 Hi, my name is Carl Hoppe, I'm the Extension Livestock Specialist at the Carrington Research Extension Center and today I'm going to visit about feed rations for backgrounding cattle and this is the fall of 2020, so this is brought to you by NDSU Extension. Well, new calf crops are here 2020, time to place them on feed and look at what type of calves we have. You know, these January-born calves are going to be big, these April and June-born calves are going to be smaller, so we've got a little bit of everything out there in the pen, we have different colors, we have different types, sexes, bulls, steers, heifer, hopefully most of them are castrated if they're going to the commercial market and there's just a lot of differences out there, but it's a new year and a new season, a new group of calves that need to be placed on feed. A couple of comments here, traditionally in backgrounding calves we grow cattle and it takes feed. In the northern plains we're a backgrounding state, if we're in the southern plains we would still have grass or some type of feed resources out there which degrades, so in the northern plains it ends up being a feeding state, so that's kind of the difference between backgrounding and stalker cattle, backgrounding means we're feeding them for a period of time after weaning. Now the feed prices follow the corn price, that's traditionally what's been going on and it continues to go on that way, so as corn prices are increased, so does the overall prices of other feedstuffs increase as well. Let's go through some examples, let's take a walk back in memory lane, I like to reflect on these just to have an idea of what prices were just a few years ago because you know we tend to even remember, we only remember about a year back, so not even that far at times what happened, but in 2017 our corn price was $2.88 a bushel and our distillage grains was $113 a ton, haze were anywhere from $65 to $85 a ton depending upon what it was and wheat mills were at $95 and at that time we still had barley mulch sprouts in the region in which to feed. In 2018 the price of corn went up to $3 a bushel, hay remained about the same, the price of distillage grains went up slightly as well as wheat mills and barley mulch sprouts were not available in North, made in North Dakota at least. Now for 2019 just last year the price of corn did go up another 10%, haze were made about the same price, wheat mills were a little bit lower and the distillage grains reflected the corn price and it increased as well. Now let's see what's happened for 2020, corn prices increased slightly, hay and both alfalfa and grass hay, at least this is alfalfa hay for steers, for beef cattle, not necessarily for dairy cattle, have remained the same compared to previous years, wheat mills has creeped up just a little bit, the distillage grains has increased quite a bit, there's been a demand for distillage grains and the prices up, canola mill prices are up as well and the price of corn size, because the price of corn has increased, the price of corn size has increased as well. Let's make note, we have a lot of processing plants in North Dakota, some states don't have this opportunity that we have, but if you're located in the right location and need some supplemental feeds, the price of these feeds along with your freight might make it very competitive to bring that into your feed yard. If you're in western North Dakota you've got a lot of freight compared to being located in eastern North Dakota, distillage grains is quite prevalent throughout the lower part of North Dakota and even in the South Dakota, so the amount of co-product feeds from distillage grains is quite readily available, as well as wheat mills and we have oil crushes throughout North Dakota that would make soybean mill, canola mill, sunflower mill, those types of things where the oil has been taken out. We do have sugar processing plants in the state, sugar beets that is, and they produce beet pulp, we used to have tailings but most of those might be going through the new ethanol plant that's producing up in Grand Forks, North Dakota. Here's just a rundown of co-product feeds in North Dakota rather than a map, as I said we have five different distillage grain plants, five different ethanol plants that produce distillage grains in North Dakota and actually several more throughout the region. They produce both wet which would be like 60% moisture, modified which is 50% moisture and dried which is basically dried 95% dry matter feed. Sometimes they produce what's called corn syrup but its real name is condensed distillage solubles. Most of these plants put this back onto the distillage grains, that's why it's called distillage grains with solubles although most of the time we just shorten it up and say DDGs which is dried distillage grains or just distillage grains if we're talking about the wet or modified, and for those people that do get distillage grains with solubles, excuse me, condensed distillage solubles, they just call it corn syrup. Not to be confused with the corn syrup that comes out of a fructose refining plant, a wet corn milling plant like there is down in Wapiton, North Dakota but that usually goes to the human food industry and not to our livestock feed so usually when we're talking corn syrup and livestock it's always just great. We do have wheat middlings in North Dakota. The North Dakota mill and elevators the largest mill in the world in one