage can we actually feed? the question we'll start with is is all silage created equally and Carl Hoppe you asked about yield differences from location to location And I know we've got a location out in Napoleon that is listening in and for some people there They were probably very How should I say envious of the people who are getting these 20 ton an acre? Silage yields I've been in contact with several producers who were getting about four ton silage yields And we start to look at a product like this and it's a very very drought stressed crop in some locations we were between three to four feet tall and Somewhere Cobs if it got any cobs about two to three inches in length So we need to really define what we've got and of course the best way to do that is to go out and actually test that feed Figure out where we're at with our nutrient contents This is a publication that Greg Lardi and Vern Anderson put out It was actually talking about Ehrlich and snaplage and some different things that fall into the silage realm So I'm just going to highlight the bottom here and and look at the nutrient variation that there can be from You know this well-eared silage product back to a drought stressed product again with a TDN Variants of it at least five percentage points This could very easily be 10 percentage points with some of this young immature crop that did never get years So again, we've really got to define what it is that we're looking at in terms of the actual crop that gets put in the Bunker or the silo I'm going to very briefly breeze over these But if you've ever looked at your bunks and seen all these little Rosettes little pieces of cob there that cattle didn't touch forage processing is an option that really reduces How much waste the cattle leave behind John did talk about some waste in the silage Processing this is waste that occurs actually after that animal has been exposed to that other places of waste We really want to tighten down on or what's our face management look like on our silage pile What does that spoilage layer look like over the top? Just for your information if you've read anything about the dairy industry lately They are all the rage about a product called shred Ledge Shred Ledge is basically a type of forage processing that they have a longer length of cut But it's cut in a whole bunch of pieces lengthwise So what this does is that you can have longer product you can have better digestibility Increase the dry matter intake right now. This is tremendously expensive and it's not in our beef world yet To any extent, but this may be something in the future. So if you hear about it, you can you can say you've actually heard it before All right impact a silo type and there was actually a question out there This is a facility I used to manage and we had all kinds of different things going on So this red circle first one is a big bunker silo that we would have Corn silo gin every year. We had all these upright staves and harvestors and This type of silo you had really dictated the product that could get out of there And the question was that the first line here did it rain when you were chopping? okay That can have a tremendous impact on The quality of the product, but I was never really that concerned about the quality of product I was concerned about knowing what I was feeding Okay, same thing as we start on the top of one of the staves or one of the harvestors as That product sits there if there's any leaching going on it's going from top to bottom Okay, so we're going to have some wet spots in there We can also have issues with infield variation or moving from one field to the next what type of variation is there Or also beginning to end so there's a lot of different things within a silo that we can look at and again it mainly really determines Differences in dry matter content. So if we want to know what we're actually feeding to our calves It does pay to to go out and do some dry matter sampling This is a simple calculation where we calculate dry matter. We have a wet sample weight the column a Okay, we dry that down. We can dry that down in a number of ways It actually works pretty well to dry that down in a microwave Okay, so we need a scale paper plate and a microwave And I'm not sure if your significant other would love you to do this in the house But it has happened on occasion. I guess it's better than putting a cedar in the microwave And then we just do a little bit of math So what was our dry sample weight divided by our wet sample weight? That gives us a dry matter content of that product typical silage between 30 we're right around 35% Some of the dry stuff if we let it get away from us can be up to 45% at that point We have pretty poor fermentation characteristics so we do all of these diet Calculations and they are in dry matter because that's the easiest way to put all feeds on the same level the other calculation we have to make is how do we get from a Recommended pounds of dry matter. So say I want 12 pounds of dry matter feed How do I actually get that back to as fed? So we've got column a here Target dry matter pounds will say 12 in both cases column B the percentage dry matter and Again, how we actually get to the as fed we take column a the target pounds divided by column B the percent dry matter Multiply that number by a hundred and that gives us how many as fed pounds. We're supposed to be giving our cattle. All right So with that in mind Let's talk about calves a little bit and we've got a lot of varieties of calves and a lot of different goals for different systems We've got steers heifers. We've got five