Feeding a balanced diet that meets but not exceeds the nutritional needs of cattle becomes increasingly important as input prices continue to rise. Using averages or �book values� for feeds can result in over- or under-feeding certain nutrients, says University of Nebraska animal scientist Rick Rasby. Feed analysis, he says, can help producers provide more economical and better balanced diets. He offers these tips for testing and analyzing forage and other feeds. Full story:
� Analyze feeds for moisture, protein, and energy when designing diets for beef cattle.
� Testing labs typically report results on an as-is and dry matter basis. Nutrients should be balanced in a diet on a dry-matter basis because that is the way nutrient requirements for cattle are reported. After formulation on a dry-matter basis, values can be converted to an as-is basis, using the moisture content of the feed, to determine the actual amount of feed to provide.
� Sight, smell, and touch are useful for determining stage of maturity at harvest, foreign material or pests, color, leafiness and signs of spoilage. Physical evaluations alone, however, can be misleading and rarely are sufficient for predicting eventual animal performance.
� The most common feed analyses use chemical processes to determine nutrient levels. Chemical testing of representative feed samples allows accurate predictions of animal performance because nutrient requirements also were determined using chemically tested feeds.
� Near infrared reflectance (NIR) spectroscopy is a rapid, reliable, low-cost, method to analyze feeds for their nutrient content. When sending a sample in to be tested using NIR, be sure to identify the type of feed or forage being submitted. The NIR method will not accurately evaluate a full mineral profile of a sample, but appears to accurately determine calcium and phosphorus.
Source: Drovers news staff
