Zachary Smith (Full Presentation)

Eric Buck Author

08/01/2024 Added

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Using Earlage in Feedlots

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[00:00:00.000]So I get to talk to y'all today about using earlage and feedlot diets.
[00:00:08.680]Here in feedlots, earlage was an ingredient that I wasn't familiar with prior to coming to the Northern Plains.
[00:00:16.220]It was an ingredient that I had seen as a student being used here, but not very often.
[00:00:21.560]It seemed to me that when we got that product, it would depend on a variety of other things.
[00:00:26.840]It was our preferred product, but we were putting up corn silage and wet corn,
[00:00:33.020]and earlidge just sometimes made it in to the RNC feed ingredients.
[00:00:37.440]2020, COVID year, we're sitting at home, and like, I don't know, we'd been sent home.
[00:00:47.140]It was March, and I told Alfredo about this grant, and I wanted to apply.
[00:00:51.760]Alfredo and I had tried some NIFA grants previously.
[00:00:56.240]With some alfalfa studies, and we weren't getting any funding.
[00:01:01.040]I was like, man, Alfredo, I heard about this program in the USDA that I think they had
[00:01:07.420]like 20 submissions last year, and they funded 10 of them.
[00:01:10.600]We should try this.
[00:01:11.560]It's all about going to where the money is, and they have a mandate to spend this money,
[00:01:16.500]and you just want to be the biggest fish in the small pond.
[00:01:19.140]So we got the study, and then we actually had to do it, which was a whole different story.
[00:01:25.640]South Dakota, if you're in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and you take a 150-mile circle,
[00:01:31.780]and the rest of the state of South Dakota, there's about 2 million head of cattle on feed,
[00:01:38.060]and these cattle would be in feed yards that are not actually over 1,000 head.
[00:01:42.560]This would be all of the yards, those under 1,000 head, so not numbers included in USDA numbers, but in the NASS data.
[00:01:49.220]Now, realizing there's a million head in northwest Iowa, probably most of them,
[00:01:55.260]all right.
[00:01:55.580]Here, but there is a good pocket of about a half a million head of cattle in South Dakota and probably a little fewer than that in Minnesota.
[00:02:03.000]So, a lot of cattle in this part of the world.
[00:02:04.720]That's why I don't get to be Kip's neighbor anymore.
[00:02:07.720]Living in Abilene, Texas would not work for my career, so I have to live in South Dakota and use this to justify to my wife while we're in South Dakota.
[00:02:15.760]It's great because this is the other side.
[00:02:17.800]This is the fun part.
[00:02:18.820]We've got two research feedlots.
[00:02:20.440]One's on main campus there at the campus station, and one is down in Bearden.
[00:02:25.560]We're in Beersford, about 100 miles south.
[00:02:28.020]We could throw a rock and hit about a million head of cattle in Iowa.
[00:02:32.260]Two facilities allows us to do research in our shop at the RNC that's on campus.
[00:02:38.960]We'll run balling calves, do growing calf studies, finishing trials.
[00:02:43.440]And then down in Beersford, we try to feed what I'll call a nine-weight in March,
[00:02:47.940]a backgrounded steer that was born the previous spring,
[00:02:50.700]or a steer that went through a really extensive grazing program
[00:02:54.420]and is a nine-weight feeder steer in October.
[00:02:57.960]And those are the cattle we feed in Beersford.
[00:03:00.380]So really at SDSU, I have this really great opportunity to get all these feeder cattle
[00:03:05.280]from the western side of the state that people like to export out of state
[00:03:10.460]and try to convince them that they should stay here in South Dakota.
[00:03:13.000]This comes from Dr. Stetler.
[00:03:15.760]Alan is a big proponent of actually describing what is the material we're talking about here.
[00:03:23.280]I actually think I stole this from his 2018 slide.
[00:03:26.880]There's supposed to be somewhere it says credit.
[00:03:30.820]Maybe I said it in the, oh, it's at the top.
[00:03:32.740]What the heck?
[00:03:33.280]Enter it.
[00:03:33.820]Corn silage, take the entire material, including the leaf husk, stalk, plant, cob, earlage.
[00:03:41.540]Now, I wasn't old.
[00:03:42.800]I wasn't even born to know this, but according to Alan, earlage used to be when we took a forage head
[00:03:49.260]and we took all the material from the last corn cob up.
[00:03:53.260]and we ensiled that. That is what earlage was called. And back in the day, they called the
[00:03:57.960]other product snaplage. And we call earlage today kind of what snaplage was. Snaplage in the old
[00:04:06.160]nomenclature was harvesting corn as a means to return as much of the husk and the leaf while
[00:04:13.300]retaining the, excuse me, the leaf and the stalk back to the field while retaining the cob, the
[00:04:21.260]corn, the husk, and some shank. And so what we're going to talk about as earlage is actually
[00:04:27.060]snaplage, returning back, not taking the harvester and forage harvester and chopping all the stalk
[00:04:34.860]and corn above, but actually taking this corn cob off and keeping the corn, the cob, and some
[00:04:42.720]husk and silk in stock. Snaplage is earlage, or in this case, it also gets called high moisture
[00:04:50.560]ear corn.
[00:04:51.100]Nonetheless, it's very confusing, but we're going to call this material earlage moving forward.
[00:04:56.580]This is from Alfredo. Any slide that looks gray or looks like Alfredo made it, Alfredo did make
[00:05:03.900]it. Alfredo was a collaborator on this research, and he had the privilege of speaking about this
[00:05:10.080]at an earlier event this week, and Alfredo and I didn't get on sabbatical until after I turned
[00:05:14.480]in all my materials here, and Alfredo actually did a better job as expected because he
[00:05:20.680]gets it done.
[00:05:21.080]He gets a lot of this stuff, and I'm really just an academic trained jerk up here telling you what I thought we saw, so bear with me.
[00:05:27.700]Corn silage, yield potential for fiber and starch.
[00:05:31.720]Problem with this is we rob all the residue from the field.
[00:05:34.700]You'd be thinking about that, especially in an integrated cropping and livestocking system.
[00:05:39.640]High moisture ear corn, less or better, what I would say, yield efficiency, less losses in the field than if we go all the way to high moisture corn.
[00:05:50.660]A product that has both fiber and grain.
[00:05:53.540]I'm going to show you some slides here a little bit later that Alfredo put together about the thin bin costs associated with producing earlage.
[00:06:01.700]And it was the most variable in price and most expensive year over year.
[00:06:06.460]But I think one intrinsic component of earlage that we must realize is that it's processed grain and forage.
[00:06:12.020]And if it's processed grain and forage, that's in regards to getting the crop off the ground.
[00:06:17.840]Once we put it up, it's an ensile.
[00:06:20.240]The material is ready to go.
[00:06:21.620]We don't have to process the corn.
[00:06:23.100]We don't have to process the forage, which leads on to the study we did looking at earlage as a roughage source.
[00:06:28.040]And we'll highlight a few of those things.
[00:06:30.040]High moisture corn is primarily starch.
[00:06:32.920]It's corn grain, highly digestible starch at that.
[00:06:36.800]And we do get to leave some residue in the field.
[00:06:38.900]So the studies we'll talk about first was the high moisture corn, high moisture ear corn survey.
[00:06:44.320]And I'm only going to talk about the earlage survey and only going to discuss those results here.
[00:06:50.180]For today, and then talk about earlage as a roughage source.
[00:06:53.300]This is an Iowa Beef Industry Council funded study where, actually, I didn't ask from everybody in the room,
[00:06:59.780]but last year, Iowa Beef sent out the RF request for proposals, and we read it,
[00:07:06.260]and we turned in an earlage study of all the granting agencies I've dealt with.
[00:07:10.840]They told us what they were looking for, and they funded those studies.
[00:07:13.660]Tried again this year.
[00:07:15.000]I heard back we didn't get any money.
[00:07:16.400]That's okay.
[00:07:17.060]But very excited to have this study funded because it had been,
[00:07:20.060]it had been on my to-do list for like five years.
[00:07:22.860]I just, I had put up 400 tons of earlage every year waiting to do this study,
[00:07:28.220]but then like, I'll give you an example.
[00:07:30.580]I was going to do it, but then someone like Kafka rolls in last minute
[00:07:34.020]and wants to do a trial, so I have to bypass my study, which is fine.
[00:07:37.320]So finally got the money.
[00:07:38.700]I got to do it now.
[00:07:39.680]We'll talk about that.
[00:07:40.900]NIFA project, USDA, Critical Ag Research and Extension.
[00:07:46.100]This is that program that was well-funded.
[00:07:49.320]They had the government.
[00:07:50.040]They had the government mandate to spend $8 million,
[00:07:52.040]but nobody submitted, so I did.
[00:07:55.780]Got the project funded.
[00:07:57.240]April of 2020, we didn't even know what we were doing.
[00:08:01.300]We were just having fun, not going to the office,
[00:08:04.820]going out to the farm, writing grants, publishing papers.
[00:08:07.360]September of 2020, it's real.
[00:08:09.520]I'm having to wear a mask to teach class,
[00:08:12.160]and then we got to start this project quickly.
