farmer feeds cows sawdust

dgasper · Feb 25, 2013

Amazing. What next?
Sawdust article here

paul · Feb 25, 2013

Cows need a lot of fiber in their diet, they can break down some nutrients from it if it has any. Now, wood is mighty low on nutrients.....

That said, would have to be careful what type of wood, and the cooking and treating of it would not be for free, and I'd guess a large percent of ddgs from an ethanol plant as well as a mineral package is mixed in with it, making the sawdust portion a rather small part of the total feed.

Back years ago when we couldn't get $2 for a bu of corn here, I remember reading an article where a dairy farm was experimenting with using no forage for the cows, he fed plastic chips (looked like tiny Pringles chips...) along with the grain and mineral package. They washed the manure and recycled the plastic chips. The idea was, with grain so cheap, it didn't pay to transport and shelter bulk forages compared to this system where the chips were fake roughage. Was interesting reading, obviously it never caught on, and now with different economics in the grain and hay world, folks are exploring different ideas in a whole different direction.

Paul

RayP(MI) · Feb 25, 2013

Back when I was a kid, the government was buying up surplus potatoes. Came in and threw a blue die all over the bins... We fed potatoes to the cows, cooked potatoes to the pigs. Little surprises me anymore, although sawdust has to be pretty low in food value. Would have to be made up in suppliments.

Lou from Wi. · Feb 25, 2013

It save McDonalds from adding fillers to their hamburgers,sorta like wood putty.It all is beginning to taste like 2X4's smell.lol.French fries are being cooked in pine tar also. Their going green, or you are after eating them.
Watch this post go pooff.lol.
LOU

Mike M · Feb 25, 2013

Potatoes when fed to dairy cows will boost the milk production naturally without using the hormones that are maybe bad for you.

JMS/.MN · Feb 25, 2013

Late 50s a local feed mill had experiments with dairy cows. Main forage was either cattails or newsprint, both fed with liquid molasses. Production was similar to control group fed normal hay/corn silage ration. In this story, where farmer noticed cows eating sawdust runoff from nearby mill, I wonder if they had a phosphorus deficiency? Chewing on wood stalls is a common indicator.

ss55 · Feb 25, 2013

Wasn't there a scandal in the 1980's of some name brand bread maker using sawdust as filler or "fiber" in their bread?

I thought lactating cows needed all the energy they could consume. Is the sawdust used in a maintenance ration for dry cows?

Angle Iron · Feb 25, 2013

(quoted from post at 12:50:48 02/25/13) Wasn't there a scandal in the 1980's of some name brand bread maker using sawdust as filler or "fiber" in their bread?

I thought lactating cows needed all the energy they could consume. Is the sawdust used in a maintenance ration for dry cows?

believe it was i Russia during thr 2nd world war that they mixed sawdust with the bread flour because of shortages. This was for human consumption. True or false I don't know but I saw it somewhere.
Angl Iron

Larry NEIL · Feb 25, 2013

Maybe some guys are trying to start a nitch? Like Jimmy Deans "maple flavored sausages...Maple flavored milk!

37chief · Feb 25, 2013

Grandma told me back in the day they would burn stickers off of cactus leavs, for cow feed. My brother fed his cattle tomatoes from a packing company.The ones that didn't make the store grade. They would deliver them in dump trucks, cattle seamed to like them. Stan

JF in MI · Feb 25, 2013

Hmm, maybe if I mix some maple saw dust into my pancake batter I won't have to add syrup.

sammydwm · Feb 25, 2013

They feed beef cattle chicken manure....
http://www.bae.ncsu.edu/programs/extension/publicat/wqwm/ag61.html

dcarp · Feb 25, 2013

Last night I was talking to a friends son who is a missionary in Africa, here on a fund raising trip. He said one of the items used to feed cattle in Africa is cardboard. Wonder what a steak
from one of those cows would taste like?

smallercrawler · Feb 25, 2013

Saw beef cattle eating orange pulp left over from juice making in Florida feed lots several years ago. Heard that sugar beet pulp was also fed. Guess it didn't "flavor" the meat.

petetx · Feb 25, 2013

still common to burn the needles off prickly pear for cows. years ago in michigan dad fed cooked cull beans to the dairy cows

60 acre hillside · Feb 25, 2013

The act of burning the thorns off prickly pear was called "Bunning Pear"

