“What’s in Today’s Feedlot Diet?”
By Chris Reinhardt and Justin Waggoner, Ph.D., Beef Systems Specialist
The commercial cattle feeding industry is incredibly diverse in many ways. A recent survey of consulting nutritionists conducted by Samuelson et al., (2016) gives us some insight into the feeding and management practices of the cattle feeding industry. This survey summarized responses from 24 consulting nutritionists that service in excess of 14,000,000 cattle annually. As expected, the primary grain used in both receiving and finishing diets was corn. However, the most commonly reported secondary grain used was wheat. The most common processing methods were steam-flaking and dryrolling. The typical grain inclusion was 60% or less for receiving diets and 34.8% of the respondents reported an inclusion of 60-70% grain in finishing diets with a range of 50-90%. The reported range in grain inclusion of finishing rations is likely attributed to the use of by-product feedstuffs. The most commonly used by-product in both receiving and finishing rations was wet distiller’s grain. Alfalfa was the most common roughage source used in receiving diets (58.5% of responses). In finishing diets corn silage was the primary roughage source used (37.5% of responses), followed by corn stalks (29.2% of responses) and alfalfa (20.8% of respondents). The majority of nutritionists in the survey recommend an energy content 0.68-0.70 Mcal/lb of Net Energy for gain and 13.4% crude protein in the finishing ration.
For more information, contact Justin Waggoner at jwaggon@ksu.edu.