[00:08:14.780]Right around the time they're putting up the material,
[00:08:16.940]so as you can tell.
[00:08:18.020]Here's the team.
[00:08:19.240]It was Zach and Warren Ledit.
[00:08:20.740]Alfredo would have been at University of Minnesota at the time.
[00:08:27.500]Kendall Swanson and Carl Hoppe.
[00:08:29.600]Kendall's a faculty member there at NDSU.
[00:08:32.820]Carl's out at Carrington.
[00:08:34.080]Dr. Loy, Dalky, Beth, Duran, Denise Schwab, Erica, and Russ,
[00:08:39.620]the Iowa State Extension team.
[00:08:41.600]Alfredo and Galen here at UNL helped along the way,
[00:08:44.580]and in particular, Galen came on board when we started,
[00:08:47.600]when Alfredo moved to.
[00:08:48.720]Nebraska focused on Ehrlich, and then Dr. Owens,
[00:08:52.880]formerly a DuPont pioneer, formerly OSU
[00:08:57.340]and retired DuPont pioneer.
[00:08:58.720]And Dr. Owens was supposed to be on the grant,
[00:09:01.680]but then when it was time to turn the grant in,
[00:09:04.360]he needed a DUNS number, and that's some USDA,
[00:09:07.740]that's some USDA NEFA stuff.
[00:09:09.880]He didn't have one, and so he just took his name
[00:09:12.980]off everything, but had been serving along the way
[00:09:15.840]as an advisor, which I don't need to get
[00:09:18.640]off track here, but we were talking about silage
[00:09:21.160]safety, and then someone mentioned the comment
[00:09:23.340]about face density, and I can't figure,
[00:09:26.540]it's the tough one, how do we measure density
[00:09:29.580]of a pile while being safe?
[00:09:31.140]We actually talked about this during this,
[00:09:33.280]coming up with how we were going to measure
[00:09:36.040]the density of the ensiled material safely.
[00:09:39.460]Fred Owens was adamant that nobody walked up
[00:09:42.540]close to the pile, and I think that's a smart idea
[00:09:44.700]at a university-sponsored deal, but we were even coming
[00:09:48.560]up with crazy ideas like, should we get a Hoyt bow
[00:09:51.520]and arrow and fire an arrow to the face of the pile
[00:09:54.400]and measure how far it goes in or something, right?
[00:09:56.620]Or could we do it from the top side?
[00:09:59.100]I don't know, but we got to think about these things
[00:10:01.580]moving forward to do this right.
[00:10:03.420]So Dr. Owens' contribution was definitely,
[00:10:06.040]Zach, you're not walking up to the front
[00:10:08.220]to get your density measure.
[00:10:09.560]Your wife won't like that.
[00:10:11.500]This was tough to do.
[00:10:13.020]One, we suck at surveys.
[00:10:15.980]Two, we suck at making...
[00:10:18.480]Making surveys.
[00:10:19.060]So that's the problem.
[00:10:20.360]I'll never do another survey again in my life.
[00:10:24.000]These were really tough to complete.
[00:10:25.640]The other thing is,
[00:10:26.920]is stakeholders don't really like to take surveys
[00:10:29.300]unless you're sitting there and making them do it
[00:10:31.440]or make them do it on a QR code
[00:10:33.660]on the way out of leaving a meeting
[00:10:35.040]or give them some financial incentive to get this done.
[00:10:39.300]We had nine people play ball on the earlage,
[00:10:42.240]seven on the high moisture corn.
[00:10:43.440]We're only going to talk about earlage.
[00:10:44.780]There were probably across the four states
[00:10:48.400]27 different stakeholders that participated
[00:10:51.940]in the sample collections that we'll talk about a little later.
[00:10:54.580]But on the survey, I was only able to get nine completed.
[00:10:57.580]Most of these came from Iowa.
[00:11:00.760]Here's a little bit about the people included
[00:11:04.720]in our particular survey.
[00:11:06.980]The demographics of those average feedlot capacity
[00:11:12.720]was 1,700, and those ranged from 500 to 5,000 head.
[00:11:18.320]Most of these producers turned over
[00:11:21.240]about a time and a half per year.
[00:11:22.980]Primarily finishers were being fed,
[00:11:26.060]and the average inclusion of the earlage material
[00:11:28.800]on a dry matter basis was about 38%.
[00:11:31.900]And talking to some folks working in the industry
[00:11:37.680]that do play with this material,
[00:11:39.400]a lot of them said, yeah, that's exactly where it is.
[00:11:41.740]So the stakeholders that responded answered as they,
[00:11:48.240]as their nutritionist said it was included.
[00:11:51.540]On average, most producers,
[00:11:54.460]we had a wide range of those
[00:11:56.140]who have been doing it for a long time to just recently.
[00:11:58.920]The average was about 20 years of experience
[00:12:01.640]with this particular material.
[00:12:03.280]Corn maturity, 110 days.
[00:12:06.720]And then this was more interesting
[00:12:10.040]when you looked at the harvest efficiency
[00:12:12.360]that I'll call acres per hour.
[00:12:13.660]And this is an estimate
[00:12:15.120]because they didn't actually tell me this.
[00:12:17.260]I had to use other numbers
[00:12:18.160]they gave me to calculate this,
[00:12:19.800]but it was greater for earlage
[00:12:21.160]than it was high moisture corn.
[00:12:22.400]So we're getting more material move per hour
[00:12:24.780]when we put up earlage.
[00:12:26.480]And the targeted dry matter
[00:12:30.380]that they said on paper was 67%.
[00:12:34.720]But I think people, if you visited with them,
[00:12:38.260]they'd say their target might range from 58 to 70%,
[00:12:41.580]depending upon what they're after.
[00:12:43.460]Most of the material we put up
[00:12:45.800]was just a nickel wetter than that.
[00:12:48.080]Um, what did their pile look like?
[00:12:50.620]And again, this was a tough question to ask
[00:12:52.640]because they were all estimates.
[00:12:53.920]None of this used a tape measure.
[00:12:55.620]It was more or less questions.
[00:12:56.760]Ask them questions like how wide, how tall,
[00:13:00.440]come up with surface area,
[00:13:01.980]the time they spent packing each load,
[00:13:04.360]which is, you also would need to know the size of the load,
[00:13:06.600]but it was about 10 minutes.
[00:13:07.640]Most of them took about a day.
[00:13:11.100]So either what I'd say immediately,
[00:13:13.440]once they got everything cleaned up within six hours,
[00:13:16.120]up until two days,
[00:13:18.000]post-harvest was the time that it took those stakeholders
[00:13:21.520]to put up and cover the pile.
[00:13:23.540]There was really, everybody uses six millimeter thickness.
[00:13:27.160]And most people waited about two months
[00:13:30.160]prior to needing to get into that material.
[00:13:32.100]But you can see here,
[00:13:33.180]there was people feeding green shop to those that,
[00:13:35.980]maybe a smaller producer,
[00:13:37.940]waited until it was the time for the cattle
[00:13:40.280]to actually need that particular ingredient.
[00:13:42.080]And so there's that information.
[00:13:44.760]This is,
[00:13:47.920]we just wanted to describe to you
[00:13:52.380]some, what does a Penn State particle separator look like?
[00:13:57.220]We did not run Penn State on these samples
[00:13:59.120]and we probably should have.
[00:14:00.200]This is the earlage material
[00:14:02.040]that we put up in Brookings this year.
[00:14:04.080]It would have a physically effective factor.
[00:14:06.900]This would be everything above the pan of about 78.
[00:14:10.060]And really our 19 millimeter sieve,
[00:14:13.120]I don't know if we did as good a job.
[00:14:15.140]I was expecting to see this number about half
[00:14:17.840]of that.
[00:14:18.280]And so earlage can be variable,
[00:14:20.660]even though most of it is being kernel processed.
[00:14:25.160]Moving forward,
[00:14:27.480]let me make sure I didn't do a very good job
[00:14:30.360]when I made these,
[00:14:30.960]the colors changed.
[00:14:31.860]So I will try to tell you when the colors changed.
[00:14:34.180]Most producers were using a normal hybrid type,
[00:14:39.000]not flowery.
[00:14:40.800]I think this would indicate that the stakeholders
[00:14:45.080]that we were investigating.
[00:14:46.840]So at least,
[00:14:47.760]eight of the nine were using only normal hybrids.
[00:14:51.580]Some elected to use flowery hybrids.
[00:14:54.520]I think this all came down to timing of harvest.
[00:14:57.420]But their main goal was,
[00:14:58.740]they weren't getting cute and using other varieties
[00:15:01.520]to say to make other endpoints of corn.
[00:15:04.120]This was pretty interesting.
[00:15:06.420]On the high moisture corn data that I'm not showing here,
[00:15:10.700]about half the people use their own equipment
[00:15:13.600]and not custom harvest high moisture corn.
[00:15:17.680]In the earlage, I was surprised, excuse me,
[00:15:21.240]in the high moisture corn,
[00:15:23.200]more people use their own harvest equipment.
[00:15:25.240]And the earlage data, about two-thirds of the respondents
[00:15:29.240]used a custom harvester to harvest this material.
[00:15:31.860]And I think this could be twofold.
