Livestock feed

Hello all!
My name is Michael and I am kind of a beginning farmer....in the last 2 or 3 years of farming I have accumulated some older equipment and have all the equipment to make my own Livestock feed. My question is about using cow peas and oats instead of corn and soy bean... Anyone have experience, tips, or advice? Can both be planted together and combined together? I have an older grain drill and a Allis 72 all crop pull behind combine that I will be using along with an old sears and roebuck hammer mill that I will be using to mill my feed. I appreciate any and all help! Please and thank you!
 
Oats are a good filler and roughage but don't have the nutritional value of corn or milo. They also make you itch like no other when you are dealing with them. I have no idea about the peas - those are totally foreign to me.

You need to consider what you are feeding and what the feed requirements are. Are you intending to use these feeds as a supplement to Coop feed or as a sole ration? Not that it can't be done, but making your feed will be a pain if it is your sole ration as the mineral, protein, etc, will have to be mixed somehow. A mixer grinder makes that process lots easier.

My fat cattle, hogs, and chickens all get the same feed I grind. It isn't a by golly and guess process though - it is measured out to provide them what they need.
 
Mike,

What sort of critters are you looking to feed? Fat cattle? Pigs? Lambs? Chickens? Goats? Brood cows?
Have you ever grown cow peas before?
 
I don't know about nutrition, but I wouldn't plant them together. Oats are planted 1-1/2" deep; cowpeas 3/4 to 1". I just planted cowpeas with an old Van Brunt. I set the flutes at around 15 and ended up at around 50-60 pounds per acre. Oats are usually planted heavier than that. The larger opening for oats will plant peas too thick. The only way I see it working would to set one side for peas and the other for oats and end up with strips. Also the ground might not be warm enough for peas at the time you plant oats. I'm just a food plotter so take it for what it's worth, but I have grown both for two or three years. Don't forget the inoculate for the peas.

Larry
 
What kind of critters? An oats and pea field makes wonderful silage, cut and bale or chop about when the oats wants to head out.

But only if you are feeding critters that eat silage of course.

I throw a small amount of peas in my oats that I combine for oats, I think I gain some free n from that. I do get peas in with the oats in the combine, but it would be hard to control the timing and amounts of that to get a predictable, useful mixture. I get enough hard peas that you can see them, not enough to matter much.

Otherwise peas are not a common crop for feeding around here, only in a silage mix.

Paul
 
Paul... I live in central NY and I know that they are not commonly used for feed... I am looking to just make a complete feed out of just the oats and cow peas.... Used for feeding sheep, goats, pigs, and beef cows.... Soybean seems a bit to expensive for me and same with corn. Also I do not have a combine that can do corn. Please and thank you,
Michael
 
Thank you. I have heard about using them together and then chopping or cutting and baling both together but I am looking more to make a feed with Oats instead of corn and peas instead of Soy bean. Thank you though!
Michael
 
I am new to planting anything. I have been working on getting my farm together for the past 2 or 3 years and recently graduated college with a degree in animal science.... I am now looking for a way to make a complete feed that I can feed to beef cows, pigs, sheep, and goats.
Thank you!
Michael
 
I planned to make a complete feed using oats in place of corn and peas in place of soy with the mineral bag for sheep and feed that to pigs, goats, sheep, and beef cows while placing minerals for each animal that have the minerals that each species needs at free choice. I planned to combine both, run em thru the hammer mill and then blow them into a clean cement mixer to mix them together and mix in the minerals.... I want to start making my own feed with what I have without breaking the bank on soy and corn. Next year I would plan to plant one and buy one... For example I would plant peas and then but oats and mix them with the minerals. I only was wondering if you could plant and combine together because then I would be able to maybe plant both next year.
Thank you,
Michael
 
Soybeans need roasting so I can see them being too expensive for livestock feed. You are better off buying protien most of the time, which ends up being processed soybean meal and or distillers dried grains.