location and of course we the taxpayers of North Dakota own the state mill and elevator in Grant Forks and they're very competitively priced when it comes to wheat mints. Of course we have a mill up in Minot, Carrington and Fairmont and even some milling is done up in Kandu. Raleigh Malt's Routes is only done in, is it done out of state now and in Moorhead. We don't have a mill sprouting plant. Well it's closed now has been for several years in North Dakota. We do have a corn gluten feed plant or a fructose plant, wet corn milling plant that produces corn gluten feed as well as corn gluten meal. Meals about 60% protein usually goes into a lot of our dog food type diets, pet diets, not so much into our animal diets, but corn gluten feeds widely utilized in the dairy industry and can be in the beef industry too. The plant now produces only wet product. That's how much of the demand there is that we produce the dry. We do have a couple of potato fry flossing plants in North Dakota. One in Grant Forks, one in Jamestown. If you're on the list to get it year round, you are probably their favorite customer. It's really hard to get this product in the off season but it is available depending upon what the supply is. Beet tailings, again that used to be readily available but now with the ethanol plant located up in Grant Forks that utilizes potato waste as well as tailings. Beet tailings that they might be more difficult to get a hold of. Beet pulp is still available when the dryers can't catch up or meet the demand of drying down beet pulp. Of course our mills, co-mill, linseed mill, which is from Flax, sunflower mill and soybean mill are produced at several plants across North Dakota. A couple of these plants or swing plants where they produce other, it depends upon the time of the year that they're crushing what particular items. Right now we don't have a mill in North Dakota that is crushing soybeans so consequently there would be no soy hulls available in North Dakota but if you go across the border in the South Dakota there is plenty of mill and hulls available in Aberdeen. Of course there's always screenings that are produced everywhere but be sure to watch out for weed seeds that might be in screenings. The favorite one now is Palmer amaranth or or Palmer pigweed and if those seeds are in some screenings that are brought in from out of state you have just created a very weed herbicide resistant plant into your fields or your feedlot and just be careful about what you're buying when you're buying screening. If they're locally from North Dakota and sourced locally from North Dakota that problem shouldn't be there with nuts because we can't be controlled with herbicides. Let's talk a little bit about cattle now. There is a daily nutrient need for certain feed ingredients for cattle. I'm going to try to lay out here that our most expensive costs for feeding cattle is in feeding what we call energy. That'd be the starch and the fiber that the animals digest and utilize to make their bodies grow. A lot of times you talk about proteins but in reality it's the energy that costs the most and we do buy protein supplements to meet the needs but usually energy is the biggest expense. So let's just use some assumptions. We have a 700 pounds tear. He's eating 3% of body weight and that would calculate almost 18 pounds of dry matter feed. If we look in the energy world we can utilize two different terms to describe the amount of energy the animal needs. Either in megacals of net energy for gain or simply placed as TDN which refers to as total adjustable nutrients. Well for easy math we can use the 14.12 pounds of TDN needed by the animal and in order to get that the cost of energy when you look at the price of corn and just do the calculations for the cost per pound of TDN it comes up up to be five cents per bushel. So this example 14 times five gets 70 cents a day for the energy costs to feed an animal a 700 pounds tear. Now they need 13.1% crude protein they're dying. If they're eating 18 pounds of feed they're roughly means 2.33 pounds of crude protein is needed per day. Crude protein if you look at the soybean meals or the other meals it's 18 cents a pound of this example which means it costs almost 42 cents a day just in protein costs. So just in that calculation alone we spend more money in energy than we do in protein. But think of this when we buy corn we buy almost 90% of the corn is energy but to 8% of that corn or 9 or maybe even 10% of that corn is going to be protein. So if we need 13% protein in the ration and we bought corn and hay that averages 10% protein we only need to add an extra six tenths of a pound of crude protein a day. So my math down there is 2.33 minus 1.74 pounds that's the amount of protein that is in the feed that we bought for the energy. So we need to provide an additional 6 tenths of a pound of protein to the cattle at 18 cents a pound that means we spent a penny excuse me a dime. So energy cost in this ration would be 70 cents the additional protein cost this ration is 10 cents and for those of you that wonder about the cost of water roll water would cost maybe two cents depending upon what your rates are in your location and the cost and the amount of water they drink. But I like to point that out that water is actually a very cheap part of our ration but energy is most expensive and protein while we usually talk about protein a lot and we do need protein to aid in digestion it's