[00:15:33.900]It's either a newer product
[00:15:36.940]or something they never invested in to get the harvester,
[00:15:42.720]or, yeah, I can't really figure this out.
[00:15:47.600]Other than maybe it's more difficult to put up.
[00:15:49.360]They're not putting up enough to own their own harvester.
[00:15:51.700]Most of the stakeholders that we visited with
[00:15:55.520]about their harvesting,
[00:15:56.540]how they facilitated harvesting,
[00:16:00.820]were using custom harvesters.
[00:16:02.460]And I think this is actually really interesting
[00:16:04.380]because in a minute I'll talk about inoculant use.
[00:16:07.220]I was surprised.
[00:16:08.640]Maybe only a third of the high-moisture corn respondents
[00:16:14.800]used an inoculant,
[00:16:16.600]but nearly all.
[00:16:17.520]Or all but one of the earlage people
[00:16:19.800]used an inoculant.
[00:16:20.800]I think it has something to do with
[00:16:22.120]custom versus non-custom harvesting services.
[00:16:24.660]You call somebody on there that has an inoculant
[00:16:27.480]that they can sell it to you
[00:16:28.660]or you have the equipment to apply it.
[00:16:30.940]That's what they did.
[00:16:32.100]Did you process the earlage before ensiling?
[00:16:35.060]And still need to figure out
[00:16:36.780]it was one respondent that said no.
[00:16:38.780]Everybody else said yes.
[00:16:40.160]But this one person that said no,
[00:16:42.680]they're going to be very important later
[00:16:45.340]when I talk about this stuff
[00:16:47.440]because this one guy that said no,
[00:16:49.440]we actually did all the sampling on him
[00:16:51.260]and ended up having some bad situations.
[00:16:53.840]How did they test whether or not
[00:16:57.100]they processed the earlage adequately?
[00:16:59.880]So for the extent of processing,
[00:17:04.780]were they happy with the earlage?
[00:17:07.720]So maybe with the high moisture corn,
[00:17:11.040]they were looking at specific particle size,
[00:17:13.800]microns and variants.
[00:17:17.360]A distribution of those around a specific micron size.
[00:17:23.940]With the earlage,
[00:17:25.300]everybody just said they wanted all the cobs crushed.
[00:17:28.840]They didn't want to see any whole cobs.
[00:17:30.600]Did you add water?
[00:17:33.680]No, at least for earlage.
[00:17:35.560]A lot of the people on the high moisture corn
[00:17:39.740]were adding water.
[00:17:40.580]Now I want to bring up,
[00:17:42.920]and I should have put this case study in here.
[00:17:44.900]Dr. Diaz would probably like
[00:17:47.280]this, I don't know why I get this periodical,
[00:17:52.740]but someone that lived in the house
[00:17:55.100]before where I lived,
[00:17:56.400]they were getting Horde's Dairyman
[00:17:57.760]and they never canceled the subscription.
[00:17:59.380]So every month I get Horde's Dairyman
[00:18:00.900]and it's actually pretty good reading.
[00:18:02.320]There's some good articles in there
[00:18:03.720]about just something random every month.
[00:18:06.380]And in particular, it was the geyser article.
[00:18:09.580]One, he was talking, no, that was a different one.
[00:18:12.720]This was about a stakeholder that wrote in.
[00:18:15.200]He was from Tennessee.
[00:18:16.300]He put up earlage.
[00:18:17.820]But he didn't kernel process it.
[00:18:19.520]And then his nutritionist said he needed to kernel process it.
[00:18:23.620]And so they did.
[00:18:25.240]They took the earlage.
[00:18:27.440]They uncovered it.
[00:18:28.740]They reprocessed it.
[00:18:30.340]They repackaged it.
[00:18:31.780]And somewhere along the way, wild molds got incorporated.
[00:18:34.780]And then the cow's milk production went south.
[00:18:37.340]And so they're never putting up earlage again.
[00:18:39.240]Do it right the first time, I guess.
[00:18:41.900]But no one's adding water to make earlage better.
[00:18:44.000]Did you cover the ensiled mass?
[00:18:46.180]This was a yes.
[00:18:47.120]Yes, 100% on the earlage material and on the high-moisture corn.
[00:18:51.180]This is good.
[00:18:51.820]This means people are using their head.
[00:18:53.220]If we had asked this about corn silage, they might not have all said yes.
[00:18:56.480]We at least locally, when we're talking to our stakeholders,
[00:19:00.140]when we're trying to talk to a guy in Kimball, South Dakota,
[00:19:04.920]about why he needs to cover his corn silage pile because his grandpa never did it,
[00:19:09.300]his dad never did it, and all the neighbors never do it,
[00:19:11.580]we ask him this question, and we're like,
[00:19:13.040]would you let the neighbor boy haul your corn silage if he took,
[00:19:17.040]every other load, and dumped it in the bar ditch?
[00:19:19.860]And he said, absolutely not, and then we tell him,
[00:19:22.000]well, you should cover your silage pile because that's the same thing.
[00:19:24.920]Everybody covers corn, though, when it's in the form of high-moisture corn
[00:19:29.880]and earlidge, at least in our biased survey of going to the people
[00:19:34.240]that we at least figured could do it right.
[00:19:35.980]Most of the material's stored in a bunker.
[00:19:38.320]A few of them were using ag bags.
[00:19:40.980]Everybody used tires as a cover, as a weighted structure to hold
[00:19:46.960]the cover down, and some used sidewalls,
[00:19:51.200]some used a combination of both, or some used whole.
[00:19:54.880]After listening to Dr. Renato's slide, we should ask more things,
[00:20:00.780]like do you use more tires on the seams?
[00:20:02.800]But we poor survey conductors.
[00:20:05.800]Did you use an inoculant?
[00:20:08.020]44% of respondents said yes, 33% said no,
[00:20:12.020]and about two of them didn't say anything.
[00:20:14.520]But this was a greater amount of inoculant
[00:20:16.880]use in the earlage material than in the high moisture corn.
[00:20:20.060]And then lastly, we asked them if they noticed
[00:20:22.780]any heating of the ensiled material.
[00:20:24.920]Most of them said no, and some did not bother responding.
[00:20:28.280]So before we get into the chemical,
[00:20:31.340]the nutrient data here, I want to tell you
[00:20:33.980]that the information that I'll be sharing moving forward
[00:20:36.480]really came from a biased population of producers
[00:20:39.660]that at a minimum were doing the things
[00:20:41.900]that you all would have asked them.
[00:20:43.300]The kernel processing, are you covering?
[00:20:45.740]Do you use an inoculant?
[00:20:46.800]Do you try to get the stuff covered within a day?
[00:20:50.460]All these things were covered here, right?
[00:20:53.380]With chemical data and some NIR data,
[00:20:58.160]and then we would have subjected these samples
[00:21:02.300]to the Dairyland Labs, what I'll call their in vitro
[00:21:06.560]wet chemistry starch digestibility assay.
[00:21:09.600]We had 24 sites with nutrient data and 137 samples.
[00:21:14.400]This is just a real quick,
[00:21:16.720]quick view of what the material looked like.
[00:21:19.500]The particle size of the high moisture air corn
[00:21:23.820]was 2,200 microns.
[00:21:28.560]I need to think back here.
[00:21:30.660]In general, the earlage,
[00:21:34.380]and I know there was some that we didn't get kernel processed,
[00:21:37.580]one stakeholder,
[00:21:39.260]was the most consistent in particle size.
[00:21:46.640]Actually, once they removed out the cob and leaf material
[00:21:50.900]compared to the high-moisture corn.
[00:21:52.260]But I want to say this particle size here,
[00:21:54.560]the way they do this is they use a Tyler sieve,
[00:21:58.040]and they really need to pull out the cob and husk material
[00:22:02.140]from the top layer
[00:22:03.180]because that can artificially inflate the weight of those upper sieves,
[00:22:07.100]that cob material that's not falling through,
[00:22:09.060]and it's not actually grain particle size.
[00:22:11.220]64% was dry matter, 8% crude protein.
[00:22:16.560]Corrected for organic matter, 17.
[00:22:18.860]UNDF, nearly 4%.
[00:22:22.180]59% starch in this material, 59% starch.
[00:22:26.380]Galen, I always use 72.
[00:22:28.280]It's probably the same.
[00:22:29.980]This was 81% approximately grain,
[00:22:33.320]19% non-grain, 3.5% fat, 2% ash.
[00:22:37.160]And then lactic acid was about 1.5%.
[00:22:41.320]I do want to point out here that about half of what we were seeing,
[00:22:46.480]and the corn silage presented earlier.
[00:22:48.020]Here's the two different materials distribution for both starch and high moisture corn.
[00:22:54.400]And so the reason I want to say, you know, we hope we got earlage,
[00:22:58.560]but a lot of people had different things for what they called earlage.
[00:23:01.700]So you can see here we had at least a half a dozen of our samples down around 51% starch,
[00:23:07.700]and some of those as high as 60%.
[00:23:10.320]Okay, so some a lot of corn, not a lot of fodder, some more fodder,
[00:23:16.400]or excuse me, corn, cob, and husk.
[00:23:20.220]Average starch, 59% for the high-moisture corn.
