01/16/09 Winter feed solutions II

Lowering your grocery bill for cattle. I'm David Sparks and a solution's next. Yesterday we learned that there is some real effort being expended in a search for more economical ways to feed cattle, particularly during the winter months where cattle need a lot more food to get by. In fact, livestock can go through as much as 140 percent of what they normally eat when temperatures dip below zero. 200 cows can eat more than $2,500 of good-quality hay in a week as their breathing deepens, their hearts beat faster and they begin shivering. Dr. Eric Scholljegerdes is an animal scientist who is investigating a program of pasture feeding with sorghum Sudan grass swaths during winter snow - which he says are bigger and easier for the cattle to find. (Scholljegerdes) "They're still getting all of their forage from the swath and we're giving them just a splash of peas to meet their energy requirements and they seem to be doing very well. We'll be weighing them in a couple of weeks and we'll see what they're actually doing as far as body condition score and body weight gain. With sorghum there is a question about enough nutrition but& (Scholljegerdes) "We're trying to give them as much as they want but we don't want them to waste it. We strip graze it so that we can limit how much they get each day but when we go out there they're not bawling and acting like they're hungry so we're pretty confident that we're giving them what they need."