really only a small percentage of the whole amount of feed that we provide their animal kind of data basis. Let's calculate some numbers for feed value in other words cost per pound of nutrients. The two big nutrients here are going to be crude protein and TDM. Let's take the first example canola meal. It's 90% dry matter let's use a math on as-fed basis and the crude protein and canola meal on as-fed basis is 38.7% the cost per ton as-fed would be $255 a ton. The cost per pound then is 12.7 cents you take the 0.127 divide that by 0.387 that's the 38.7% crude protein and we end up with a 29 cent cost per pound of protein. That's how we calculate cost per pound of protein coming out of feed. Now we do the same thing in calculating cost per pound of TDM except we use that 1.27 and divide it by 0.621 that's the TDM energy of the of canola meal and that ends up with 0.84. We do the same math for wheat mitts corn grain and distillers and as you look through there what's the cheapest cost of protein of a TDM? We normally think corn grains the cheapest cost of TDM and that's exactly what our math turns out to be it's fairly cheap and it's it's a fairly low cost feed. Wheat mitts is right behind it fairly close and distillers grains are somewhat competitive. Now if you look at canola meal that is definitely not an energy source that we'd use in our rations because the high cost for energy. Now look let's look at the cost per pound of protein. Where's our cheapest cost per pound of protein? It's actually in the distillers grains and then wheat mitts and then canola meal actually our cheapest sauce is distillers grains then canola meal then wheat mitts and of course corn and grain would have a very high cost per pound of protein because it's not utilized for protein as a protein supplement. It's utilized as an energy supplement. So if we need energy we look towards corn. If we need protein we usually look at protein supplements like canola meal however distillers grains can almost be considered one of those that's both a protein supplement as well as an energy source and quite frankly wheat mitts falls in the same category too. So when you start looking at rations please keep these in mind as two co-product feed sources that can help balance a ration. Before I get into rations I'd like to talk about some feed issues in North Dakota 2020. This year corn silage wasn't as difficult for harvest as it was in previous years but we did like last year but we did end up with an early frost the first part of September. We've been kind of used to having a frost that doesn't show up until the first part of October so we lost about a month worth of growth and of course when it freezes corn choppers are they want to have everybody's asking for them to show up their place now because corn is ready at that particular time. So the amount of delay you have from the time it froze to the time it actually gets chopped affects the moisture content of the feed and then turn can affect the feed value so I always encourage you to feed test. Dryer silages like this picture where the corn was froze and you can see that kind of a light green color in the corn. It dries out and there will be some poor fermentation due to X and that'll lead to excess heating. So I like this temperature gauge it's a three foot long gauge that you stick into the silage pile and it tells you what the temperature is. Just a few weeks after chopping it was only at 82 degrees. About a month and a half later it went up to 100 degrees which indicates there's more air or fermentation going into the pile because of the lower moisture content. One other issues that we've ran into this year is dry edible beans. It appears there's enough moldy and discolored beans that producers of dry beans can't sell them or market them. Consequently they've offered these to beef cattle producers say can you use those and in reality we can unfortunately we can't use a lot. Some of the research projects have shown that if you feed at a high degree you can actually like 20-30% even more of the diet the cattle will just stop eating so the recommendation comes down to limit to 10% of the rations. You might be able to go up to 20% but watch cattle performance and if they don't decrease in performance continue on. Here's the things you'll see with cattle there'll be digestion issues. Probably some scours. Decrease feed intake and actually downright feed refusal. Remember one project using great northern beans, northern great white, northern great northern whites and the cattle actually had I think 30 or 40% of the ration just stopped eating the ration and wouldn't eat. Actually I had to discontinue feeding that because you know animal health they die if they won't eat. So cattle might eat it for a little bit be careful how much you can put in. I suspect if you wanted to cook these you could probably eat more but cooking beans before feeding the cattle probably isn't a realistic thing for us in the northern great plains. Here's some rations for feeding cattle. For the next four slides we're gonna have different rations for 700 pound steers and different rates of gain and correspondingly different feed costs. The first one is simply 13 pounds of grass hay and we need some protein and energy to add to it in order to get enough gain because grass hay itself won't provide a two pound a day gain. About 13 pounds of grass hay and then seven pounds of wheat mints will give us a two pound a