[00:23:23.880]It was 71.6, so I think for the math here,
[00:23:27.060]I took this number divided by the starch content of the high-moisture corn,
[00:23:31.060]came up with 82% grain, 18% for non-grain.
[00:23:36.260]The NDF, as you can see here, is much more variable around earlage than the high-moisture corn.
[00:23:42.860]This high-moisture corn is non-normally distributed.
[00:23:46.320]Most of them are seven. There's a few higher.
[00:23:48.260]But with this earlage material here, it's a broad span of material.
[00:23:53.640]And what I want to point out here is that actually this can be determined.
[00:24:00.040]If we end up differences within a pile or even across a field or amongst piles,
[00:24:07.300]a lot of this can come down to harvesting conditions.
[00:24:10.500]So as it gets drier in the field and we snap that corn husk off, do we take a greater portion
[00:24:16.240]of the shank with it?
[00:24:17.360]All these things can affect the starch and NDF content.
[00:24:22.040]And then that's the whole reason why we're trying to figure out what the roughage content
[00:24:25.300]of this product is.
[00:24:26.180]While high moisture, while Galen had mentioned that corn silage moisture content changes
[00:24:33.920]or dry matter content changes over time, in corn silage, it does do the same thing in
[00:24:39.080]high moisture corn as well, but it does not appear, at least over time, to vary greatly.
[00:24:46.160]R squared is less than, that's a zero, zero, zero, zero, so high moisture ear corn, at least
[00:24:52.660]in this data set, appeared to be relatively stable.
[00:24:55.640]The one thing I want to point out here is we determined the lactic acid content of the
[00:25:02.940]material, and then I've regressed that against the dry matter of the earlage material and
[00:25:10.660]silage.
[00:25:11.100]Now, got to make note here, we actually didn't get any green shop samples.
[00:25:16.080]We got notification the grants was funded about the time people were putting the stuff
[00:25:21.540]up.
[00:25:21.700]So we're behind here starting out anyhow.
[00:25:23.600]But as we got to about, I don't want to say this, it's not a yes or no, but it is kind
[00:25:31.160]of yes or no, but then these are kind of suspect.
[00:25:34.100]But let me just say, when you get to about 73% dry matter, it is a yes or no outcome
[00:25:41.540]at that point.
[00:25:42.200]As we enhanced plant maturity past about...
[00:25:46.000]25% moisture, at least in the earlage, we don't have lactic acid production, and that's
[00:25:51.800]going to be indicative of inadequate fermentation.
[00:25:54.320]So at best, dry earlage is processed dry corn and processed corn cob.
[00:26:01.260]It's not going to be the fermented corn grain that you expect to feed like rocket fuel.
[00:26:07.840]Is that a problem?
[00:26:09.720]I don't know.
[00:26:10.640]We didn't get to look at aerobic stability.
[00:26:13.980]This likely alters aerobic stability.
[00:26:15.920]And feed out use.
[00:26:17.100]But yeah, get her too dry.
[00:26:20.080]It's not going to make silage.
[00:26:21.560]Something to keep track of.
[00:26:23.100]So hopefully by the end of this deal, I'm going to give you all two things to take home.
[00:26:26.680]One is dry matter of the earlage material.
[00:26:28.500]And the other one's going to be particle size.
[00:26:30.980]There's some other things that I got to give credit to Mary Beth Hall.
[00:26:36.640]They're in Madison U.S. Forage Lab.
[00:26:41.140]And Fred Owens.
[00:26:42.280]Dr. Owens has been talking about this stuff forever.
[00:26:45.920]If you would have attended Alfredo's meeting and sent in tone,
[00:26:49.240]we actually had Dr. Owens on board to speak about this, but he didn't travel down.
[00:26:52.860]And I'll just give you a long story short.
[00:26:55.940]About two years ago, Dr. Owens emailed me and said,
[00:26:58.780]Zach, I need help with dairy NRC.
[00:27:01.880]All right, well, we got the beef NRC, so we went and found a dairy NRC.
[00:27:07.520]I got a buddy to bootleg the back end of the SQL access database
[00:27:12.700]and give me all the feed tables from dairy NRC.
[00:27:15.760]And what we wanted to calculate was the unknown cell contents.
[00:27:19.880]Long story short, what blew Dr. Owens' mind is that for nearly 100 years,
[00:27:25.100]we've been assaying feed ingredients, and sometimes specific ingredients,
[00:27:29.820]they don't add up to 100, or they add up more than 100.
[00:27:33.040]So we're either miscounting or missing things in proximate analysis,
[00:27:38.520]or we're double counting.
[00:27:40.120]Double counting could be ascribing the nitrogen bound to NDF to
[00:27:45.680]crude protein, and then you double count that nitrogen component,
[00:27:48.740]and you sum everything up, it's more than 100.
[00:27:50.460]And I think the whole reason for this initially was like,
[00:27:53.800]how the heck have we done this for 100 years,
[00:27:56.040]and no one ever looked to see that all these ingredients don't add up to
[00:27:58.680]100, and some of them add up to more than 100.
[00:28:00.660]So we got cell contents, cell walls, starch, fructans,
[00:28:05.660]the oligosaccharides, organic acids, and then cell wall components.
[00:28:09.540]But there's this one, and we can assay for everything,
[00:28:13.240]and by difference determine this.
[00:28:15.600]We called it unknown cell contents.
[00:28:18.220]We don't know if it's good or bad.
[00:28:20.620]Nasum Dairy actually calls this residual organic matter.
[00:28:25.340]Residual organic matter is very much probably just a carbohydrate.
[00:28:31.540]They call the gross energy of it similar to starch or any carbohydrate,
[00:28:38.100]but the unknown cell contents are the total minus the sum of the NDF,
[00:28:43.780]crude protein, fat, ash.
[00:28:45.980]Sugar and starch.
[00:28:47.340]And what was interesting is the unknown cell contents.
[00:28:51.700]Okay, so for example, like unknown cell contents of citrus pulp is like 63%.
[00:28:59.060]We sum everything up, it's less than 100.
[00:29:01.160]For feather meal, it's 120%.
[00:29:03.460]So somewhere along the way, we're double counting things.
[00:29:05.880]And for the earlage, it was twice nearly that of corn.
[00:29:08.880]And so when I run into problems about this not matching what I thought or the starch
[00:29:15.440]and fiber fractions not behaving as I thought they should in regards to quality,
[00:29:20.180]there is this unknown of this material here that is likely readily digestible by the critters,
[00:29:28.040]but we don't actually know what it is, where it's coming from.
[00:29:32.500]So in complete assay of the feed or poor analytical procedures, we add all these up.
[00:29:41.340]They should add up to 100.
[00:29:43.220]We use these values.
[00:29:45.360]We use these values to calculate digestible energy content,
[00:29:48.420]and any ingredient component missing can result in calculation of energy values that are too low.
[00:29:55.620]So I think this is really more for the scientific community going forward.
[00:29:59.880]When we publish papers, maybe we need to do a better job of describing things.
[00:30:05.480]Moving forward, I might send a paper to the journal, and Jim's like,
[00:30:10.120]Zach, why don't you calculate residual organic matter because you told everybody it was important.
[00:30:15.280]And me, more on this later in experiment two.
[00:30:19.340]Okay, now, obviously, to get a government grant, which I don't advise doing this,
[00:30:25.340]it literally is the most, I don't know, I don't want to sound ungrateful,
[00:30:29.520]but it's not very joyful.
[00:30:31.260]The grateful things are like a commodity group comes and wants to do a one-year project with you,
[00:30:37.900]and it's quick, and you get the answer.
[00:30:39.720]These government projects, pain in the butt.
[00:30:42.000]You honestly got to over-promise.
[00:30:45.200]And try to deliver.
[00:30:47.860]It's tough.
[00:30:49.960]So we went really big.
[00:30:51.480]Me and Alfredo were sitting there, and we're like,
[00:30:53.080]we're going to go and get feedlot meal sheets, right,
[00:30:56.740]from every feedlot and pen that was on this study,
[00:30:59.300]and we're going to look at variance and intake and level of high moisture.
[00:31:02.220]Yeah, right.
[00:31:02.900]We thought we were going to do that.
[00:31:04.600]We didn't.
[00:31:05.740]So we're going to go out in the field, and now we're getting samples.
[00:31:09.860]And to be enrolled in this particular part of the study, a lot of this was just
[00:31:15.120]learning as we go.
[00:31:15.860]We said, okay, you need to be on a finisher for three to four weeks.
[00:31:19.100]We know that these producers in the survey are feeding yearling and high
[00:31:23.600]moisture corn, and we want them on a finishing diet, and we're going to use
[00:31:29.420]internal marker and all those things.
[00:31:32.580]All right, 10 feedlots were enrolled.
[00:31:35.580]First thing I did is I got these 10 feedlot pin samples and paired them to
[00:31:43.840]the particle size of the...
[00:31:45.040]the earlage material they were feeding.
[00:31:46.700]And what I want to point out here is that mean particle size, okay, so this is
[00:31:51.780]something we can actually measure during the time we're putting up the material
[00:31:56.240]was an indicator of fecal starch.
