Feed bunk management
is a crucial factor for big bales whether we're talking
about hay or haylage.
There's significant data now to show that the type of feeder that you have has a big
impact on the utilization of that forage.
If we just set a bale out in the field
as I see so often when I drive through
the countryside, we would figure that
only about 60% of that forage is consumed and 40% is pulled out from the bale and
trampled. Once that animal
defecates or urinates on it, she's not
gonna go back and eat it. So again, 40% loss wasn't too bad when bales
were worth $10 or $20 a piece, but now
that they're worth $50 or $60
a piece
we maybe should think about managing the
feeding. We can do a little bit with
electric wires and we can cut that feed
loss in half if we put electric fencing
around those bales over winter and allow
restricted access to the bales. But, the
best thing is to put it in some kind of
a feed bunk. The standard has been to
simply put the rings around the bales.
They're easy, they're cheap, but again
we're still going to have something
around 15%-20% feed loss.
The most efficient way to feed is to put
that bale into a bunk that is a cradle
underneath the bale so that the animal
reaches up to it as she pulls out a bite
and again particularly if it is not
pre-cut, the animal can chew and
drop that forage in the manger and still
go back and eat it.
That will reduce our feed losses to
around 10% which is not too bad.
I do think at this point in time with
the higher value of hay, with the higher
value of animals that were feeding, it's
worthwhile to pay attention to our feed
bunk management. The other thing that I
might mention on feeder management is that
smaller units are preferential too
long bunk. Some of the data out of
Michigan has shown that if we have a
long bunk that the lower ranking
animals don't gain as much weight. What
happens is that the boss animals go down
that long bunk as much as twenty times an hour. Every three or four minutes. They
push all the other animals back. So, if
you have individual feeders then the boss
cows can go around everyone and push all the animals away. So, what we see is that
with individual feeders we see about
again a 10% improvement in weight gain
compared to the long bunks where the boss
cows are pushing a lower-ranking animals
away periodically. So, do consider feed
bunk management is a crucial thing.
A cradle feeder that lets the forage
fall down below will improve feed
efficiency and then smaller bunks will
reduce the effect of boss cows on
limiting the feed intake of lesser
ranking animals. Both of those things can
have a significant impact on feed
utilization and animal performance.