day gain. The rations around the 64% TDM the cost of feed per pound of gain is 42 cents. If you look at a little bit better gain we have to change our ration realm. We got to increase some alfalfa hay, actually pick up some wheat mints. Why did we increase alfalfa hay? Because alfalfa hay has got calcium in it. Well wheat mints is really high in phosphors and without the adequate two to one or one to one ratio of calcium to phosphorus you can end up with urinary calculation cattle. You don't want kidney stones and cattle so you need to balance the ration for calcium phosphorus as well. This is a real deal most time we don't have a problem with it but it certainly can if the rations are improperly balanced. Okay so this particular ration will give you 2.6 pounds per day gain and 37 cent cost of gain. Please note that as our gain increases our cost of grain decreases. Now let's just use a ration that's got we go from 2.6 to 2.8 that's not much is it? That's just a just a few more pounds and this ration we used eight pounds of hay grass hay 12 pounds of wheat mints and we had to include limestone to an ounce per head per day just because of the extra calcium needed in this ration because wheat mints are high in phosphorus. We need to add extra calcium. So 2.8 pound a day gain feed costs us 35 cents per pound a gain. Again as we pick up the rate of gain or cost of feed or cost per pound a gain tends to go less. Now here's another set of rations. Say we put up a lot of corn silage and we had alfalfa hay so alfalfa hay is the queen of forages corn silage is the king of forages. In this example eight pounds of alfalfa hay 29 pounds corn silage. You might think that's a lot of feed but that's 29 pounds of wet feed which would be what's one third of 29 maybe 10 pounds of dry feed. So they gain 1.8 pounds on this particular ration and feed costs is 0.48 that's $35 10 corn silage and $90 10 alfalfa hay. Now let's cheapen this up to some grass hay and corn grain and wheat mints and in this particular example we've got 2.6 pounds per day gain feeding six pounds of hay four pounds of alfalfa hay two pounds of corn grain and eight pounds of wheat mittlings and our feed cost per pound a gain is 38 cents. Again as we increase the gain the cost of the gain goes down and if we tweak this ration a little bit more so we're giving them even more corn grain and less alfalfa hay. They're only going to eat so much so we have if we give them more corn grain we're going to have to back something out of the ration. So we give them less grass hay and a little less wheat mints and now we got three pound a day gain and our feed cost per pound a gain is 3.6. So again the same true message rings true that as we increase the gain the cost of the gain goes down. Please note that corn size always get this comment wow I'm feeding that a lot of pounds out there can they eat that much? The answer is yes because it is mostly water they're not going to be drinking as much water because they ate it in their feed. Okay now here's another ration a simple alfalfa hay and corn grain no wet feed here we can feed an old dry ration this particular one would be 2.3 pounds a day gain and our feed cost is 46 cents. At 2.5 let's go backwards a slide for a second maybe I can't. Now we got another ration that's alfalfa hay at 7 pounds corn grain 11.5 and then because we're not feeding enough alfalfa hay and quite a bit of corn grain we need to add a provide a protein supplement and it's going to have extra calcium in it as well so it's going to be 1.5 pounds of that particular feed and then we're going to get a 3.1 pound a day gain and it's going to cost us 46 cents per pound a gain. If we tweak this ration a little bit more and decrease the alfalfa hay and increase the corn grain a couple pounds we'll get a little bit better gain at 3.4 and our feed costs are now down to 42 cents. Well now let's do another ration using grass hay and distillers grains. 15. Grass hay 5 pounds of distillers feed cost is going to be almost 5 50 cents per pound a gain. If you look at grass hay corn grain and distillers we're at 38 cents and if we look at grass hay corn grain distillers and limestone because we're feeding quite a bit of distillers and quite a bit of grain and and we're not getting calcium anywhere else but it's got to come from limestone all of a sudden we're at 35 cents. We've got quite a spread going on here at cost of gains anywhere from 50 cents down to 35 cents and when you're doing your budgets this certainly comes into a consideration of what type of profit you'll make because if you're paying for feed and not getting gain you need to be careful of how you're doing things. Now we should talk about rates of gain in cattle. Low rates of gain are considered less than two pounds a day gain that works quite well for cattle that are going to be heading for grass cattle. It also works quite well for replacement heifers. We don't need to have a replacement heifer weigh 1300 pounds when she goes out on grass. She's probably going to go backwards lose weight if that's the case but if you have her at 1.8 pounds a day gain throughout the whole winter and going up the breeding season she'll be in good condition the way the appropriate rate. Roughly heifers should weigh 80% of mature weight at their first calving and 80% of their first calving weight at breeding. So we're looking at an eight to nine weight steer excuse me heifer when it gets to be breeding time and