[00:31:58.540]Well, it could be used to describe fecal starch, so as we increase the
[00:32:02.540]particle size of the high moisture ear corn, we increase the amount of starch we found in the
[00:32:07.290]feces. And this seems logical. We talk about corn particle reduction, destruction, minimizing,
[00:32:13.250]and no, we don't want starch in the feces, okay? Now, take this a step further. We took that paired
[00:32:21.410]fecal sample to the paired diet sample, and we can actually use something called an internal
[00:32:26.850]marker ratio. So I take something in that feed that's not actually digested by the critter. That
[00:32:32.610]can be lignin. In this case, I use the NDF that after 10 full days in the rumen wasn't getting
[00:32:38.290]broken down. And we use that determined UNDF in the feed and in the feces. And I use the internal
[00:32:44.630]marker ratio to determine digestibility of a variety of components in the diet. And in this
[00:32:50.470]particular instance, I was interested in starch. And then Galen, I had a different line and there's
[00:32:56.510]a different line than this in your proceedings. I screwed up because you can't have starch
[00:33:00.690]digestibility greater than 100. So I locked my intercept at 100. Doesn't change things too much.
[00:33:06.670]But as fecal starch increases, obviously the apparent total tract starch digestibility
[00:33:14.030]decreases. This is not novel. Everybody knows this. There's a paper in 08 or 12 Zen wrote. It's called
[00:33:26.170]Processing Mechanisms to Optimize Performance of Cattle-Fed Flake Corn Diets. And they actually
[00:33:33.610]use fecal starch as a metric to optimize processing of steam flaking grains. Kind of
[00:33:40.590]hard to do this after the fact because Mark was talking about the piles there for a whole year.
[00:33:46.170]Worst we ever had wasn't a custom harvester. It was an undergrad driving the silage bag,
[00:33:51.610]and it took a quarter turn about halfway down. And then you've got to feed that thing
[00:33:55.830]for a whole year. At any rate, as starch digestibility, as fecal starch increases,
[00:34:03.230]the total tract starch digestibility decreases. Now, why does this matter?
[00:34:07.630]I'll show you why. On the two different options on this curve, I want to just put some numbers to it.
[00:34:15.490]And I don't even know if this is the right way to do this, but when I did it, I thought it was crazy.
[00:34:19.710]All right. If you say total tract starch digestibility at a 96%
[00:34:25.490]versus 85%, well, then we could figure out how much corn grain I fed in the diet,
[00:34:31.190]how many pounds of starch I fed, and then the starch digested between high and low fecal starch.
[00:34:38.270]If you take that all the way back to corn, cattle that have total tract starch digestibility at 96%
[00:34:46.690]versus 85%, it ended up being on a per steer basis, the difference in starch digestibility, the starch we were
[00:34:55.150]pooping out the back end was about 14 total bushels of corn per year.
[00:34:59.510]Okay, so this is just taking it back a different look.
[00:35:02.630]14 bushels a year at $2.50 bushel corn, the difference in being here or here was about $34 per steer per year.
[00:35:12.930]And for down to $5 corn, these small differences in what I'll say fecal starch and why using fecal starch
[00:35:20.310]as a metric to make sure we are optimizing total tract starch digestibility,
[00:35:24.810]can be as much as $75 per year because literally the difference here in the fecal starch
[00:35:30.190]is the starch you didn't capture energy out of.
[00:35:32.350]So I just took the starch in the feces, turned it into whole kernels of corn,
[00:35:36.110]and that's where you're at if you're on either line of those two deals.
[00:35:39.790]Now, who was the poor one?
[00:35:41.570]There was this one individual with ridiculously large particle size,
[00:35:46.550]1,000 microns greater than everyone else.
[00:35:48.970]It was the one guy who used his own harvest equipment and didn't have a kernel processor.
[00:35:54.470]Now, I am the same guy that did a study after Galen and them that went around and told people,
[00:36:01.450]you don't need a kernel processor corn silage if you're feeding it to finishing cattle, okay?
[00:36:05.610]I did go do the study in growing cattle and would agree, yeah, it's important there.
[00:36:09.710]All right, so you do need a kernel processor stuff.
[00:36:12.670]At least this guy, he exposed himself in the data set as being the worst one.
[00:36:17.790]He had the greatest mean particle size.
[00:36:22.030]He didn't do an adequate job of grain.
[00:36:24.130]He didn't do an adequate processing.
[00:36:25.250]Pounds of corn lost versus the best.
[00:36:27.930]He was, in essence, pooping out two pounds of corn a day
[00:36:31.150]because he didn't adequately destruct that corn kernel.
[00:36:33.750]So important things to think about.
[00:36:35.390]What can we do before we feed the pile?
[00:36:40.110]Well, one is, I guess the lactic acid's kind of lousy because it's already done.
[00:36:45.430]But I can tell you if it's too dry, you're probably not going to get lactic acid production.
[00:36:49.590]You'll have inadequate fermentation.
[00:36:50.850]Second thing I can tell you is if you don't process it,
[00:36:53.990]it certainly will come out the back end.
[00:36:56.570]Conclusions, dry matter inclusion of earlage, 38% was the average,
[00:37:01.570]but that range was from 22% to 75% on a dry matter basis.
[00:37:05.730]What are the things we can do to best manage a pile?
[00:37:08.570]Process our earlage, appropriate timing for ideal dry matter content
[00:37:13.230]because if we screw this up, we're not going to get lactic acid production.
[00:37:16.610]60% to 72% was the range.
[00:37:19.990]67% was the average when we asked them what they wanted to do.
[00:37:23.850]The material actually came back 63%.
[00:37:26.290]So what was Galen saying?
[00:37:27.370]Your target's 35%, it's actually 32%.
[00:37:30.370]Everybody's target was 67%,
[00:37:32.590]and the material that we actually assayed was 63.5%.
[00:37:36.310]So sounds about right.
[00:37:38.550]This earlage is a sole roughage source.
[00:37:41.270]I want to move into this.
[00:37:43.670]When I originally wrote this, and I appreciate Adrian for letting me do this,
[00:37:47.490]we were on day 28, and I was like, man, it sucks.
[00:37:52.470]I've got to put out the 28-day.
[00:37:54.010]This is the latest and greatest.
[00:37:55.210]I want to share it.
[00:37:56.090]Whatever.
[00:37:57.090]Then we had our next weigh day, and I said, hey, Adrian, I've updated these.
[00:38:01.930]Can I share this?
[00:38:02.710]She said, certainly.
[00:38:03.510]Backgrounded steers.
[00:38:05.130]We bought these calves as ballers last fall.
[00:38:07.630]Riley Leeson, MS student, Dr. Rushi, and myself is running this project.
[00:38:13.430]900 pounds initially.
[00:38:15.210]We gave them a Rev 200 on day 28.
[00:38:17.170]140 days on feed is the target, and we're probably going to feed a beta agonist.
[00:38:23.810]I have not decided.
[00:38:25.290]Maybe not.
[00:38:26.750]Earlage.
[00:38:27.390]The earlage material that we're feeding this year is 58% starch.
[00:38:32.130]My math is 81% grain, 19% roughage.
[00:38:36.310]And then we're feeding it on a dry matter basis at 75, 55, or 35% earlage.
[00:38:42.830]The rest of the diet is 20% modified, 5% suspended supplement,
[00:38:47.870]and the balance of what's left is high-moisture corn.
[00:38:53.790]The redneck math on roughage level with an estimate of 19% non-grain in the earlage
[00:39:01.010]is a 14, a 10, or a 6 roughage finisher.
[00:39:04.590]And these are being compared to a 10 roughage control based upon grass hay.
[00:39:11.610]And that diet has the rest of its wet corn modified, the grass hay, and the liquid supplement.
[00:39:17.590]Okay, so Riley is getting weekly sent.
[00:39:23.770]We're getting samples of the TMR.
[00:39:25.050]And we didn't start this until we were on the finisher.
[00:39:29.050]And it appears two weeks before we started getting these, we started getting the ingredient samples.
[00:39:35.290]But what I want to point out here is that as we increase the earlage level in the diet,
[00:39:43.730]we see a lower proportion of material in the pan of the TMR.
[00:39:49.730]And the physically effective...
[00:39:53.750]ratio of earlage, and this, like I said, I think this number is a bit high, especially here.
[00:40:00.650]This should be half here, and this should be lower here.
[00:40:03.530]But our material is about 78%.
[00:40:05.610]So we're trying to do a really good job of characterizing this earlage,
[00:40:09.170]because we do realize this might not be the same earlage that Jim got put up in Scott's Bluff,
[00:40:14.330]or that Mr. Mogler puts up in Northwest Iowa.
[00:40:17.930]We're trying to do our best job to characterize a non-standard feed ingredient.
[00:40:23.730]Oh, let me see what I was doing here.
[00:40:26.150]Oh, I put the, for those of you that don't know, Penn State particle separator size nomenclature,
[00:40:31.470]three quarter, three tenths, or sixteenth of an inch, and then the bottom pan.
[00:40:35.810]Physically effective ratio is this number minus one, 100 minus this, it's about 78%.
[00:40:42.490]Probably other earlage material might be even higher than that yet.
