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On farm corn trial led to another chopper

P

Philip d

Well-known Member
The last few years our nutritionist was grumbling about the amount of corn passing through the cows. Last fall we hired a custom guy that was in the area to do 10 acres for us. We fed his first than a few weeks ago ran out and switched to stuff we did ourselves. The herd average dropped 4 pounds! We just by luck found a local trade 790 NewHolland used with a processor already on it. With a 4# loss we won't be long gaining the machine price back.
 
If you had started the unprocessed stuff sooner, when the kernels were harder, it would have been a 6 to 8 lb loss.

Not only do you lose milk without a kernel processor, but you gain efficiency (more milk, same feed or less) and the cows will eat the cobs without starving them.
 
I'll add that I'm glad you bought a chopper with a processor. Ive never heard someone say, "wow I wish I never bought that. I'm gonna take it off."
 
(quoted from post at 17:53:53 04/07/17) The last few years our nutritionist was grumbling about the amount of corn passing through the cows. Last fall we hired a custom guy that was in the area to do 10 acres for us. We fed his first than a few weeks ago ran out and switched to stuff we did ourselves. The herd average dropped 4 pounds! We just by luck found a local trade 790 NewHolland used with a processor already on it. With a 4# loss we won't be long gaining the machine price back.
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Now you need to keep track of how much more fuel it takes to run the processor :( I ran a 450HP self propelled Deere with a processor once, had to fuel up at noon and the end of the day.
 
I have no processor on my harvester , and rarely ever see a kernel come through my cows. I grow only silage specific corn varieties , cut corn at the correct moisture content , and store silage in a bunk silo.Just don't see the need for a processor on my farm , and corn silage only makes up about 35% of my ration . Bruce
 
That's the way we looked at it for years too Bruce. We always cut it at barely the 1/2-3/4 milk line it's still green and @70% moisture and its silage corn recommended by our pickseed salesman. You don't notice the kernels that much till you do a manure screen test. We feed 50% corn on a dry matter basis. The undigested finer level went up a lot and there is a surprising amount of kernels showing up on the top screen. You might not see it that much at 35% but we feed 50% year round.
 
That's tor sure lol even on our small farm we figured
the differences in milk loss to be @$17000/yr
 
Sorry,it's a set of rollers just behind the knives on the chopper that the corn goes through when your chopping. The silage looks the same coming out only when properly adjusted there's a tiny cut on all the kernels so they don't go undigested.
 
(quoted from post at 01:18:42 04/08/17) Sorry,it's a set of rollers just behind the knives on the chopper that the corn goes through when your chopping. The silage looks the same coming out only when properly adjusted there's a tiny cut on all the kernels so they don't go undigested.
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I wish you luck with your processor, but I have never seen one that pays like you think it will.
 
It's a great feeling when you fine tune a business and can find a few more dollars profit. It's like squeezing a few more horsepower of a race car.
 
On a pull type, not much more. You usually lengthen the cut, too (makes for better cud chewing, plus it doesn't need to be so fine to crush the kernels). So the longer length of cut compensates a lot for the
processor being there. Pull types usually have more processing caspacity compared to what the whole chopper can do as well- the processor is nearly as big, but only has half the feed going through. The rolls
are not open as wide, with a lot thinner mat going in at any one time.
 
Screen some manure. Put a cup or two on old window screen, and wash it with a garden hose. Or better yet, send a sample to a lab for a fecal starch test. Either way the results will surprise you.
 
There is a company here that custom builds processors for most types of harvesters. He makes a lot of them. Ben
 
Not arguing with your milk drop,but there was a guy here who was feeding high moisture shelled corn to about 300 steers. He wasn't even cracking it,just feeding it whole. The manure was full of corn,so he was gonna put some hogs in with them to clean it up. He sent a sample of it to MSU to get a nutrition analysis so he'd know how many hogs he could put in there. They told him that if he put any in there,they'd starve to death. They said there was no nutritional value left in that corn whatsoever.
 
MSU was full of it. They were telling him in a scientific way, "don't feed your livestock other Animals S#$T." Do you blame them? There certainly pigs raised on steer manure out there ( I know of a few up the road here), but try explaining to the non farm neighbor how that is a "good" practice.

YOu can feed steers straight unground corn. But if you did that with ground corn, what would happen??? Dead steers? You'd have dead milk cows, thats for sure. That's because grinding (or processing) increases speed of starch digestion, and too much too fast will kill a steer via acidosis. that's also why kernel processing works- but we don't kill the cow by feeding them nothing put processed kernels.

As for feeding straight corn, it might work well to steers when corn is cheap. I know people who did it... people with PhD's in animal science no less. When corn gets higher priced, I would think a money minded feeder would get the corn ground, feed less, and fill in with something else cheaper (hay, byproduct, corn silage).
 
Horning makes a good processor- it is a step up (probably two steps) from a New Holland one. They also have a Fiber tecH one (what I have) that is the Shredlage clone. That one has more aggressive rolls and more speed differential between the rolls to be more aggressive. You might check that out with them. They might be able to sell you a different sheave for yours to hop it up a bit. This WILL help make it better yet.
 
