# Dairy nutritionists



## steve IN (Jan 13, 2010)

Anyone else out there being told that some dairy nutritionists are telling customers to eliminate forage from thier rations? I dont mind selling fair hay at a lower price but to make claims that good hay is worth only what straw or soyhulls will bring is absurd. i was always taught that a cows rumen needs long stem roughage to keep the rumen going. Just wondering what everyone else has heard. These same nutritionists are also advocating western hay over local hay. Sounds like a kickback somewhere. Only time will tell


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## swmnhay (Jun 13, 2008)

steve IN said:


> Anyone else out there being told that some dairy nutritionists are telling customers to eliminate forage from thier rations? I dont mind selling fair hay at a lower price but to make claims that good hay is worth only what straw or soyhulls will bring is absurd. i was always taught that a cows rumen needs long stem roughage to keep the rumen going. Just wondering what everyone else has heard. These same nutritionists are also advocating western hay over local hay. Sounds like a kickback somewhere. Only time will tell


it's been that way for awhile here,Nutritionist promotes wheat straw and add protein that he sells to build the ration.Dairy and beef rations.


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## Bob M (Feb 11, 2012)

Steve, are you saying they are telling you to eliminate all forage ( silage and dry hay), or just dry hay. Every year we try and improve our forage quality with idea of feeding more forage and less grain.


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## steve IN (Jan 13, 2010)

Seems they have become salesman instead of providing a service. Remember when a dairy farmer fed what he raised and made money. Now they have to mix five or six things together and next week maybe something different because the price of one thing changed. I know its all about making money in tough times but what about a consistent diet? Cows are also being worn out faster. Change is a wonderful thing but not always for the best. Next year will be different as well as the year before was also different.


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## swmnhay (Jun 13, 2008)

The way I see it good Alfalfa is a protien source along with a lot of vitamins and other goodies.If you feed straw to replace the roughage you have to replace the protien,vitamins,etc.The nutritionist can sell more of his protien and byproducts that he has for sale and he makes more $.

A lot of feeders and dairyman will believe anything the nutritionist tells them with out even questioning it.


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## steve IN (Jan 13, 2010)

I am pretty sure they like straw because either they bale it themselves and because it has zero nutritional value which means they don't have to work too hard to balance the ration. have even heard some dairies sell their straw they bale to a nutritionist and then buy it back because they have been told it is better on their cash . In our area we also have a problem with western hay. Seems truck drivers are willing to drive here for almost nothing with a load of hay to get a back haul. I even emailed a dairy nutritionist at Purdue about the benefits of western big square hay over local round bale hay. He has been asked this a lot. He thinks it funny because all hay is put into the ration based upon analysis so cheaper lower protein hay can be fed at a different % . t of course the nutritionist might not get a kickback from the western grower, truck driver or some even own hay farms out west.


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## mlappin (Jun 25, 2009)

Had some thing similar awhile back, nutritionist getting everybody to buy western hay over local, turns out nutritionists family were either the producers or brokers of the hay.


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## deadmoose (Oct 30, 2011)

I don't get it. I have to bring my hay almost 5 miles home, and that seems too far to me...


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## swmnhay (Jun 13, 2008)

steve IN said:


> I am pretty sure they like straw because either they bale it themselves and because it has zero nutritional value which means they don't have to work too hard to balance the ration.


There is no wheat straw baled here,it is all trucked in so with delivery last yr it was running 100-125 ton.They could of bought pretty good hay from 150-175 a ton then.

I've heard of nutritionists saying that very thing but isn't it there job to balance the ration and not to put something in with near 0 feed value because its easier for THEM.Jeeze I'm sure they got a computor program to punch the numbers into.


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## mlappin (Jun 25, 2009)

Way it was explained to me is straw is easier because its a constant value, unless a dairy can buy all its hay at once, and it's all the exact same quality and tests the same, the ration needs adjusting with some regularity.

We just always tried to chop our haylage at the same maturity and alfalfa hay was fed free choice.


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## steve IN (Jan 13, 2010)

Straw is used as a filler to help keep cows gut full for full milk production but also keep costs down. So another reason that $8 corn was no good for the ag economy. A lot of my dairy customers feed very little if any corn since the ethanol fiasco. They also have no intention of going back to feeding corn. They also have found other sources of feed. Protein is the one thing that is hard to replace. One vet told me that without a long stem forage of some sort in the diet there is a bigger percentage of twisted guts.


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## mlappin (Jun 25, 2009)

Agree, all of our animals were fed a TMR but also had baled hay free choice as well.


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## Gearclash (Nov 25, 2010)

steve IN said:


> Straw is used as a filler to help keep cows gut full for full milk production but also keep costs down. So another reason that $8 corn was no good for the ag economy. A lot of my dairy customers feed very little if any corn since the ethanol fiasco. They also have no intention of going back to feeding corn. They also have found other sources of feed. Protein is the one thing that is hard to replace. One vet told me that without a long stem forage of some sort in the diet there is a bigger percentage of twisted guts.


I'm not a nutritionist but I am in the dairy business. Dairy rations are complex. I question the theory of feeding straw, at least in a lactating ration. Lactating cows need all the energy they can get, not fillers. Straw, particularly wheat straw is sometimes used in dry cow rations for nutritional reasons related to hypocalcemia after calving. All else being equal, top quality alfalfa will have the most energy in it of any "hay" that is out there whether it be in silage form or dry hay. There was a big push in this area to use shredlage (corn silage with a very long TLC and more aggressive processing) as a method of eliminating the need for other forage sources. That came about during the high corn prices and subsequent high hay prices. As time has progressed, this shredlage product is more resembling the classic processed corn silage, and dairy producers are finding out that cows milk better when there is some other high quality forage in the ration beside corn silage.

There is no getting around the fact that cows are ruminants and need to be fed accordingly.


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## Gearclash (Nov 25, 2010)

This is a shot of a ration that was fed to our milking herd a while back. Rations are constantly being adjusted as feeds are changed and lab tested.

"Cotton" is whole fuzzy cotton seed. "Hay" is dry alfalfa. Corn silage is regular processed silage. Holstein cows that milk from 80-95lbs/day average, depending on time of year.


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## steve IN (Jan 13, 2010)

Both my neighbors feed straw to their milking rations , as do several of my customers. I think it also came about because of the ethanol fiasco that drove the cost of corn ridiculously high. One other thing I have noticed is that it also seems to be the larger and "more modern" dairies. Smaller dairies even with a TMR ration still feed hay free choice. As in every area of ag there seem to two very different ways of doing things. Everyone does what seems to work best for their operation. But then again don't we all. Also one more thought . Got phone calls from North of Benton Harbor, MI as well as Fort Wayne, IN about hay. Both people said good hay in very short supply or at a price that , in my opinion, was plain stupid and greedy.


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