Corn and alfalfa are the cheapest energy and protein crops out there one can grow for yourself, that is why we grow those. Yep they are expensive to get planted, fertilized, and harvested right, but you will get more bang for the buck from them at the end of the year.

Letting the critters graze as much of their feed as possible is the low-cost, cheapest route to go. Sometimes takes more time to get a livestock crop but it is low cost.

Otherwise if you want to grow and harvest 'other' crops you need to be looking at ground not right for corn and alfalfa, or just enjoy those other crops. $ wise on good ground, the alternative crops don't actually come out cheaper.

By all this I do not mean you should grow one thing or another! Oats and peas are just fine, grow what you want on your farm and love doing it your way.

I do the same, it is silly $$$ wise to grow oats here, but I always plant 5-15 acres, and make it work out for me. For me, I get the oats, I get the straw, I get a place to spread manure early on the oats stubble, and I plant a plow down cover crop with the oats so the cattle get a fall grazing off the same acres of alfalfa, clover, and turnips. That all together actually makes my 5-15 acres return very well for me, tho I would lose the farm if I planted the whole place to oats and thought I would be rolling in the money. One needs a plan and options to make the oddball crops work.....

But don't put a false sense of ecconomy on it, it ends up you get what you pay for is all, corn pays me well here on a bigger scale.

I'm just rambling, different ideas and directions to attack the issue.

Paul
 
Barley is equivalent to corn for most livestock, for cattle and sheep and goats ground barley and ground Alfalfa is a complete feed for fatteneing or maintenance of breeding stock in the winter. Hogs do well on barley as well but they do a lot better on corn and soybean meal or cottonseed meal or flaxseed meal. Most of the protein feed value in cowpeas is in the forage, the actual peas seeds are similar to raw soybeans in that they are not that digestible for ruminants and much of the protein and feed value is lost in unprocessed peas. Any feed does not cost so much as it pays if it is a well formulateed ration suited the class of livestock being fed. You can pick up a copy of ""morrisons feeds and feeding "" for little or nothing at a used bookstore or on E-bay, while the most recent edition is 50 plus years old all the information is still relevant and useful.
 
Are you looking to make one "complete" feed for all those classes of livestock, all ages and growth stages, reproduction status?
 
If you are set on those here's what you need to do. Figure out your ratio (how many pounds of each you are going to run through) and then go to the Coop. Tell them you need Concentrate 40 (Purina) and the amounts you are using. They will be able to give you enough bags to bump the protein up where you need it. Don't hammer it too fine.

For a little summertime batch I grind about 1600 pounds of corn in my mixer and throw in a bale of alfalfa. I put in 7 or so bags of concentrate from Coop. That has the minerals, salts, and soybean meal to make the feed about 16% protein. The cattle get bales and some of that ground feed in the winter. The fat calves obviously get lots more. The hogs get about 5 pounds of it a day (if they aren't on a self-feeder) and the chickens have a second feeder full of it to eat free choice. It just about doubles egg production on older hens. If I am grinding different amounts I tell them at the Coop and they change the amount of bags. Seven bags runs me right about $100. The other inputs I have here.

It doesn't sound like you will be doing tons of it. Like I say, grind it a little more coarse and it is better food for all animals. The hogs won't process it quite as well, but if you tailor it to them the other animals won't eat all of the fines and end up wasting.
 
Where did you get your Animal Science degree? Did you do any nutrition work, ration design, amino acid balancing, etc? No one in the industry believes there is a one size fits all ration.
 
Dad used to have a dairy in the 50s and 60s. He also had pigs, sheep and horses. He grew oats and peas together and combined them. The oats help hold the peas up so that he could direct cut them. Here peas will go down and need swathed and a pickup head on the combine. He also grew barley and vetch, too. He ground them with a Montgomery Wards hammermill with a hay conveyor. He used a Moorman mineral concentrate. The hammermill had a blower on it and the ground feed was blown into wooden feed boxes that had angled lids that kept the mice and rats out. He mixed the ground feed with skim milk for the hogs. He fed the animals out for butcher but he didn't push the animals like feedlots do now....James
 

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