That's the same thing I have been told and have also read. Feeding whole shelled corn the cattle will extract the nutrients and extract the haul of the kennel. That's why it looks like it just runs through the animal when you see the kernels in their manure. My friend use to feed out over a 100 steers a year that way. He adds a protein pellet to the feed to assist their digestive system with the corn. I have finished steers the same way although not too often as I use mostly cob corn and grind it ear and all.
 
Wait, this comment confuses me. Please tell me more coonie. I've been on the farm 40 years and have always fed my fat steers ground feed. Many years ago it was wheat and milo. In the last 10 years it is straight corn. Lots of it if they are in their last 90 days before butcher. Currently I have three penned and it's easier to fatten them on hog feed than grind another batch, so they are getting corn, milo, wheat, and hog base.
 
I'm not gonna get in to a big thing about it because I don't know and don't care,but are you talking dry corn or high moisture? Would the high moisture fermented corn digest the nutrients out easier or in a different way? Dick just blew whole high moisture corn in to an upright silo and fed it back out whole without cracking or grinding it. The same thing would be happening with the kernels in corn silage.

Philip obviously has the milk weights to prove something,but it would be interesting to see an analysis of the kernels of corn that come out the back end of the cows when they were fed the corn that hadn't been run through a processor.
 
For years I fed dairy steers using only a DoBoy protein/min pellet and HM Harvestore whole corn, running everything into the concentrate hopper of the GM. I welded a stove pipe to the lid and ran the drain tile from the bin loading auger into the hopper. Only roughage was the cornstalk bedding they ate. They could finish out at 1150-1200# at 13 months if started early, before they had much frame on. Roughage at a young age makes more frame, and finish is later. With HM corn, in the summer the feed would get a bit ripe after 5-6 days, but in the winter it would be fine in the self feeder. For the younger ones I raised up 60 bu hog feeders and used the tank and cone, mounting them about 5 inches above a plank bottom.
 
High moisture and dry do make a difference, especially with whole kernels. And steers are more forgiving that cows... usually on grain for months, not years. As you know as a former dairyman, too much grain to a milk cow, and she has acidosis, bad feet, won't breed, etc.

Was the silo he put the corn in a bottom unloader? Usually we don't see high moisture corn in a top unloader unless it is ground so it will ferment better and not mold.

And I'm not a beef guy... but I have balanced rations for our herd (32,000 lb plus, 4.1 fat) so I do pretend to know about feeding dairy cows. Most of the steer guys I know though if they have them on ground feed, have at least a bit of roughage. What do you do with yours?
 
Yeah I know lots of guys push a lot of ground feed to steers... and a lot depends on how fine, what grain, HM or dry etc. Finishing that steer for 90 days is a lot different than feeding a dairy cow though, because you want her around for years, and not weeks. It's been my limited experience that a lot of steers consume some bedding if they don't get ANY fiber, and a lot of guys don't quantify that...

Ruminants are pretty adaptable animals, and there re certainly different ways of doing things, that is for sure.
 
That's a good point too,there was a big move here 10 years ago to processing and everyone I asked said other than no undigested kernels they saw no noticeable difference in the tank which is why we didn't bother. We switched to purina 4 years ago and out nutritionist was always pointing out the leftover corn so to prove our point we tried some both ways. Our hopes were that after our unprocessed corn sat for 4 months it would be fine and we'd just get the custome guy in to do enough to last us that long and feed his first every fall. The only change in the barn was the corn and we noticed a big enough difference that we decided to jump when we had the chance. NH doesn't make a 790 with a processor and a good used one with a good one already on it is very hard to find.
 
Dick was using a stave silo with a top unloader.

I feed second and third cutting dry hay free choice in the round bale feeder,corn silage out of the bunker and ground ear corn mixed in to the silage,mixed fresh every morning,enough of it so they have that pretty much free choice day and night too.
 
Like I said,not a big deal to me,but out of curiosity,did your feed rep ever have that corn that you washed out,analyzed?
 
Not sure, but it is a Mennonite operated business. Advertises in the Ontario Farmer at times, near Waterloo, ON. Ben
 
No but I think I might send in a sample on my own for curiosity sake I'm wondering what is actually left in it myself
 
HAve a feed lab run a fecal starch test. A good goal is less than 4%. I am at less than 1. Rate of passage through the animal also has an effect on how digestible things are- so a high producing cow eating 60 plus lb dry matter a day, has a faster rate of passage than a steer. Whole kernels don't have a chance to be digested in a hard working dairy cow, because the digestive tract has less time to get it done. The steer has a bit more time to break down that whole kernel, because passage rate is usually slower.

That being said, I know a heifer v(slower passage rate) will still gain faster on processed silage. We had to cut back the amount of silage fed to keep them from getting too fat.

You made the right decision to buy a chopper with a processor. Make sure you get it set right in the fall so it does the best job you can get.
 
Yes they're a great machine we looked at those too but w don't have enough power to run it
 
I may do that instead of testing the kernels themselves,the origional owner is a friend of mine and lives close by after it gets here I'm hoping to have him show me how to make the adjustments.
 
Over the years we have tried different ways to feed beef steers, whole kernel corn and pellets seem to be the best,, cattle don't seem to like fines in the feed..and when we were trying a hot ration with ground shelled corn and a urea supplement the cattle all seemed to have bad looking livers when slaughtered ..which made us think that was not a good way...
 
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