[00:40:46.890]Okay, what were we doing here?
[00:40:49.790]Earlage behavior responses.
[00:40:51.730]Okay, so.
[00:40:53.710]I had some of those fancy ear tags from Merck.
[00:40:58.190]We use those, but batteries are dying and I can't buy new ones.
[00:41:02.610]So the grad students actually got the privilege of going out every 10 minutes and walking
[00:41:07.070]by the steers.
[00:41:07.890]And in this particular instance, we have the Hayton, the earlage from 10, 6, or 14, about
[00:41:16.890]48 steers total.
[00:41:17.990]So the way I know this normally works is the way I knew that.
[00:41:23.690]I felt good about these data the first time I saw them.
[00:41:26.030]And I did them because I've done this a few times now, was the time spent eating.
[00:41:29.770]When my kids walk by them every 10 minutes and I get a similar value to like what Penner
[00:41:34.970]or Karen Schwarzkopf, Guy Swann got by actually videotaping them.
[00:41:39.330]I know this is working.
[00:41:40.330]Spent about two hours a day eating.
[00:41:41.770]But what I want to point out here, resting, and some of these are, I'm not so sure if
[00:41:47.670]they were ruminating or resting, but at least here we'll talk about this, time spent ruminating,
[00:41:52.710]linear.
[00:41:53.670]Linearly increased as we increased the earlage in the diet.
[00:41:56.790]We had more fiber in the diet.
[00:41:58.250]Makes sense.
[00:41:59.070]They're reading the book.
[00:42:00.210]And time spent chewing linearly increased.
[00:42:02.810]Now, chewing is the sum of ruminating and eating.
[00:42:05.750]I want to point out that it does appear that as we increase the fiber from earlage, we
[00:42:11.230]do stimulate responses we'd anticipate from a greater amount of roughage NDF being fed.
[00:42:16.430]Here's growth performance first 28 days.
[00:42:19.710]Let's start here at the quadratic effect.
[00:42:23.650]It appears intake responses are quadratic, increasing from 6 and 10 to 14.
[00:42:30.030]This would be the type of response we would expect with greater forage would be greater intake.
[00:42:35.590]No difference, though, in any other attribute except as we increase earlage, we linearly
[00:42:43.750]decrease dry matter feed conversion.
[00:42:47.450]From day 29 to 56, no quadratic effects.
[00:42:51.990]There is a linear effect.
[00:42:53.630]That is, we go from six points of roughage to 14 points of roughage from earlage.
[00:42:57.950]We increase dry matter intake.
[00:43:00.830]And with this, we have a 10, well, yeah, we do.
[00:43:04.190]We actually linearly decrease dry matter feed conversion.
[00:43:07.970]So at least within earlage, the starch and fiber proportions, it appears to me that they
[00:43:16.470]do behave as they should.
[00:43:18.570]Now, I'm showing you this because there's other instances where this doesn't always
[00:43:21.970]appear to be the case.
[00:43:23.610]Performance for the first 56 days, no quadratic effect, but a linear increase in intake as
[00:43:29.170]we feed more earlage and a linear reduction in feed conversion.
[00:43:33.290]So at least in the eight points of dietary roughage we're playing with, earlage is behaving
[00:43:38.910]as we would expect it to.
[00:43:40.330]This cumulative growth performance based upon roughage level fed, the 6, 10, or 14.
[00:43:48.110]And I put both lines on here, really not a good describer.
[00:43:53.590]Roughage level of average daily gain, but intake as we increase intake, roughage level
[00:44:00.110]with the earlage, we have a linear increase in dry matter intake.
[00:44:03.610]And it does appear that in this particular case, this is a quadratic line, R squared
[00:44:12.750]is 0.5, it does appear that the earlage material at the 10 roughage has slightly better feed
[00:44:19.950]efficiency than the 10 control, but I'd say they're the same.
[00:44:23.570]Conclusion, at least through day 56, and we've still got a lot of time left yet, the
[00:44:29.010]roughage equivalent appears to be equal to what the starch assay says, okay?
[00:44:34.410]So when I feed 10 points of roughage from earlage, it's looking pretty close to the
[00:44:38.210]10 points of roughage from the grain, from the hay.
[00:44:40.990]Our earlage might have greater physically effective fiber than other material.
[00:44:46.270]There's some other factors to earlage that may or may not describe why it's acting this
[00:44:50.990]way, and I believe that could be the unknown cell contents.
[00:44:53.550]And then, of course, I still got 84 days left on test, and I'm just guilty of wanting
[00:44:59.850]to look at proof feed conversions before lunch, and that's what y'all got.
[00:45:03.470]These are Alfredo's data.
[00:45:05.550]So now I've talked about all this stuff, and someone asked me, are you going to tell us
[00:45:10.130]earlage sucks?
[00:45:11.190]No, I'm not here to tell you that, but really here to tie the whole story together.
[00:45:15.890]So I've told you some things about earlage.
[00:45:18.950]One is process it.
[00:45:21.070]One guy that didn't just...
[00:45:23.530]He fell out of the bed.
[00:45:24.590]Two is if it's too dry, it's not going to ensile.
[00:45:28.030]Those are things to be cognizant of.
[00:45:30.090]And then the third instance is that we're feeding it at SDSU at this moment as a source
[00:45:36.870]of roughage, okay?
[00:45:37.830]So why am I going to waste the time?
[00:45:40.230]Not waste the time, but why am I going to choose earlage as a crop input?
[00:45:43.050]Well, I like it, at least in our shop, as it's processed grain and corn.
[00:45:48.930]I don't have to worry about the university feed mill guy.
[00:45:53.510]Delivering dry rolled corn.
[00:45:54.550]Now, that's not going to be a problem.
[00:45:55.630]Y'all have.
[00:45:56.010]I don't have to worry about farm ops coming and processing.
[00:45:58.990]Hey, it is a built-in ingredient.
[00:46:02.070]It's corn with built-in roughage, okay?
[00:46:05.090]So, if I'm feeding it because it's got the built-in roughage, that's why I elected to
[00:46:08.890]do the earlage as a roughage source study, because the stuff I'm about to show you here
[00:46:12.590]is going to make you be like, okay, we're not going to do this.
[00:46:15.550]This would have been the Minnesota thin bin average expenses, and Alfredo left about right
[00:46:21.650]when I need them, including...
[00:46:23.490]Labor and management, but in not all instances, I think...
[00:46:28.370]And that's where Alfredo might have to help me out, so we'll just wait.
[00:46:30.210]We've only highlighted red.
[00:46:32.190]Red bars are snappage.
[00:46:33.830]In the Minnesota data set, they call earlage snappage.
[00:46:37.110]So you have blue is corn silage, red is snappage, yellow is corn grain.
[00:46:42.310]Okay?
[00:46:43.470]And really what I want to point out here is the red line.
[00:46:46.170]One is, it's one, two, three, four.
[00:46:53.470]Five.
[00:46:54.470]And five of the ten years producing snappage was more expensive.
[00:46:58.410]Something to do with custom harvesting over corn grain harvest or corn silage harvest.
[00:47:04.490]And so higher on five of the ten years.
[00:47:07.450]And it's the most variable.
[00:47:08.730]The CV associated with the annual expenses, and these are data from Alfredo, for corn silage was 11%.
[00:47:16.990]It was 17% for snappage or earlage and 12% for corn grain.
[00:47:22.090]So.
[00:47:23.450]When we're trying to figure out how to use this, the correlation coefficient between corn silage and corn grain expenses is 0.97.
[00:47:32.250]And that if I know how much it costs to put up the corn silage, I know what it's going to cost to put up the corn grain.
[00:47:38.750]But with the snappage and corn grain expenses, that correlation relationship was only 0.75.
[00:47:45.310]It becomes difficult to know maybe what it's going to cost, what the value of it is.
[00:47:50.890]Step two.
[00:47:53.430]So, university researchers suck at feeding earlage, Alan.
[00:47:57.950]Yeah, okay.
[00:47:59.970]This is a total of 10 comparisons done from Kip's days at Oklahoma State in the early 90s
[00:48:08.630]to Garrett's work done last year to our work currently ongoing.
[00:48:14.670]There's 10 comparisons feeding earlage compared to high-moisture corn, dry-rolled corn, and barley.
[00:48:20.650]Earlage in these particular instances,
[00:48:23.410]was included from 35% to 90% of diet dry matter.
[00:48:26.590]And I love this effect size chart Alfredo made.
[00:48:30.230]It was so simple.
[00:48:31.510]And he's not here, but lazy too.
[00:48:33.750]He just took pounds.
[00:48:34.770]It's great.
[00:48:35.450]So watch this.
[00:48:36.090]Zero.
[00:48:37.550]An open circle is average daily gain.
[00:48:39.950]If earlage wins, we want that circle above the line.
[00:48:42.730]Dry matter intake, red square.
[00:48:45.230]If it's a positive intake response, it'd be up here.
[00:48:48.810]Dry matter feed conversion is green square, and negative number's better.
[00:48:53.390]And as you can see here, average daily gain, zero reports above zero.
[00:48:57.950]Intake, there's only one where intake was greater than the control,
[00:49:03.090]or it's what it was being compared against.
