01/19/05 Cattle nutritionist

Cattle Nutritionist Who does a cattle nutritionist consult for when most of the feedlot operators are not doing business? I'm Jeff Keane and I'll be right back to tell you the answer. Nutritionist Mike Mehren of Hermiston, Oregon talks to a lot more cow-calf producers and people who feed young cattle to "background" them for feedlots instead managers of larger feeding operations. A lot of Mike's talks are now at county cattle organization's annual meetings and other group gatherings rather than the one-on-one conversations with commercial feedlot operators. Since he has been working more with cow-calf producers Mike feels they are more appreciative of his advice than the commercial feeders. Mike's approach to feeding cattle has always been to look for the one factor in feed and mineral rations that limits an animal's body condition improvement. At this time of year, most of the questions center around feeding range cows for winter. May times the limiting factor in feeding this group of cattle will be protein or energy. This is when a rancher needs to know just what is in the certain feed and the best way to get that information is to have an analysis run on that feed. Too many of us have fallen into the by-the-cheapest feed syndrome, which usually cost way more money in the end, but looks really good at the start. This approach is guaranteed to give cattle nutritionists nightmares. Mike Mehren has written a book called "Commonsense Livestock Feeding." I'd like to contact Mike to get a copy, but I tried and the book is sold out. I would still like to find a copy. I'm Jeff Keane.