FEEDING FACTS
B Y J I M M Y PA R K E R
Hay Quality Hay is undoubtedly one of the costliest inputs in the cattle industry. The most expensive hay is usually way too high to feed and the cheap hay costs far more than it is worth. So how do you decide which hay is what you need? I guess this is where we need to do our quota of math for the month. I know most people don’t like math but bear with me and I will go through it and hopefully make sense. Let’s talk about the animals’ needs and look at a few examples. If you have had livestock for very long you probably know that an animal’s needs change dramatically
as their age and stage of production changes. Mature dry cows in mid to late gestation have relatively low nutritional needs, mature lactating cows with a 60- or 90-day-old calf have fairly high needs and lactating first-calf heifers that are milking heavily have really high needs. The same roll of hay won’t be correct for those three different cows. Poor quality hay could be defined as less than 8% protein and less than 52% TDN. It won’t meet the needs of any of the cattle listed above in all weather conditions without some supplementation but clearly it will come closer to meeting the needs
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