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Wintering cows on cereal straw and millrun (wheat mids)

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Never had a problem with wheat shorts being delivered hot but know what you mean Per. We get ours through Newco Commodities out of Coaldale. One thing about the wheatshorts is the analysis doesn't differ much load to load - I believe with screening pellets there can be quite a variation between batches.
 
Just straw and mids alone won't work in my area without a little something else including mineral. I would guess your conception rate will fall the next year. I fed CRP hay and mids and conception rates fell some. At least that's what I blamed it on. I haven't had luck with mids keeping in a bin when its warm out and then mids I have received have a lot of fines. Felt like I had alot of waste with straw. Guess you have to count it as good bedding.
Pure barley straw around here is very hard to find. (Most barley here is Haybet forage barley.) If you have a straw catcher, great, if not its hard to bale behind a rotary combine. Also most wheat straw around here are varieties than are sawfly resistant and are solid stem, hard to get cows to eat it.
Barley straw (low in nitrates), mids and mineral, then switch to more hay before calving should make it ok. Have to keep some condition on the cows.
Last I checked wheat mids $142 US, delivered. Haven't heard of any wheat straw for less than $50.
 
I used to work in the feed business, so I have had experience with warm pellets. If they come warm we will put them in a Coverall shelter.
After seeing what goes into screening pellets I will never feed them myself. The quality is far to variable. At least with millrun you can formulate a ration with some confidence in the numbers.
I do my own nutrition work so I wil build a vitamin/mineral supplement depending on what the ration consists of. I don't think we will be feeding just straw and millrun, although I would like to try it on a small group of cows.
Around here I think we will be able to get all the straw we want for a maximum of $40/ ton delivered.
 
turning grass into beef said:
We locked them in for $118.00/tonne delivered. We can take them whenever we want them.
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That sounds suspiciously cheap to me if we are talking about the same product - I just called our supplier and he is quoting $175. That would be in the ball-park of where I would expect the prices given what we have paid in the past. Maybe they are a little high and will drop with the grain prices but not to <$120.
 
I heard things were getting tough over in the have-not province to the west of us. there might of been an opportunity to lock in a good price back in time a ways.
 
Northern Rancher said:
I heard things were getting tough over in the have-not province to the west of us. there might of been an opportunity to lock in a good price back in time a ways.
Click to expand...

Back when? when barley prices were considerably higher than they are now? This feed market is only going one way and it's down so I don't think I missed the chance to lock in. I don't believe that anyone would sell wheat short pellets at a discount to barley - don't you think the feedlots would be buying it all up afterall they would save the cost of rolling barley?
 
I'm just wary that TGIB doesn't get a pellet like TexasBred described "15% protein and 70%TDN" - that has quite a feed value difference from the 18% protein and 80%TDN wheat short pellet I use.
 
I would imagine that they will come out of flour mill in Saskatoon. From my expereince in the past I have found that millrun pellets stay in pellet form slightly better than good quality screening pellets. I have seen some screening pellets that were more than 50% fines. I would expect these to be no more than 10% fines. As for the nutrient quality I expect that they will be what millrun pellets usually average here in Canada. We will see when they get here.
If they were priced any higher than they are, we probably would not have bought them. If you compare them to barley from an energy standpoint, all we are saving ourselves is the cost of rolling barley.
 
Just wondering if the pellets you guys are talking about is the same as
what we have available here in Louisiana. We have an aspirated grain
screening pellet made from product that comes out of the export elevators. It is about 8% protein, 1.5% fat, 10% fiber and about 8%
ash (on an as-fed basis). What we get is about 80% corn, 10% soybean,
10%wheat/milo, blended and made into a 1/4" pellet. From in-vetro
tests we figure it is about 90% of the energy value of corn.

Works well in stocker rations as the energy source. Price usually runs
about $75-$100/short ton FOB south Louisiana.

Lane
 
A few years back the local feedlot was getting all their feed/pellets from out of Canada because they were so much cheaper....Besides the cattle in the feedlot they were wintering about 5000 cows....But I was thinking it was some where closer like Swift Current, Moose Jaw or Regina....

