Jim MacDonald (Short Presentation)
Eric Buck
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08/01/2024
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The Role of Silage in Beef Systems
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- [00:00:00.000]My name is Jim McDonald. I'm on faculty at the University of Nebraska. I have the pleasure
- [00:00:09.420]of working in beef cattle production systems and was asked today to talk about how silage
- [00:00:15.140]fits into the beef complex. And really, if you look throughout the history of beef production,
- [00:00:22.800]silage has been used for the last 50 years or longer throughout the entire beef production
- [00:00:28.680]system complex. So if you think about the use of silage in cow-calf systems, really
- [00:00:34.920]the challenge is that silage is really high in energy and especially at certain times
- [00:00:40.640]of the year is more energy than what the cow needs. So if you think about the energy requirement
- [00:00:46.960]of the cow and how that changes throughout her production cycle, really her greatest
- [00:00:52.460]energy requirement happens right before calving until she hits peak milk lactation several
- [00:00:58.460]weeks post-calving. And so there's really about a 45-day window in there where the energy
- [00:01:04.300]density of the silage meets the energy requirement of the animal quite nicely. If you go outside
- [00:01:11.680]of that, then she's wanting to eat because she eats as a percentage of her body weight.
- [00:01:19.260]She's wanting to eat more than what she needs, kind of like me. And so then the result of
- [00:01:26.040]that is she's adding body condition.
- [00:01:28.240]And so if you're going to use a silage system in cow-calf production, you probably need
- [00:01:34.140]to limit her intake through most of the production cycle in order to hit her energy needs.
- [00:01:41.320]Using silage in backgrounding calves, in my opinion, this is where silage fits best. The
- [00:01:46.660]only deficiency when feeding silage is that calf needs some additional protein. It's a
- [00:01:52.960]young growing animal. I have a 15-year-old son and he eats a lot of protein and that
- [00:01:58.020]growing calf also needs a lot of protein. Supplemental to a silage diet is rumen undergradable
- [00:02:06.000]protein. We've done a few studies at the University of Nebraska looking at high silage
- [00:02:10.860]diets and the amount of supplemental protein that's required. From a practical standpoint
- [00:02:16.220]for most producers, about 15 percent distiller's grains meets the protein requirement of the
- [00:02:21.360]calf, which means you can feed an 80 to 85 percent silage diet with distiller's grains
- [00:02:27.800]and just a little bit of supplement, and you'll get plus or minus three pounds a day gain
- [00:02:35.420]on that calf, and they do very, very well on high silage diets.
- [00:02:39.100]A little bit of caution about a newly weaned calf. They may
- [00:02:42.520]They may need to adjust to the taste of the silage, a fermented feed, when they're used
- [00:02:47.860]to grazing forage, but otherwise silage fits very nicely into backgrounding calves.
- [00:02:54.000]Then in the finishing system, of course, 12 to 15% silage in finishing diets is very,
- [00:03:00.000]very common.
- [00:03:01.480]For some producers, if they have access to a lot of silage, actually increasing that
- [00:03:05.680]amount up to 45% of the dry matter can be advantageous.
- [00:03:11.760]In finishing systems, we tend to think and focus very clearly on feed efficiency.
- [00:03:17.300]We know that when you increase the concentration of silage in finishing diets, feed efficiency
- [00:03:24.560]is going to go down.
- [00:03:26.320]They're going to eat more.
- [00:03:27.520]They may gain just a little bit less, but feed efficiency is going to be poor and they
- [00:03:31.460]will require more days on feed.
- [00:03:34.720]When you look at the economics of high silage diets.
- [00:03:41.000]Those diets look quite good relative to conventional diets where you're feeding 15% silage.
- [00:03:48.120]The other benefit of feeding high silage diets in finishing systems is that we reduce liver
- [00:03:53.600]abscesses even when we don't have tylosin.
- [00:03:57.020]The other advantage in the beef complex to using high silage is that if you're harvesting
- [00:04:02.680]silage you have the opportunity then to go back in and plant a cover crop, especially
- [00:04:06.760]a fall grazed cover crop, and that works quite nicely.
- [00:04:10.240]You'll get about a ton per acre, at least that's been our experience, and you can come
- [00:04:15.060]in and that's a really good opportunity to graze especially newly weaned calves and incorporate
- [00:04:21.180]them into a backgrounding or finishing system.
- [00:04:24.960]So you could essentially set up an entire beef system using silage throughout that complex.
- [00:04:33.120]So if you have a spring born calf that's weaned in the fall, you get about 30 days in a silage
- [00:04:39.480]system from that secondary forage crop.
- [00:04:42.360]From the first of December into March, background that calf, you end up with a 900 pound animal
- [00:04:48.620]moving into a finishing system on a high forage diet, probably market that animal about August.
- [00:04:54.580]That gets all of your silage moved up, and in addition to that, about 45 days pre-breeding,
- [00:05:00.260]30 days post-breeding using silage in the cow system.
- [00:05:03.920]And you could develop an entire beef system based on silage, and that would work quite
- [00:05:08.980]well, especially for smaller producers, integrated cow-calf farming and finishing systems, especially
- [00:05:17.220]in the eastern part of Nebraska in the central Great Plains.
- [00:05:20.220]Thank you.
- [00:05:21.060]Thank you.
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