• If you are having problems logging in please use the Contact Us in the lower right hand corner of the forum page for assistance.

GRAZING CORN FIELDS.

  • Thread starter Thread starter Anonymous
  • Start date Start date
A

Anonymous

Guest
Have about 7 acres of corn in a field that can be and is a little wet. All the corn around here this year was late. Have been thinking about grazing it or else we will have to hand pick it.

This corn wont shell for another 2 to 3 weeks by then it will be to wet to catch. Old pasture field was turned under in the spring about the time it got ready to cut for silage it rained for 2 weeks off and on. Now its to dry to cut. Was going to fall seed it but again its been a different year.

Anyone ever grazed corn? What else would we need to do along with the cows grazing the corn? We have about 300 ton of silage in a 10 foot bag would you feed the silage also or wait till they had harvested the corn?
 
I would only give the cows access to a little at a time. It may be wise to put out a bale of free chioce hay as well. If you can limit the cows to as much as they eat in 1-2 days it will go alot further and you wont have to worry about them over eating corn.
 
What Andy said. Limit them to a couple of rows at a time, give them 24 hour access to hay, and if they water from s stock tank, add as much sodium bicarb as you can get to dissolve in the water. Save the silage for later.
 
We've been grazing corn for a few years now. We found that the first time they go out, they're not sure what to do, so are far less likely to overfeed than cows who know what standing corn is. The experienced cows get pretty happy when that gate opens, so they are the ones to watch!

Our basic rules are.

- Never send them in hungry.
- Have hay available, this is important, especially in the beginning.
- Allow them only enough to last three days. Experienced cows will eat mostly corn on day one, corn and leaves on day two, and then clean up on day three. Make them clean up.
- We put 180 cows out on 75 acres, and it lasts 75 days. How many cows do you have? That will decide how much to allow them. Our cows would clean that up in about a week. For ours we would just divide it in half.
- If cows are going to be on corn for any length of time, minerals are very important. We had a cow go down with milk fever last year because she didn't eat enough mineral. We have switched to a 3 to 1 mineral this year to help prevent that happening again.

Bicarb is a buffer that helps prevent acidosis from eating too much grain. Like Tums for the tummy. :-) We've used that with steers on a high grain finishing diet and it works well.
 
Helps negate the acid caused from a high corn diet. We use it a lot when there is a lot of corn on the ground when grazing corn stalks. Nobody has a hard n fast rule as to how much to add, but older gents say to add as much as you can get to dissolve in the water.

Of course, a LOOMIX trough will get the same results, as the cattle will crave dry matter equally with the grain.
 
loomixguy said:
Helps negate the acid caused from a high corn diet. We use it a lot when there is a lot of corn on the ground when grazing corn stalks. Nobody has a hard n fast rule as to how much to add, but older gents say to add as much as you can get to dissolve in the water.

Of course, a LOOMIX trough will get the same results, as the cattle will crave dry matter equally with the grain.
Click to expand...

Thanks everyone. What is a LOOMIX trough?

We keep about 80 head at this place cows and calves.

Would you treat the water when feeding the silage?

Boy if they would eat that up in a couple of weeks it would be expensive feed. Think I just might have to consider picking it by hand with a track type skid steer. Then feed it to the hogs let them take it off the cob.

There is no permanent fence around it or I would consider running the hogs on it.
 
For us it works out to about 50 cents a day per cow. We figure that's cheaper than hay. But then again, after having cows graze this field for a few years, we don't need a lot of fertilizer on it. This year it only got 50 pounds of actual N, and produced about 16 tonnes per acre of corn silage equivalent. It's about 7 feet high.
 
Pig Farmer said:
loomixguy said:
Helps negate the acid caused from a high corn diet. We use it a lot when there is a lot of corn on the ground when grazing corn stalks. Nobody has a hard n fast rule as to how much to add, but older gents say to add as much as you can get to dissolve in the water.

Of course, a LOOMIX trough will get the same results, as the cattle will crave dry matter equally with the grain.
Click to expand...

Thanks everyone. What is a LOOMIX trough?

We keep about 80 head at this place cows and calves.

Would you treat the water when feeding the silage?

Boy if they would eat that up in a couple of weeks it would be expensive feed. Think I just might have to consider picking it by hand with a track type skid steer. Then feed it to the hogs let them take it off the cob.

There is no permanent fence around it or I would consider running the hogs on it.
Click to expand...


No on treating the water when feeding silage, as there should be other groceries in the diet (roughage or hay) to negate the acid in the corn.

www.loomix.com

Remember, typical silage is 60-65% moisture.

Electric fence may become your best friend.
 
That corn will be high in phos so feed a low-phos or no-phos mineral so they will eat it and get the trace minerals they need.
They have found in feedlots that high calcium helps with rate of gain.
Calcium is also a buffer (like Tums) so if you can get a high calcium,
low phos mineral that should help you quite a bit.

As haymaker would say, "good luck"...
 

Latest posts

Back
Top