One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered Part 63

Feed for Cows.

What shall I feed cows when they are fresh and when they are dry!

When they commence to freshen, give some green feed, such as alfalfa or corn; if possible, also give, say, two or three pounds of barley or bran, and gradually increase this for two or three weeks until six or seven pounds of bran or barley is being fed. Also give a small amount of hay. Bran may be rather expensive feeding and a subst.i.tute is being used. Take four parts of barley to one of bran and mix. With barley at its low price, this makes rather inexpensive feeding. Another subst.i.tute is to take the chopped alfalfa hay and barley. These are mixed thoroughly together and moistened. After the cow freshens and gives her full flow of milk, let her eat all the alfalfa hay she wants. A good ration is about 15 to 20 pounds of hay, 6 or 7 pounds of barley or bran and about 10 pounds of roots such as beets or mangels. When the cow is dry, pasture is the best food, supplemented with some green food.

Sorghum Silage.

Will Egyptian corn make good ensilage and at what time should it be cut to make the best feed for dairy cows?

Sorghum makes good silage. It must be cut while surely juicy enough, for it is a little more apt to dry out than Indian corn.

Barley for Hay Feeding.

Should the barley for hog feeding be rolled, ground or fed whole, dry or wet? Also, how much should be fed and how often to get best results?

To obtain the best results, the barley should be ground into a meal (not too fine) and have the hulls screened or floated out. This is best fed when made into a thick slop. Some good feeders believe in letting it stand until fermentation sets up, that is, gets a little sour. We prefer a sweet to a sour feed. However, hogs will do well on either, provided there is no change from sour to sweet. The change is the bad part. Hogs should be fed just the amount that they will clean up well, and no more.

A hog should always be ready for his feed at feeding time. We would not feed oftener than twice a day: night and morning. - Chas. Goodman.

Sugar Beets and Silage.

Will sugar beets keep in a silo and how sugar beets rank as a hog feed?

Sugar beets would probably keep all right if stored in a silo just as they might if kept in any other receptacle, but it is not necessary to store beets for stock-feeding in this State. They can be taken from the field, or from piles made under open sheds in which the beets may be put because more convenient for feeding than to take them from the field in the rainy season. Beets put whole into a silo would not make silage. For that purpose they would need to be reduced to a pulp, but there is no object in going to the expense of that operation where beets will keep so well in their natural condition and where there is no hard freezing to injure them. Beet pulp silage is made from beets which are put through a pulping process for the purpose of extraction of the sugar and, therefore, best pulp silage is only made in connection with beet-sugar factories and is a by-product thereof which is proving of large value for feeding purposes.

Feeding Value of Spelt.

What is the food value of spelt? It is a Russian variety of wheat, and yet, I am informed, it has about the same value as a stock food that barley has.

We have no a.n.a.lysis of spelt at hand. It is presumably like that of barley, as you suggest, because the spelt has an adhering chaff as barley has. This fact makes it better for feeding than wheat, not in nutritive content, but because the chaff tends to distribute the starchy material, making it more easily digestible; just as barley and oats are better than ordinary wheat for stock feeding.

Concentrates and Corn Stalks.

Is it necessary to feed mulch cows any hay or concentrated feed in addition to green corn stalks?

It is necessary. Green corn is an excellent thing for milch cows, but it is a very unbalanced ration and needs alfalfa or something else to balance it up. Green corn, for example, contains only about one per cent of digestible protein and 11.5 per cent of digestible carbohydrates and 0.4 per cent fat, or a nutritive ratio of about 1 to 12 1/2. A proper ration would be about 1 to 6 or 7, or less. To balance this up alfalfa can be fed better than anything else in California, for that is very rich in protein and the cheapest supply of protein that there is. If you give the cows a good supply of alfalfa hay with the green corn, you will have an ideal combination.

Dry Sorghum Fodder.

Is Egyptian corn fodder good for cows? I have been told it would dry up the milk. I have several acres and would like to feed it if it is not harmful.

Dry sorghum fodder is counted about the poorest roughage that one would think of harvesting. It is much less valuable than Indian corn fodder.

Egyptian corn is one of the non-saccharine sorghums which are valuable both for grain or for green feeding. We never heard of direct milk-drying effect, though such a result might be expected from feeding such innutritive material, which is also difficult of digestion. If fed for roughness it should be in connection with concentrated foods like bran or oil meal or with green alfalfa. No cow can give much milk when the feed is hardly nutritive enough to keep her alive.

There seems to be, however, much difference in the dry fodders from different varieties of sorghum. One grower writes: "Kaffir corn is the only variety within our knowledge of which the fodder is of much value.

We consider the fodder much more preferable than that of the ordinary Indian corn, and our stock eat it much more readily than the sweet sorghum. However, it requires a much longer season in which to ripen than does any of the other varieties, for which reason it is less desirable to plant in midsummer."

Steers on Alfalfa.

How much alfalfa hay will a two or three-year-old steer eat per day, and about what is the gain in weight per day?

A steer will clean up about 33 pounds per day. Steers will make about 1 1/2 pounds gain in weight per day.

Concentrates with Alfalfa.

I have a good supply of alfalfa hay and have been feeding this as a straight feed for my dairy cows. They are not, however, doing as well as they should and I am looking for some good feed to go with it.

You could probably get better returns by feeding about a pound of cocoanut meal and three of dried beet pulp than by any other combination of concentrates with straight alfalfa. If you are producing market milk or b.u.t.ter prices justify it, more concentrates could profitably be fed.

It is an expensive proposition to build up a properly balanced ration with alfalfa and concentrates alone, and unless market milk is being sold, it usually does not pay. The cheapest way to provide a balanced ration is not by concentrates, but by wheat or other grain straw, and let the cows eat all they care for. This is very cheap and helps to balance a ration with green or dry alfalfa hay, is usually cheap, and is fine for cows. Both are much less expensive than concentrates.

Chopping Hay for Horses.