weights. We've got yearlings braid type isn't such a big importance here But if you've got some dairy influence, there's going to be some some different nutrient requirements for those cattle Where are we at with temperature? And mainly what are the goals of our systems? Are we looking for grass feds feeders replacement heifers? When are we putting these things on feed if we do? Plan on doing that ourselves So it all boils down to what's our target gain? And if we have a good handle on things like this going in it makes our recommendations for how much silage calves can actually eat a lot easier So if I throw the question out there and I don't have access to everyone who's out there listening So I can't get much feedback, but what do we anticipate a Backgrounding gain would be for a grass calf. All right. This is a calf. We want to kind of keep along through the winter Kick him out on grass Once we have a good green up What are we thinking there and? Mainly the answer is keep him alive Okay Certainly well below a pound and a half gain, you know somewhere around that pound maybe so we are actually moving him in a direction But just not very fast backgrounding for the feedlot Really, that's all over the board too You know you can go from that pound and a half up to three three and a half pounds Again the biggest question here when it comes to target gains more and more people are putting their calves on where they've got an Anticipated weight they want them to be at A lot of people are contracting calves this time of year for delivery in January February So I really need to focus on okay What are those payweights on our contracts because depending on how the slides are on those contracts? We can really hurt ourselves by not really Hitting those gains And then as it comes to replacement heifers I did have another slide on here and said depends I took it out for the sake of time, but mainly what we need to do there is we need to anticipate Okay, what is our target breeding weight? You know we're roughly 200 to 250 days away from breeding in most cases right now We need to figure out how many pounds we wanted to put on between now and then and then go accordingly Most of the time that is well under two pounds a day You know about a pound and a half is about where those cattle need to be Okay, so these are great big slides full of numbers and I have them there mainly If people want to print them off or come back and look at this But this basically breaks down different weights of cattle that would come into a Backgrounding yard right now and looks at different gains. I put a box around this first one So let's look at the 550 pound calves and again from gains anywhere from one to three pounds That's the total gain that have over a 90 day period So from 90 to 270 pounds and that's that and weight that we have so if we want to have eight weights delivered Three months from now We need to have them gaining at three pounds a day and then we have the requirement for TDN and crude protein Okay, that's where our calves would need to eat in order to gain that respective weight That's for 550 pound calf. We move up to 650 pounds each calf weight has its own requirements interestingly if you go through the different Ration formulation software. There's not a difference in requirement that the software detects between Steers and heifers, so that's why I just put calves up there. It wasn't a steer thing or a heifer thing Alright, so then we come in here once we have those answers and let's use some of these definitions to get back to the original question at hand We're going to start out with a well-eared product now This is some of that 20 ton an acre silage about 70% TDN 8% crude protein We're going to start to look at that product and say alright, how much corn silage would it take? To fulfill the energy and the protein requirements of these calves So back up to this slide right? 550 pound calf In order to meet the TDN requirement for a pound to gain it needs to eat 10 pounds of dry matter So we are right in here 10 pounds of dry matter as fed. He's just shy of 30 pounds of As-fed dry matter again. That's about a 35% dry matter product Coming up to this two pounds a day in order to meet that requirement. He needs to eat 13 and a half pounds of corn silage It's about just shy of 40 pounds as fed Moving up to that three pounds a day 17.2 pounds of dry matter or 50 pounds of as fed corn silage. Okay, that's what a calf would have to eat in order to Get to those requirements Again, we move down here this calf that's six hundred and fifty pounds You'd have to eat 20 pounds of dry matter 55 pounds as fed and it ends up being a question of can a calf actually eat this much and John did point out that there may be some limitations in terms of corn silage And we're getting to that point in a hurry All right, we talk about a need to eat TDN and need to eat protein Right, we need energy and calories, but there's also a limit to what our cattle can physically eat Okay on the right hand side of this chart. That's what we're running into Okay, so for a 550 pound calf the recommended dry matter intake is about 12.9 pounds the maximum dry matter intake just shy of 15 and then we've got that for each of the the other respective 650 pound calves and 750 pound calves coming into the lot We're gonna start by looking at These calves that are gaining a pound a day and all we're gonna do is go through here and say, okay, we look at the TDN requirement So we would need to eat 10.8 pounds of corn silage to meet this requirement and Our recommended dry matter intake is 12.9. Okay, so we're