Death comes to us all. Life's but a walking shadow | According to my cattle feeding manual The "net energy for maintenance " for 56, 45, & 35 lb test weight corn is 1.02, 0.98 & 0.95 Mcal/lb of Dry matter. Similarly "net energy for gain" is 0.67, 0.64 & 0.62 Mcal/lb of DM Thus 45 lb test wt corn has about 95% of the energy of 56 lb test wt corn and 35 lb corn is about 92% by weight. Interestingly, net protein goes the other way. Net protein for 56, 45 and 35 lb test wt corn is 3.5, 3.9 & 4.2 % of DM.
Keep in mind that while 45 & 35 lb test weight is 80% and 62% of 56 lb test wt corn as long as you feed by weight the actual decline in feed value is nominal but it sure takes up more space in the bin and truck. My impression is the buyers really like to discount low test weight corn because it's just another way to ding the producer.
I have heard that the ethanol plants don't like the low test weight corn because the volume factor really hurts the ethanol yield because the limiting factor for them is the space in the fermentation tanks. This makes some sense because more of the space is taken up by non-fermentable fiber and protein. In contrast the % protein in the DDGs aught to be 20% higher. |
I'll go first.........Oct. Report Guess