[00:49:05.090]And all and five of the feed gains are not positive.
[00:49:10.930]All right, so in general, across 10 studies,
[00:49:13.790]multiple biotypes of cattle, institutions,
[00:49:17.550]and probably processing methodology of earlage, it's not been a winner.
[00:49:24.210]So universities either suck at putting up earlage,
[00:49:27.030]or as Alfredo would say, people are lying to us.
[00:49:30.410]But I don't think that's actually the case.
[00:49:32.390]I think it's twofold.
[00:49:33.730]We realize with the crop production and timing standpoint
[00:49:37.870]that earlage is really, really tough to put up
[00:49:42.130]in between corn silage and high moisture corn.
[00:49:44.190]So you're probably picking one or the other.
[00:49:46.050]I'll give you an example.
[00:49:47.310]This earlage that I've been up here talking about,
[00:49:49.390]and I'll be the first to tell you,
[00:49:50.510]our earlage was probably not perfect.
[00:49:53.350]I know in some other studies
[00:49:54.670]where we've worked with earlage lately,
[00:49:56.050]it probably wasn't perfect.
[00:49:57.390]Our earlage, waiting on the custom harvester to get there
[00:50:00.510]and it rained and it dried down
[00:50:01.910]and I put up the earlage material at 73% dry matter.
[00:50:04.950]And I think he was late and running behind
[00:50:07.310]and he ran a little faster
[00:50:08.530]and he didn't have his kernel processor tight enough.
[00:50:10.550]And he ended up with a little bit more cob
[00:50:12.090]than I'd want, Alan.
[00:50:12.910]And so got this material here that maybe isn't perfect.
[00:50:18.950]The other thing I want to realize though,
[00:50:23.330]is that we got our high moisture corn prepared
[00:50:28.870]before we got the earlage,
[00:50:30.330]which that wasn't supposed to happen.
[00:50:31.570]Example on where I got screwed on my earlage this year
[00:50:35.330]is that we opened the field up
[00:50:37.270]for the custom harvester to come in.
[00:50:39.010]And then we're a little small operation.
[00:50:41.730]I'm like, oh, this corn's getting too dry.
[00:50:44.090]They're like, no, it'll work, it'll work.
[00:50:45.750]We did it.
[00:50:46.350]Things that I noticed were is that it wasn't a trivial task
[00:50:50.130]to just go find another field to cut earlage
[00:50:52.250]because we had to open,
[00:50:53.310]we had to get the field up,
[00:50:53.830]we had to get the things ready.
[00:50:55.090]And they're like, Zach,
[00:50:56.110]you're gonna blow through a lot of corn
[00:50:57.550]just for us to set it up
[00:50:58.750]to where we can get the trucks in here to harvest it off.
[00:51:01.030]So little things on a small scale that drive me crazy.
[00:51:03.670]I can't imagine what y'all have to deal with
[00:51:05.450]on the real deal.
[00:51:06.410]This is Garrett's data.
[00:51:07.670]I think this is interesting.
[00:51:09.790]Garrett Lemon, MS student at Galen here,
[00:51:13.710]and did some, helped with the earlage survey
[00:51:16.750]and also did a study out at Panhandle
[00:51:21.330]where they fed corn silage
[00:51:23.290]and earlage, and the whole premise of the study
[00:51:26.850]was source and level of roughage NDF.
[00:51:29.250]So the source was corn silage or earlage,
[00:51:32.150]and the roughage NDF was, I'm going to call it
[00:51:34.830]lower high, all right?
[00:51:36.210]What was interesting is, in Garrett's study,
[00:51:41.610]but not in our study, and this is why
[00:51:44.730]I think this is why earlage is to be determined.
[00:51:49.590]We're learning as we go.
[00:51:50.670]As Galen and...
[00:51:53.270]And Garrett and Jim and all them increased roughage in DF
[00:51:56.070]and corn silage, they had an increased intake
[00:51:58.930]with corn silage, but not in earlage.
[00:52:01.410]This is just the inverse.
[00:52:03.730]This is starch.
[00:52:04.530]As we increase starch in the corn silage diets,
[00:52:07.190]we see decreased intake.
[00:52:08.570]But we didn't see that relationship with earlage.
[00:52:11.170]And these aren't interactions, but we can see here
[00:52:15.650]that as we increase roughage in DF,
[00:52:17.550]decrease in average daily gain,
[00:52:19.570]but the slope of that line wasn't as great.
[00:52:23.250]As it was for the corn silage.
[00:52:24.870]And then for the starch, those are more closely slope related.
[00:52:29.370]So what I think might be going on here
[00:52:31.410]is that there's something going on
[00:52:34.210]at that level of inclusion in the starch and fiber matrix
[00:52:38.170]that is why these things are quite variable.
[00:52:41.970]Lastly, some good data I'll always like to bring up
[00:52:46.470]when Alfredo talks about it.
[00:52:48.830]Him and Tyler Johnson would have worked on this years ago
[00:52:51.610]talking about corn crop endpoints
[00:52:53.230]and the whole moral of the story is that in Minnesota
[00:52:55.970]from 2014 to 2024, if you sold corn silage,
[00:53:00.170]sold snappage, sold high moisture corn
[00:53:02.230]or sold corn grain at the field
[00:53:06.370]and didn't feed it to cattle,
[00:53:08.050]you lost money pretty much every year,
[00:53:10.490]but about four years.
[00:53:15.490]Alternatively, if you sold the grain,
[00:53:20.030]your brother instead of selling it in town sold it to you
[00:53:23.210]and you got to market that corn through livestock.
[00:53:26.290]Corn was only a loser on one, two, three, four, five
[00:53:29.450]of the 10 years and it was only a loser
[00:53:32.950]if you fed snappage.
[00:53:33.790]Now that's not to say earlage is a loser,
[00:53:35.690]but in this data set with those inputs, it was.
[00:53:38.630]So method, how can we return the most amount
[00:53:42.090]of value to cropland, net return to acres calculated
[00:53:46.330]from commodity sale price minus the input expenses.
[00:53:50.310]It pays to feed cattle.
[00:53:53.190]At commodity prices, if you sell corn off the farm,
[00:53:55.930]you only made money four out of 10 years.
[00:53:58.730]When you sell corn through cattle,
[00:54:00.390]which is what we all do as a business model,
[00:54:03.190]we're gonna make money pretty much every year.
[00:54:05.950]One year we didn't,
[00:54:06.870]and that ranges from three to $700 per acre.
[00:54:09.610]But in this particular data set,
[00:54:11.410]Ehrlich did have five negative years out of 10,
[00:54:15.590]which is not what I wanted to have to tell you all
[00:54:18.290]when we started this.
[00:54:19.290]And I'm definitely interested to hear if it's totally
[00:54:22.350]the exact opposite of what y'all experience
[00:54:24.350]out in the field.
[00:54:25.330]But that's, this is what we came up with.
[00:54:28.410]Overall, Ehrlich fits as an additional crop end point still,
[00:54:31.210]I think, if we're talking about managing harvest workload
[00:54:34.590]demand, are we marketing livestock,
[00:54:37.190]the feed stuff through cattle?
[00:54:39.130]Does it fit into our feeding system?
[00:54:41.310]We like having corn grain with built-in roughage
[00:54:44.090]that's already processed.
[00:54:45.470]Could we use it to cover a portion of our processed grain
[00:54:49.290]and roughage to increase milling efficiency
[00:54:52.290]and output and those things?
[00:54:53.350]The favorite diet that we feed
[00:54:55.350]at the Ruminant Nutrition Center is the earlage diet.
[00:54:58.050]It's 75% earlage, 20% modified, five points of liquid.
[00:55:02.630]It's our winter diet.
[00:55:04.430]I mean, the grad students and undergrads
[00:55:06.710]can't screw this up, all right?
[00:55:08.790]It's about like what Galen and Jim
[00:55:10.950]use their corn silage growing diet that I also stole.
[00:55:13.490]It's 75% corn silage, 20% distillers, and 5% supplement.
[00:55:18.290]It's really easy.
[00:55:19.790]Key factors to control are grain,
[00:55:22.230]particle size, and dry matter content.
[00:55:24.170]These are things you have control over
[00:55:26.050]at the time of ensiling.
[00:55:27.830]And the thing about this is there is no processing,
[00:55:32.570]dynamic, mechanistic fixing.
[00:55:35.410]Once you put the material up, you're it.
[00:55:37.550]Brandon's not going to go adjust the rolls of his flaker mill.
[00:55:41.570]This is it.
[00:55:42.190]We are stuck with it.
[00:55:43.350]And so all these things early on really matter.
[00:55:45.950]And I think you can use it as a sole roughage source.
[00:55:48.610]I've heard other stories about people using earlage as a means
[00:55:52.170]to dry diets up, feeding diets based upon coproducts.
[00:55:56.730]They can add this material 70% dry matter because the corn silage
[00:56:00.390]they were going to add was 35% dry matter,
[00:56:02.490]and they weren't getting anywhere.
[00:56:03.430]So there's probably a lot of places that this can be used,
[00:56:07.990]although do know agronomically it's really hard to go corn, silage,
[00:56:12.810]high-moisture ear corn, high-moisture corn.