a lot of times if you do the back math here 150 180 days on feed at a pound and a half a day will give us enough weight on these heifers to make them into breeding season without spending too much money on feed and getting them too fleshy because we are inventorying them until they're breedable and ready to go out to grass. If you're looking to grow cattle without adding too much condition and conditions referred to as fat two to three pound average daily gain is where we look at. Three pounds a day for 60 days as compared to two pounds a day for 100 days different ways to grow cattle remember if you feed them really heavy you might end up with fleshy cattle which leads us to the next life rate which should be greater than three pounds per day average daily gain that's almost what we call a finishing ration and it really would be we can feed it to young calves that have just been weaned they're just going to get fat at an earlier age and if you're looking to get them harvested less than a year of age this might be the way to do it however feedlots feedlots like to buy cattle that have not been fed at these higher rates gain because it might reduce subsequent feedlot performance however some cattle are genetically disposed to gain well even without any loss of performance and can grow in great extremely well even if they're fed at higher rates a gain so if you know what type of animals you have you might be able to get this by you buy with this and it works quite well especially if you're looking to get animals and you can feed them on your own farm until finish this is something that we do routinely on calves that are brought in weighing five six hundred pounds and trying to be sold at 11 to 12 months of age which can be done it just needs to be pushed you need to look at the historic performance of the cattle what type of cattle they are they'll give you insight of how you want to manage these of course the next piece of the puzzle is what is the market price going to be at the time that you're looking to sell these cattle and usually most of our spring-born calves get fed to be dead come the summer of the next year and that's usually when the market low is so we try to background cattle or feed cattle to avoid marking them in that particular time frame otherwise we end up getting a lower price so we can target calf gain with a balanced ration I always think of a balanced ration we have adequate amounts of energy and protein to give us our better gains and feed efficiency but when we're looking at a target weight I think about that as being the ideal issue of back groaning so we wean calves we want to feed them for two months so we can get them sold after the first year we might have three pounds average daily gain there's a goal and that'd be 180 pounds in these calves or we might be looking at selling these calves six months from now into the grass cattle market that would become April and people would be looking for those calves and there's usually quite a price for green type calves and green I mean under flesh calves that time of year and 1.5 average daily gain for 120 days is going to be 180 pounds so in these two scenarios we feed for 180 pounds but we certainly change the market window by quite a bit and of course different market windows can lead to different prices you can source core product feeds in different locations there is an info sheet on this website that shows where there is selected prices of co-products that are produced in North Dakota with home members and a spot market price available there let me just note that we can contract feed prices to cattle and they're usually low during the summer times and if you can put in if you can estimate what your need is for the fall time you can probably get into a contract at that lower price rather than waiting for the spot price it usually gets higher after the first year whenever people start feeding big issue is when it comes to feeding co-products is how far the freight how far you are away from the plant or in other words how much freight there is some people haul a wet product hundreds of miles and I always have to do the math and wonder why they are doing that there must be other reasons other than cost of feed maybe looking for a wet product maybe they've got a trucker or somebody they're trying to keep in business the the real issue though is we can't afford to haul wet feed too far because the high price of of trucking after a while it gets to be cheaper to haul dry product if we're hauling it it's even cheaper if we raise it on our own farm and produce it that way usually for backgrounding cattle we look for high fiber feeds and a lot of these co-products are high in protein as well a lot of our haze are usually a little bit lower in protein so by adding in a co-product it mixes well with our haze to increase the protein sources please think about good feed bunk management good feeding management for your calves this is the opportunity for you to train them on how to develop their behavior of eating out of a feed bunk when to eat develop their routine and that'll stay with them so far mother has been doing the mother cow has been doing that to the calf they graze the morning graze at night now it's your opportunity to train these cattle on how they are going to be fed we don't want to just keep the feed bunks full that means they can eat whatever they want to which we do want is to have the feed bunks filled to what the