By Mike Surbrugg

msurbrugg@joplinglobe.com

MOUNT VERNON, Mo. — Before writing that check to buy an alternative cattle feed, a beef-cattle producer needs to know how to feed it and how its costs and nutritional values compare with corn.

That is the advice of speakers during a beef tour that was part of Field Day held last month at the University of Missouri’s Southwest Center near Mount Vernon.

Such feed can be in dry, cake, wet or syrup form, and include the byproducts of fuel production.

Costs to haul the feed to the farm and storage also need to be considered, said Justin Sexton, state beef extension nutritionist.

Providing such feed should include a goal to reduce forage consumption, especially during a drought.

Corn costs dictate the economics of alternative feeds, he added.

“What form you get it (alternative feed) in depends on what works on your farm. Liquid is the more complicated to store and feed,” he said.

A bushel of corn will generate three gallons of ethanol. That portion of the corn that is left weighs 17 to 18 pounds, he said.

Monty Kerley, an animal scientist at the university, said making biodiesel fuel from soybeans leaves a co-product called glycerol. It has the same energy value as corn.

A feeding study covering 110 days showed cattle getting no gylcerol had average daily gain of three pounds. When glycerol was added at rates of 5 or 10 percent of the ration, average daily gains increased to 3.2 to 3.4 pounds respectfully.

Doubling the glycerol to 20 percent cut animal gains to 2.7 pounds per day, he said.

As more biodiesel fuel is made, more product will be available that could lower prices below that of feeding corn, he said.

Glycerol should be fed with hay to enable cattle to absorb the feed, he said. When the methanol level in the glycerol exceeds 150 parts per million, it is not to be fed to animals, according to the Federal Drug Administration.