[00:56:16.270]Alan, have you ever seen anyone do it?
[00:56:18.850]Okay, it's difficult.
[00:56:22.110]This is my lab group.
[00:56:23.010]This picture is getting old.
[00:56:24.070]We've got to – with any size.
[00:56:26.110]And, in fact, when I told you all the size of the operators, that 17,
[00:56:31.310]that was the size of the earlage people.
[00:56:33.470]So I don't know.
[00:56:34.250]Maybe they aren't in 10,000 head feedlots.
[00:56:36.170]It's the 2,500 to 5,000 head yards.
[00:56:38.490]There's the kids.
[00:56:40.550]There's my real kids and my wife.
[00:56:42.290]That's my contact.
[00:56:43.570]Y'all can call me anytime.
[00:56:45.450]Easy to get a hold of.
[00:56:46.630]Thank you all.
[00:56:47.210]I do got to say, we're going to get out of here a little early.
[00:56:50.490]We got to get back home.
[00:56:52.170]But my contact's there.
[00:56:53.830]You email me.
[00:56:54.590]Email's best.
[00:56:55.510]You text me.
[00:56:56.130]I can't slide away and say, read later.
[00:57:00.270]I forget about text messages.
[00:57:02.030]So thank you all.
[00:57:03.010]Appreciate your time.
[00:57:03.970]Thank you.
[00:57:04.010]Quick questions for Zach.
[00:57:11.670]We got some over here.
[00:57:12.850]I see.
[00:57:13.670]It's Leva.
[00:57:14.550]Hey, Leva.
[00:57:15.330]What is the greater cost on equipment?
[00:57:18.950]That's a good question, Leva.
[00:57:21.990]Were you there on Tuesday?
[00:57:23.030]We never got there.
[00:57:23.930]Well, and that's just a question for Alfredo, Levi,
[00:57:28.670]because I imagine the corn silage had to have had custom harvesting,
[00:57:36.170]but maybe the corn grain didn't in that scenario.
[00:57:39.290]But I don't know.
[00:57:42.950]I will go back and look for you on the FinBin data with Alfredo
[00:57:46.550]and get back what all is actually being put in there.
[00:57:48.730]Because I imagine, yeah, with the earlidge, you had processing or harvesting costs.
[00:57:51.930]That if they're putting in inputs like this is a farmer and they're calling in and filling out the survey and say,
[00:57:59.090]yeah, I paid this much per acre, they probably paid custom harvester.
[00:58:02.770]But on the corn grain, they would have used their own equipment.
[00:58:05.270]And so I think that's an unfair advantage of that.
[00:58:08.390]Now, alternatively, if someone takes the corn grain, then they're not,
[00:58:13.850]they probably didn't consider high moisture corn processing or putting it into the pit either, I don't think.
[00:58:19.610]Because they're thinking that that corn could go to town.
[00:58:21.870]So those are some probably good points, Levi.
[00:58:24.350]You probably want to pencil it out on your own.
[00:58:26.770]Are you figuring a value in that roughage?
[00:58:31.810]Yeah.
[00:58:33.870]So that's another thing would be.
[00:58:37.110]Oh, okay.
[00:58:39.290]So the question was, is value of roughage.
[00:58:42.650]That's a great point.
[00:58:44.550]Okay, so one, I think we're probably at on the, y'all remember in 2018, I think Galen,
[00:58:51.810]I had a whole talk about pricing corn silage.
[00:58:54.170]We're probably at that point on earlage, pricing earlage in the field.
[00:58:58.070]The roughage value, the best we have to go off of right now, though, is it's starch content.
[00:59:04.810]What we're trying to figure out is what's left, the cob, the husk, the shank, is that
[00:59:09.530]the same as prairie hay or a known standard roughage ingredient?
[00:59:13.750]And so at pricing at that point, that's a good point.
[00:59:16.590]We're all of a sudden, we're having a material that's already processed roughage that has
[00:59:21.750]an intrinsic value as a roughage ingredient, but we also don't have to worry about it blowing
[00:59:26.510]away, it capturing ash or dust or getting dirty and a variety of things.
[00:59:32.310]I mean, at the very least, you have to treat it as a point.
[00:59:34.990]Yeah, exactly.
[00:59:37.770]So it has a value.
[00:59:39.210]For sure.
[00:59:40.210]I think of it as grain with built-in roughage.
[00:59:43.230]Right.
[00:59:43.610]As a custom harvester, I get the question, how do you price it?
[00:59:48.050]Or, you know, I'll give a fine price to the harvester.
[00:59:52.450]And they will say, well, I can combine it in wool or in lead.
[00:59:55.530]Well, it's not the same product.
[00:59:57.890]Yeah.
[00:59:58.490]I'm going to punt to somebody who actually has to price this stuff in the field.
[01:00:04.110]How are they doing it?
[01:00:04.930]Is it a wild guess of starch assay?
[01:00:07.290]Is it intuition?
[01:00:08.350]Yeah, Zach.
[01:00:09.530]The way I price here, like, for clients.
[01:00:13.170]Yep.
[01:00:14.550]Okay.
[01:00:14.930]I don't mind giving points.
[01:00:16.750]Thanks, Zach.
[01:00:20.010]The way I price.
[01:00:21.790]It's good, bad, and different.
[01:00:23.070]Like your data showed, I'm just rounding here.
[01:00:27.990]80% starch, 20% roughage.
[01:00:30.550]So I'll convert that, that 1,600 pounds of grain, 400 pounds of corn stalks.
[01:00:41.310]And then what I'll do is I'll add that up, say corn, 450 a bushel, say corn stalks, what, 60?
[01:00:49.770]You know?
[01:00:51.570]And then add those prices up and multiply by the dry matter.
[01:00:57.850]I would agree with Monty over here.
[01:01:02.930]That's what Allen's in Allen.
[01:01:04.210]Right, right.
[01:01:04.910]It's pretty simple to do that.
[01:01:07.790]Zach, I think one of the problems we're still running into with earlage, more so than corn silage and certainly more so than high moisture corn, is we're still earlage, snap-less.
[01:01:21.510]What are we truly harvesting?
[01:01:23.790]Because I've seen some research trials where they're 20-plus percent roughage.
[01:01:29.410]I can tell you in northwest Iowa, I see more 8% roughage earlage, and I brought myself to just call it earlage like you did.
[01:01:39.710]So I think that's one of the problems is trying to figure out what it's really worth.
[01:01:45.030]And I think Alfredo, I've talked to him about this data set we're talking here.
[01:01:51.450]Most of that is what I call old school earlage.
[01:01:54.530]In Minnesota, that's snafflage?
[01:01:56.970]Yes, yes, 20, maybe 25.
[01:01:59.390]I mean, there's some research trials out there as recent as 2016.
[01:02:03.450]I'm looking at one right here where it was what they called earlage was only 53% corn.
[01:02:10.590]Oh, no.
[01:02:11.730]Not different than some of my corn silage now.
[01:02:15.270]Yeah, not different.
[01:02:15.810]So it's very convoluted.
[01:02:17.770]You know, I think at the end of the day, nutrients are new.
[01:02:21.390]Nutrients, other than a few unknown aspects, like you said, would sell contents.
[01:02:26.450]Yep.
[01:02:26.790]So it sounds like we could make a pretty simple silage or earlage pricing calculator.
[01:02:35.110]It's napkin math.
[01:02:37.150]Then the other deal is probably the levels in which we fed it that we had been feeding it at such a high level,
[01:02:48.390]there's probably not a – it would be really hard.
[01:02:51.330]It would be hard for you to put up enough material locally to cover 75% dry matter inclusion of earlage
[01:02:56.990]across an entire feedlot for 5,000 head.
[01:02:59.470]Right.
[01:03:00.090]The window of harvest is too narrow.
[01:03:02.010]Yep.
[01:03:02.530]I was just in an 8,000 head yard last week with the farm manager, you know, brothers,
[01:03:09.890]and it's just almost impossible to get it done.
[01:03:14.210]And they want to because, like you said, it's corn rebuilt in roughage.
[01:03:18.410]It can eliminate an ingredient for you.
[01:03:21.270]It can eliminate a headache.
[01:03:22.330]It can be, and even at the levels these people are fitting,
[01:03:26.850]it's a third of your diet dry matter.
[01:03:28.650]Like, it's a lot of handling savings.
[01:03:30.790]It's all right there.
[01:03:31.570]I will say, Alan, I don't have a pitcher of earlage, and I know why.
[01:03:36.430]I have them on my phone.
[01:03:37.390]I've never been able to take a pretty picture of the pile.
[01:03:39.810]It's just the ugliest.
[01:03:41.170]I don't know.
[01:03:42.210]We got a 12-foot-wide pile, and it's uglier dog snot.
[01:03:47.130]There are no earlage pitchers, so.
[01:03:51.210]If you ever see one, you would know.
[01:03:52.430]You said it's the ugliest material.
[01:03:54.610]You know when you're talking earlage versus.
[01:03:57.070]True earlage.
[01:03:58.070]True earlage, yeah.
[01:03:58.990]Yeah.
[01:04:00.110]Thank you.

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