Ration Tips for Using Distillers Grains
Jerry Bertoldo, Dairy
Northwest New York Dairy, Livestock & Field Crops
The nutritionist may work for a feed company or as an independent consultant. The person is undoubtedly familiar with the particulars of dry distillers grains (DDGS) but might not recommend putting it into your ration. Poor results in the past from highly variable DDGS make some nutritionists take a "wait-and-see" strategy concerning local distillers.
Livestock farmers who don't use a nutritionist miss the luxury of having someone sort out the details that lead to a reasonable decision on whether or not to feed distillers. There are lots of calf raisers and back-yard beef operators who could feed the product, but they need some guidelines. That's the purpose of this article: to give some tips on feeding DDGS and offer you opportunities to save money and get good performance results.
Thumb rules for DDGS use
- Limit DDGS to a maximum of 40% og diet dry matter (DM) in finishing steers, 20% in dairy heifers and 10% of dairy rations. These recommendations are based on DDGS being 12 to 14% fat. With lower fat DDGS, you can include more in dairy diets.
- In growing or milking cattle you cannot replace all the cornmeal in a diet with DDGS unless you feed high levels of corn silage.
- If DDGS represents a high percentage of the diet protein, you must use other protein sources with significant lysine content such as soybean, fish or blood meal.
- If hay crop is the main forage source, particularly as dry hay, and distillers is maxed out, attention to rumen available nitrogen or degradable protein is important. You can add urea to the diet.
- Including DDGS with a base of good corn silage and/or high quality hay or haylage will result in a ration high in energy. While this is a good formula for finishing steers, growing heifers will trend towards excessive body condition.
- Calcium supplementation is essential in growing animals with high DDGS inclusions rates.
Dairy
Livestock
Grazing
Forages
Grains
Upcoming Events
Fertilizers and Herbicides
March 31, 2023
Mount Morris, NY
As input costs rise, it is necessary to employ the best management practices, and it can be advantageous to know what you're getting from your purchases. Plan to attend if you want to understand the terminology, calculations, formulations, and chemistry behind your fertility and herbicide recommendations.
Agritourism Workshops Monthly!
February 20, 2023
March 20, 2023
April 17, 2023
May 15, 2023
June 19, 2023
July 17, 2023
Are you thinking of starting an agritourism business or are you currently operating one?
Join our monthly lunch-hour, workshop virtual series and learn how to grow your agritourism business!
The first session will cover the basics of running an agritourism operation. The following sessions will focus on specific topic to help aspiring agritourism entrepreneurs grow their knowledge and profit through this exciting on-farm business.
Dairy Comp 305 for Spanish Speakers
April 19, 2023
This program was rescheduled from March 30th.
This workshop is for employees, supervisors or managers whose first language is Spanish and whose job entails using DC305 on a daily basis. The objective is for attendees to improve their understanding of the "language" of DC305 as well as the whys behind consistent data entry. Since DC305 is specific to each farm, the workshop will focus on general application and deeper understanding of how data is used on dairy farms.