Also in the 1970's the East Perry Lumber Company at Altenburg and tha LaPierre Sawyer Handle Company experimented in chemically treating the sawdust to make it palatible for animal feed. Although it was not economically feasible at the time. There is a fellow at Bernie, Missouri who was an executive with the LaPierre Company. He could explain the process. It may have been copyrited or patented.I talked to him about a year ago

dhermesc · Feb 25, 2013

Lots of countries resorted to that. Germany did it in WWl and WWll. France and England did it in both wars too. England was still doing it into the early 1950s as they continued rationing for years after the war ended.

dhermesc · Feb 25, 2013

Link to wood flour bread:

http://www.theoldfoodie.com/2011/03/sawdust-bread.html

dhermesc · Feb 25, 2013

Neighbor up the road uses scraps from a food processor to feed cattle in his feedlot. Carrot scrapings, potato peals and apple cores. He gets one or two semi loads a week.

Bob Bancroft · Feb 25, 2013

Since the dairies have gotten so big around here, they don't even try to use dry hay. Everything is chopped, damp of course. The feed is so "hot" and wet they are buying all the straw they can find and mixing and feeding it.

EricInSEI · Feb 25, 2013

You don't happen to have a source for your claims about McDonalds do you? I'd love to see it.

samn40 · Feb 25, 2013

Visited a dairy farm in Malta after being told there was a farm of over 300 cows on a barren island.....I just could not think of what they would feed them....Guess what? they were eating spagetti....hard broken sticks of spagetti that didn't make the grade!.
We feed quite a bit of orange peel(citrus pulp) and sugar beet pulp, plus soya bean, along with wheat, barley and a little corn. Along with whole crop wheat silage and grass silage to our dairy cows. TMR through a mixer feeder.
Sam

Anonymous-0 · Feb 25, 2013

Beef, with it's own toothpicks, what will them there scientists think of next!

S.Crum · Feb 25, 2013

Most people eat a lot more wood fiber than they realize. Start reading the ingredient statements folks!

john in la · Feb 25, 2013

Here is one from ABC news about fillers used in burgers.
McDonald s Announces End to Pink Slime in Burgers

JMS/.MN · Feb 25, 2013

"Hollywood" bread- claimed to have fewer calories, thus you"d lose weight. Yes, sawdust was the filler. Another trick was fewer slices in a loaf.

Anonymous-0 · Feb 25, 2013

When I was in Aggie college in 1953 there was a reference in Morrison's Feeds and Feeding about feeding hydrolized sawdust. One of my classmates, who actually read his textbooks, found it. He took a lot of ribbing. His cow's byproduct would be 2x4s he could build a barn with, the rest of us told him.

Anonymous-0 · Feb 25, 2013

For years I mixed my own grain using rice "fines", broken pieces, and a protein supplement. When the instant rice operation moved the place was used for experimental products so at different times I fed macaroni and potato flakes. It was all cooked so it didn't help my butterfat. None of the local farmers went to college so I was regarded as a little nuts, especially since I fed 90% silage and bought what little hay I fed. This was back in the 60s.

ohiojim · Feb 25, 2013

been 5 years ago i saw on ag day about feeding cattle out on sawdust and chicken poop,...take a bucket of sawdust and a bucket of poop and stir it up and send it to the cattle....sure makes ya think.

Hay_Man · Feb 25, 2013

Not "Bunning Pear"

"Burning Pear"

JD Seller · Feb 25, 2013

Well just raise some Holstein steers. They will eat the wood siding right off a barn. Don't even have to saw it. LOL.

It is funny to read the comments from guys with ZERO idea of the nutrient value of different feed sources.

Saw dust is cellulose fiber. What do you think corn stalks are????? Cellulose. Just a different form. The article says he is cooking the saw dust some how. That would break it down into a digestible feed source. You would only be feed a few lbs per head per day.

I have fed the following stuff: potato chip rejects, old bread, chocolate syrup that was out of date, rejected coffee creamer, burnt Cheeto's, over baked cookies, out of spec. candy(that tasted real good too), rejected soybeans( they had been treated but where washed and roasted. Where safe to feed then), rejected rice cakes, Out dated Quaker Oats.

I am sure there are other stuff too but these are the ones I remember.

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