not even at the recommended level a calf could absolutely do this Moving on we're gonna talk about Something that wants to gain two pounds a day Recommended dry matter intake is 12.9 Okay, and we look back here at either the TDN requirement or protein requirement that it would take for a calf to gain two pounds a day and We see that both of these are well over the recommended dry matter intake So that's gonna cross those out. Okay, we are feeding above the recommended dry matter intake level to gain two pounds a day Well if we're feeding above the recommended dry matter intake level, they certainly can't eat that sometimes All right, what about the maximal dry matter intake? So 14.9 about 15 pounds Both of those are under that 15 pounds. So say well, maybe we can do it But it might be pushing it. Okay Moving on we're gonna talk about this calf that's trying to gain three pounds a day and In order to do that just on corn silage alone back up one here He's got to eat 18 and a half pounds to meet the TDN requirement 17.7 to eat the crude protein requirement and we look at that there is no way that can happen a calf physically Cannot eat that much So then it comes back to well, what can we do? We can get to a pound two pounds is pushing it. It's possible not going to rule it out Three pounds. It's just not going to happen Limiting both by prep protein and energy So then we start to look. All right, is there something that we can feed that's got protein and energy to balance these rations out The first thing that comes to mind just because it is simple. It's available in some places The product here is actually a modified distillers grain product I did talk about a dried distillers grain product in these comparisons Distillers grains put it at a 91% dry matter good protein contribution a good energy contribution as well For that two pounds a day target We come in here and we got about 80% of a dry matter basis corn silage 20% distillers grains Basically, we're feeding nine and a half pounds of dry matter corn silage two and a half dry matter distillers You can see our as that inclusions And we still get some issues here. We're still a little light on the crude protein side And and that's mainly what's restricting these calves from growing more. We give more protein in there and We will have better gains But it's really hard to balance a corn silage diet with distillers grains when we're looking for those low rates of gain It becomes a lot easier as we're moving on to three pounds a day target This particular case we're at about 65% of the diet dry matter with corn silage 35 distillers grains that makes us a very very nice mix. We're right there about 14 pounds of dry matter intake you can see what our as fat intake is 25 pounds of corn silage Just shy of six pounds of distillers grains. That gives us a 15% crude protein diet Very very good very appropriate for those 550 pound calves So again here we're targeting three pounds a day that inclusion levels under 65% of diet dry matter And again 25 pounds of as fat Looking at something a little differently We're going to say we've got some good alfalfa. Hey, we've got some corn and we've got some liquid supplement You can see the respective nutrient contents of each of those ingredients along the bottom here and Then we're going to put two different diets up here And I'm going to leave this up to you guys to take a look at and maybe have a discussion about later In your individual groups is is what is the impact of some corn levels in our backgrounding diets and In addition, how do you think these two diets stack up? The diet number one We've got about three and a half pounds of dry matter corn silage and hay so on a dry matter basis That's quarter the diet each About 40% of the diet as corn grain and the balance is a liquid supplement Now when you look at this at face value, that's about six and a half pounds of corn that might scare some people out there Diet number two when we take a look at that. So we've just flip-flopped it said about 41% of that diet is corn silage We've got alfalfa hay corn grain in there now. We're down to four pounds of corn grain So which diets better at the end of the day Do we have a preference out there at all? My concern with diet number two is it may make us feel good because we're not giving quite as much corn grain But we're really approaching that maximum intake in there Really nutrient contents of these two diets are very similar So again at face value you say well you're feeding too much corn to those calves in diet number one And at the end of the day it may be just a case of corn silage. It's got corn in it, too So that substitution feeding that six pounds of corn may not be as big of a deal as we think so at face value Again summarizing here. This is a person who has got a ton of corn silage that they need to feed out So here's some things we need to consider first of all is dry matter content whether going on out there harvest conditions They're really going to influence what happens and those things are going to influence how much we should include in our diets We set a clear set of goals for calf growth and performance. That's really going to help us dial in what we want to be feeding Silage will support low growth rates very easily Actually, it may be overkill for some of these growth rates once we get in anything above two pounds We need to talk about protein energy supplementation to achieve consistent growth rates So more questions I can take those now or again some of this stuff will be good discussion For you guys locally in your county. So thank you very much