fodder

Why buy a feed wagon for a small herd when you can do the same job with a loader bucket, Cody Shay modified his loader to feed ethanol byproduct and found it works great for silage, too. Using the byproduct has cut his hay cost by a third, his cattle love it and his neighbors are ordering their own. ÒWhen the ethanol plant went in nearby, I wanted to take advantage of the byproduct,Ó says Shay. He cut a 6-in. hole in one end of his 84-in. loader bucket and installed a 6-in. poly auger that extends out  

The meeting is being hosted by the Aurora Cooperative's Feed Division. The program for the evening will include Jeremy Martin of Great Plains Livestock Consulting with up to date information on the value of distillers grains compared to corn. Greg Sherwood from Aurora Cooperative's Feed Division will provide a presentation on "Feed Opportunities for 2010 and Beyond."  

Cash barley bids in Western Canada remain stable, with end-users only buying on a hand-to-mouth basis and ample competing feed stocks keeping prices well contained. Cash bids in the key Lethbridge, Alta. cattle feeding area can currently be found in the $135 to $139 per tonne area, according to the latest prices put out by the Alberta Canola Producers Commission. That works out to a price of around $3 per bushel, a level below which most producers are reluctant to sell, according to a feed grains brok  

PASTURES and fodder crops have taken a battering in recent years from drought and weed infestations. A recent field day in Victoria's North East looked at the consequences. Four failed springs in a row have turned pasture management on its head for Numurkah dairy farmer Damien Carpenter.  

It looks like grass growth is three or four weeks behind normal. In fact, there has been no growth since the end of November. However, since we are getting further into the spring I would expect that when mild conditions come, there will be a good growth response and we will catch up in two or three weeks.  

r round bale. That would have led to a cost to the buyer of more than £100 per tonne after haulage costs to south-west Scotland were added. "In addition to my usual customers, I am now getting a large number of calls from strangers," said Graham.  

Last week's high temperatures were mostly in the 60s. Highs reached the 70s a few days out of the week for the majority of the state. Nightly lows were in the 20s, 30s and 40s.  

"Farmers are supposed to feed the nation for a little bit of nothing, and on top of that we feed the Game Commission's wildlife, and then we suffer for it," said Tioga County farmer Stanley Brubaker at a meeting last week in Ulysses. Twenty-four Tioga and Potter county farmers met with a Pennsylvania Game Commission (PGC) representative on February 16 to discuss the increasing bear damages they say they have been experiencing. Of those local farmers who responded to a request for damage costs, an estima  

Dairymen should strive to produce high quality forages in order to increase the amount of forages in rations. "If we want to improve rumen health and cheapen rations, we have to move towards optimizing forages in the ration," said Dave Fischer, University of Illinois Extension animal systems educator at the Edwardsville Center. "This year it was a real challenge to make high quality forages because we had late harvest of first cutting hay and we had late harvest of corn silage due to late planting," s

If we want to improve rumen health and cheapen rations, we have to move towards optimizing forages in the ration   -Dave Fischer