tlakota said:
So ive been reading on here for awhile and a lot of topics are about protein and cake. What exactly does it cost and the ways of feeding it? I have seen those hydra beds with cake feeders on them but those are to expensive for my operation. I graze a lot of cornstalks and need a little protein supplements. Are there other ways to feed the cake? and what does it run per cow per day? thanks
tlakota
The price of cake varies depending on the protein involved. Say that twenty percent protein cake is costing $200 per ton. That is 10 cents per pound. If you are giving two pounds per head per day, it is costing 20 cents per head per day for the cake. This is $6.00 per head per month just for the protein, without figuring the cost of hay, cornstalks, or whatever form of roughage they are getting.
Cake can be purchased in 50 pound paper sacks. This usually figures out to an extra $25 or $30 per ton over the price of cake in the bulk. For a small bunch of cattle, this is an easy way to feed the cake. When I was a kid, cake came in one hundred pound burlap bags. We'd always save the sacks for either feeding more cake later, or if they had holes in them, we'd wrap them around chains on "backrubbers". We'd dope these sacks up with insecticide for cattle fly control.
I've fed a lot of cake in these used burlap bags. We'd put two five gallon buckets full of cake in each sack to be hauled out to the pastures. Usually I'd tie the steering wheel of the pickup to the gear-shift lever, then jump up in the back to feed out the cake.