Beef Cow Should Consume How Much Feed Per Year
Determining How Much Forage a Beef Cow Consumes Each Day
April 2013
It'south April and for cow/calf producers in the Northern Great Plains the bulk of the cows are calving or are well-nigh to start calving. Moo-cow/dogie producers during this time period are typically feeding harvested forages. A frequent question from producers is "how much will my cows eat on a daily basis"? Producers want to come across the cows' nutrient requirement, simply sure don't want to over-feed expensive forages. With the dry weather condition this by summer and harvested forages at a premium, closely estimating the amount of feed needed to become through the winter and early spring will be important to incorporate cost.
The Difference Between Intake on a Dry out Thing and As Is Basis
This can be a challenging concept to explain – what the divergence between dry matter and every bit-fed – especially when nutriments for beef cows are on a dry matter basis. Intake on a dry matter basis means that the fodder doesn't include moisture. Withal, nosotros know that the forages contain moisture and not all forages incorporate the aforementioned corporeality of wet. So if forage intake can exist determined on a dry out thing basis, it can easily be converted to an "equally is" or "as-fed" basis.
As an case, if information technology were determined the daily dry affair intake of a group of one,200 pound cow eating an average quality hay is 24 pounds per head and the hay that they are consuming is 88% dry affair, these cows would consume about 27 (24 pounds/.88) pounds per head per twenty-four hour period on an as-fed basis.
If the same grouping of i,200 pound cows are fed a ration where office of the ration called for corn silage to be fed at 10 pounds per caput per day on a dry affair basis and the corn silage is 35% dry matter and 65% moisture, the pounds of corn silage in the diet would be 28.5 (10 pounds/.35) pounds per head per 24-hour interval on an as-fed ground. Remember that of the 28.5 pounds of silage, 18.5 pounds is h2o and 10 pounds is silage.
What Determines Daily Forage Intake
In that location are a number of different factors that determine the daily intake of a cow. The primary factors are cow weight, forage quality, and phase of production (gestating or lactating). When feeding the same forage, cows that counterbalance 1,300 pounds will consume more than on a daily basis compared to lighter weight cows that weigh 1,100 pounds. In addition, cows that are lactating will swallow more feed than cows that are not lactating.
Forage quality impacts dry matter intake of cows. As the forage quality increases, indicated every bit an increase in TDN content of the forage, the amount of the forage that the cow tin consume also increases. Equally forage quality increases, in that location is more than leafage as compared to stem. When quality is low, there is more stem, therefore more than prison cell wall contents that are not as easily digested - the provender does not pass through the rumen very fast.
In addition, as forages increase in maturity, there is an increase in lignin content. Lignin is not digested past the rumen microbes.
A good case of how forage quality impacts the corporeality a moo-cow can eat daily is wheat harbinger. Wheat harbinger is low in protein and energy, 4.0% crude protein and forty% TDN. When cows accept total admission to wheat straw, they don't quit eating wheat straw because they don't like it, they quit eating it because they can't stuff anymore into their rumen. Straw has such a depression digestibility that information technology takes extra fourth dimension in the rumen for it to exist digested and passed through the rumen before more than can be consumed. Daily intake on a dry matter footing may be 1.6% to 1.8% of her body weight. In comparison, corn silage will typically be about seventy% TDN and lactating beef cows can easily consume 2.5% to two.7% of their body weight on a dry affair basis of this feed.
At that place are some "pollex rules" to assist estimate daily feed intake of cows on a dry out thing basis consuming forages of differing quality when they are either gestating or lactating.
- When forage quality is depression (52% TDN or less) and cows are not lactating, they volition swallow 1.8% and lactating cows near 2.0% of their weight on a dry out matter basis.
- If the fodder quality is boilerplate (TDN content between 52% and 59%), non-lactating cows will consume nearly 2.0% to two.1.% and lactating cows about ii.3% of their body weight daily on a dry matter footing of this forage.
As an case, if the forage were 55% TDN and lactating cows on the average weigh i,200 pounds, and so it could be estimated that they would eat 28 (1200 pounds x 0.023) pounds of hay daily on a dry matter ground. If the hay were 88% dry affair, on an "as-fed" basis, cows would eat about 32 (28 pounds/.88) pounds daily. If there were 200 caput of cows in the herd, it would take about 3.2 ton of this hay per 24-hour interval [(200 caput 10 32 lb/hd/da)/2000lb] not accounting for any waste matter.
Estimating daily feed intake of your cow herd is the first stride in determining the amount of fodder that is needed to be on-paw for a harvested fodder feeding program. When forage availability is tight like it is during drought, being able to decide how much inventory needed will assist raise the turn a profit potential of the cow/dogie enterprise.
Rick Rasby
Beef Specialist
University of Nebraska
Source: https://beef.unl.edu/cattleproduction/forageconsumed-day
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