The local junk steel is all being hauled to Regina now- so a guy might even find some cheap trucking if he could get a belly dump load of steel hauled up and pellets hauled back.....
 
Not necessarily depends on the pellets quality, the tonnage you are taking and how much they charge for delivery. I was quoted $175 for wheat shorts straight off the train but we tend to buy them in 10 tonne loads augered into our bin and that adds a bit - probably would be $190 delivered here. We have paid over $200 before for wheat shorts delivered under these terms.
I don't think the $118 tonne product is the same product I'm talking about. If it was I could probably buy it where TGIB does and ship it here for that price differential.
 
That is delivered and in my storage. I ordered 10 tonne, the minimum for delivery unless I wanted to split with another customer around here.

I guess I will see when it shows up and is actually fed.

Gosh darn drought..
 
An article on the Alberta feed situation... Sounds like straw may be gourmet food for some cows this winter...

Bad break for Alberta's beef industry

Skyrocketing cost of feed is prompting some producers to sell herds



By ANDREW HANON

The Edmonton Sun

September 1, 2009



EDMONTON -- For Alberta's beef industry, it's been one bad break after another.



"We just can't keep losing," Busby area cattle breeder Jill Careless says with a sigh.



For farmers across northern and central Alberta who raise breeding cows to produce steers for slaughter, skyrocketing hay prices this year are the icing on a bitter cake that's been nearly a decade in the making.



Many are radically scaling back their operations, and according to some auction houses, a growing number are selling off their entire herds.



"We're seeing huge numbers of guys selling down (their herds) because of the cost of feed," said Gary Jarvis of Triple J Livestock, an auction house in Westlock. "Some are selling them all."



Jill and James Careless have auctioned off one-third of the 120 breeding cows on their farm, 50 km northwest of Edmonton, and plan to sell more this fall.



Jill says no other breeders bought their cows, even though they were in their reproductive prime.



"Every one of them has gone for slaughter," she says sadly. "It's heartbreaking to sell them like that because they're still good, producing cows."



This year's bitterly cold spring, followed by two months of abnormally dry weather, has decimated the hay crop and tripled the price of bales sold on the open market.



Round bales weighing 1,100 lbs. sold for $115 each at Ardrossan Auction Service yesterday. Auctioneer Peter Pedgerachny said they would have sold for $35 to $40 a bale last year.



Meanwhile, the farmers' own hay fields are producing a fraction of what they need for the winter. The Carelesses' fields have yielded a quarter of what they did last year.



"We can't afford to keep (our cows)," says Jill. "A cow will eat approximately seven bales in a normal winter. But this year, we'll have to start feeding two months earlier, so that means eight or nine bales."



At about $100 per bale, she explains, it will cost $800 to $900 to feed each cow over the winter, never mind each cow's calf. Last winter feed costs would have been about one-third of that.



"We're looking at huge losses, and we just can't justifiy keeping them," she says.



The Carelesses have been there before. They kept all their cows through the drought that ended in 2002, incurring huge financial losses in the hope they could make their money back in the following years.



"Then there was the BSE crisis in 2003. Prices have never recovered," she says.



But there is some hope on the horizon, at least for this year's hay crop.



Blair Vold, owner of Vold, Jones and Vold Auction in Ponoka, says improved weather in the past has raised hopes that the final hay crop of the year will be a big one.



"Next month is going to tell the tale," he says. "There's big crops coming off now that hopefully will bring feed costs back in line. South of Edmonton is a lot lusher these days. The big concern is still in the north."



Alberta Agriculture's soil monitoring specialist agrees.



Ralph Wright said while the early summer saw only about half of the regular amount of rain in most areas north of Red Deer, August was back to normal. And with September looking hot and sunny, things are very promising.



"In the last 30 days we've seen quite a turnaround, particularly south of Highway 14," he says.



Meanwhile, Alberta Agriculture spokesman Nikki Booth says producers in drought-stricken areas will be allowed to defer paying taxes on income generated from cattle sales until next year.



The federal government will be announcing which areas qualify this fall.



But deferring taxes isn't enough for the beef industry, which has been financially battered for years, says Pedgerachny.



"They need help now, not next year."



cnews.canoe.ca
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