Anyone ever feed chopped DRY cornstalks without the ears

[FarmboyBill]

in wintertime. Just wondering what your thoughts were about doing it, to those who have.

[arcticow]

Bill, how small are you thinkin' of choppin' 'em? If you could borrow a shredder, they oughta feed ok. Heck, I've seen stockers in KS clean a field of dry stalks pretty well when it got cold.

[MO_cows]

Never seen anybody process the stalks, just turn cattle onto the field after harvest to graze them.

[myersfarm]

I have seen them feed the round bales but they used a grinder and mix grain products in with the corn stalks


never seen them feed in the round bale

[tinknal]

It will work as feed, but not alone. they will need supplement in the form of grain, protein blocks, lick tanks or blocks, alfalfa, etc.

[arcticow]

Originally Posted by myersfarm

I have seen them feed the round bales but they used a grinder and mix grain products in with the corn stalks


never seen them feed in the round bale

Have, in the past, had wild sunflowers take a field of sudan. Baled the sunflowers. Ground 'em with a little meal and milo and made a good feed for a bunch of heifers.

[Tom in TN]

FarmBoy,

I was just a kid back in the 1950's so I didn't know anything about nutritional values of feed or nutrional requirements of dairy cows. However, the owner of the farm where we lived, and my dad worked, was still shocking corn and hauling it into the top of the dairy barn in the fall. He (we) then spent many hours in the winter snapping the ears of corn off the stalks and stripping the husk off the ears.

Then, the farmer had a fodder chopper that we ran the stalks through. It chopped the stalks and leaves up into small pieces that were an inch or two long.

We fed the fodder to the dairy cows after we had fed corn silage and ground feed to them during the milking process. I think that the fodder was to provide some roughage for the cows and to give them something to munch on during the long hours that the were in the stanchions.

So, I don't know how good it is for feed, but it definitely can be, and has in the past been, a source of feed for cattle.

Good luck with your search for more information.

Tom in TN

[springvalley]

Bill, I sure have over the years, if we were short hay and needed some forage we would feed stalks. One year we went out with a green chopper and windrowed it, then followed up right with a small square baler and baled couple thousand bales that fall. Stacked them along side the cattle yard and tarped them and feed along witrh the hay all winter to strech the hay. Have fed big rounds also along with hay for my stock cows over the winter, if you can get the stalks baled nice and dry without getting any rain on it before baling, it makes some nice feed ( along with hay). > Thanks Marc

[francismilker]

There's been some drought years in the past when the only hay I could get was roundbaled corn stalks out of Kansas and was proud to get them. I don't know what nutritional value they have, but I fed them free choice as well as free choice soybean meal/salt mix and the critters done well.

[haypoint]

I hate to start a comment with, “I read about”, but here goes. I found it very interesting. The editor of Small Farming Journal, Lynn Miller, reprinted a book from the 1880s. It is about a family that made a living on 3 acres. They had a hired hand that they kept busy all summer. In order to insure that he’d be back in the spring, they devised a winter job for him. They bought 20 bred heifers. In the Fall, the hired hand collected a huge amount of corn stalks from neighboring farms. During the winter, he would chop stalks and add ground corn to warm water to create a “slop”. The manure was kept in a covered area. In the spring, the new calves and the newly freshened cows were sold. The profit covered the hired hand’s wages. But the real important part of this sideline was the manure. Anyone that has gardened understands the value of several tons of weed free manure. By feeding stalks and ground corn, there weren’t any weeds like would be in “normal” cow manure.

[Oakshire_Farm]

My dad has a little garden shredder. He would put it in the pasture, fire it up, and start feeding the stalks into it. They got shredded into bits small enough for the cows to eat. The cows LOVED it and would come running any time they heard that little shredder fire up

[rancher1913]

most years if it wasn't for ground cornstalks my cows would starve. alfalfa is gong for around 250 a ton and corn stalks are around 60 a ton. you need to give them some form of protein to help digest but everybody around here feeds stalks all winter.