play in the dirt - 11/15/2012 21:55

Thanks for the reply's Il cow man and 801486. I never could find what 801486 was talking about on the okie st website. The ezration .com website I just haven't played around with enough I guess to figure out some numbers.

Il cow man... I think I follow your numbers and is similar to the way I am thinking but like you am just guessing on how well they will gain.

So here's what I got.... I'm guessing they weigh 900-950. I could be fooled and they average 1000 but I don't think so. I would like to see them weigh around 1200 in 90 days because that is what sells good around here. If they're around the 1100lb range well that is fine too.

What I have been giving them the last couple of days is 12lbs of hay and 12lbs of silage (dry matter weight). I figure there is about 4lbs of corn per head at this weight of silage. We have a assortment of hay ranging from good grass hay, CRP, good alfalfa, and oat hay. They probably wont see much of the alfalfa hay but some.

I have some corn and gluten pellets I started to mix in and will get them up to about 3lbs/head of that in a couple of days but I only have about a 2 week supply of that without buying more.

They still have a little bit of grazing but figured here in a couple of weeks or so when it got colder to up their dry matter intake to 30lbs and do away with the corn and gluten.

I could leave them with the 24lbs and 3lbs of corn if you think that would be good enough? but that would mean buying more corn and gluten.

If they would gain good enough with just the silage/hay ration then I would rather do that. I just want to make sure I get them up to a good weight. I wish there was an easy answer......but will probably just have to learn the hard way. :)


Good thing Texas Pawpaw posted a link, I couldn't find it myself when I went looking, it's been a long time since I downloaded it. I've got the older version of the program and I fired up the antique desktop and fiddled with it a while tonight. I used standard values for corn silage and good alfalfa hay and corn. 25 pounds of silage and 14 pounds of hay will give you a 2.22 adg, too much protein and .47/pound cost of gain. Add 3 pounds corn and the adg goes to 2.99 and cost of gain to .48. Add 5 pounds corn and the adg goes to 3.49 and the cost of gain to .49/ pound. I think all three rations had too much protein so you could sub some other kind of hay for part of the alfalfa or gluten pellets and non alfalfa hay. I don't know if I have updated pricing lately so the cost of gain figures might be low, but should still illustrate the ration differences, and like I said in the other post I don't get as good a gain as it estimates.