With excessive winds, low humidity and extreme drought in Nebraska and the Plains states, it was an ideal storm for fires in 2022. Following a spring and summer time that was filled with wildfires, each massive and small, harvest season was notably hazardous, particularly on days with excessive winds. Many producers who skilled these fires on unharvested or harvested cornfields surprise if they will safely flip cattle out to graze fire-damaged grain this winter.
“Fireplace-damaged grain, if not fully destroyed, can have an look starting from a slight brownish tint to black,” states Mary Drewnoski, Nebraska Extension beef methods specialist, in a current College of Nebraska CropWatch article. “This grain will be salvaged and fed to cattle.”
Verify by colour
The widespread strategies utilized by business laboratories to judge the vitality content material of broken corn won’t present an correct estimate of energy-availability for heat-damaged corn, based on Drewnoski.
“Nevertheless, colour can be utilized as a crude indicator of the relative vitality obtainable for cattle,” she says. “Based mostly on analysis carried out by Iowa State College, the quantity of starch from brown to black corn that was digested within the rumen was about 30% lower than regular corn,” she says. “This corn would nonetheless have a big quantity of vitality and can be utilized as an vitality supply.”
In keeping with ISU, gentle publicity to warmth might barely tint the outer seed coat from yellow to tan, however longer publicity and better temperatures will flip the seed coat black. If the inside starch of the kernel continues to be white to tan in colour, the feeding worth should still be comparatively good, says the ISU examine.
However in case you are grazing fire-damaged fields, cattle have to be tailored to corn, or have restricted entry to keep away from acidosis. “Strip grazing is one technique,” Drewnoski says. “Because of the fireplace eradicating the residue within the area, cattle might want to have a roughage supply, resembling hay, offered when grazing.”
Drewnoski means that grazing weaned calves on heat-damaged cornfields may very well be an optimum method to make the most of the feed. “It is strongly recommended to have them used to consuming at go away 5 kilos of corn earlier than turnout,” she says. “Along with a roughage supply, these calves will want supplemental protein to make finest use of the vitality within the corn. Alfalfa hay may very well be used as a supply of protein and roughage.”
Free-choice grass hay plus 2 kilos of dried distillers grain is another choice.
Cull cows
The subsequent most suitable choice for utilization could be utilizing the corn to placed on additional weight and improve worth of cull cows. They need to be fed grain forward of turnout, working as much as 7 to 10 kilos over per week to 10 days, Drewnoski says. In any other case, strip grazing can be utilized to adapt the cows to the corn.
To be taught extra, contact Drewnoski at [email protected], or go to UNL CropWatch.
