1-18 IAN WinterFeed

 Magicvalley.com ran an article that had a headline saying that  feeding cows this winter will pay off.  At 1st glance that seems pretty obvious… What are we going to do? Starve them? I’m David Sparks… But when you look into the reality of expensive feed costs you have to do some pretty serious calculating. According to Mary Drewnaski, University of Idaho beef nutritionist,  65% of your total budget when raising cattle in our region is feed. Looking at other economic factors cows that do not breed are the largest figure in the loss  column for ranches and the 2nd biggest deficit is the death of young calves. Winter diet plays a hand in both of those losses.  It is a natural, as you look at feed costs, to ask ‘Where can I reduce expenses?’ but don’t skimp says Mary Drewnaski who has some advice. ” when I think about not skimping, the 1st thing you think about is meeting their needs but as you do so as inexpensively as possible, so the 1st step to that is getting an analysis done on your forage source. A lot of times we either under supplement for over supplement just because we don’t actually know what the quality of the forage is that we are feeding our. “