animal's intake will be for the day and then we put in new feed for what their intake will be the following day try to have the bunks cleaned up um we usually practice what i call a slick bunk philosophy that's where when you come out the feed in the morning there's bunks should be all slicked up cattle eaten everything they need and now they're ready to eat more and please practice that uh one of the big issues we run into is when you have variable intake eat a bunch today not so hungry tomorrow then they eat a bunch on the second third day not so hungry they eat a bunch more on the fifth day in doing so creates kind of a yo-yo effect and the animal's steady state condition and room and fermentation goes haywire and the cattle are not as efficient in digesting that food as compared to having a meal every day at the same time don't forget bedding we've done research at the Carrington research extension center that shows we're bedding can improve average daily gain in these calves and uh and it's not because they're eating the bedding it's because it's a nicer environment for them to lay on water should be kept clean so cattle will be readily willing to drink it um try to reduce them on a mold to feed the cattle if you do feed it you'll notice there will be digestive upsets especially in these young calves that are just developing onto a new ration you can keep cattle healthy whether it means antibiotics in the feed with a veterinary feed directive or working them through a shoot and giving antibiotics if they're snotty or just pre-vaccinations there's a lot of things you can do to keep cattle healthy and when healthy cattle are healthy they consume lots of feed and grow very well adapt to ration slowly in other words um we start with a step-up ration one that's higher in forage and lower in energy content and as the cattle are filled up we after three or four days or a week or two weeks we bump them up to a higher energy ration a step-up ration that would have a little bit more grain in it and then we might do that two or three times depending upon what our goal for rates of gains are we just don't dump a whole bunch of grain out there and hopefully they don't get acidosis and die on you that certainly is something that can happen so that's why balanced rations and step-up rations are certainly utilized by nutritionists and it works quite well the old thumb rule way of feeding is you give them a couple pounds of grain along with all the hay they want to eat and then in two days we give them a couple pounds of grain and another half a pound of grain and do that plus a full feed of hay we do that for a few days and when they're adept to that ration then we increase it again by another half a pound for two days and keep moving up the grain part of the ration until the cattle have matched your target goal ration that you're using for whatever gain it is we're looking for again bouncer ration there's lots of feed nutritionists whether it be your county extension agent or a feed company that provides this service there's lots of ways to put the rations for cattle and let's not forget there are the things that can prove feed efficiencies in cattle on a fours, remits and above attack can improve feed efficiency by five to seven percent implants the ear implants can increase average daily gain because there are steroid that can increase it by five to seven percent and your feed per pound of gain can be improved by five to twelve percent these things can also control coxidiosis if you ever run into coxidiosis outbreak in a group of cattle you'll wish that never happened and you will do anything in the future to prevent that from happening and use the on a fours or declinate or co-rid our options to or feed things that we can add to the feed to prevent coxidiosis of course coxidiosis is usually an opportunistic type thing that always develops after a stress so if we have a blizzard that would be a stress cold weather can be a stress commingling cattle together is new stress just being weaned can be a stress so pack all these stresses on top of each other and coxidiosis might break out especially if you make a diet change or a ration change higher in energy that can lead to an additional stress so only one stress at a time don't stack them up and make them endure and then you end up with a health issue well in summary here let me just say that it looks like feed prices are higher this year and it's true this year is another year's higher every year the gains usually have a lower cost compounded gain we have lots of options out here in developing rations we tend to always use distillers grains in our rations because of where it's priced and the availability and it is quite available quite available but there are other feeds that are available out here too and we can use those if that's what you need co-products are usually higher in protein and fiber and actually work into a background ration very well in a finishing ration maybe not so much because they just don't have the overall energy density be included at a high rate in the in the ration but certainly a smaller percentage could work and again your management and feeding goes a long way to good calf gains if they're used to being fed at eight o'clock in the morning keep them fed every morning at eight o'clock making different changes going a little bit earlier going a little bit later all leads to behavioral changes in cattle that can lead to poorer gains