Let 'em eat sawdust might be a good thing

[haypoint]

http://thegazette.com/2013/02/25/nor...st-based-feed/

While it’s not quite spinning straw into gold, Bob Batey is converting sawdust from his lumber mill into nutritious and palatable feed for his cattle.
When Batey fills his feed bunks with the 70 percent sawdust ration, his cows eat it like candy, plunging their faces into it and licking their lips.
“They like it. It’s good for them. It’s economical. And it’s green.” said Batey, 85, an outside-the-box thinker whose entrepreneurial endeavors have often turned dross into profit, especially in the custom machinery he has “invented” for use in his family’s large and successful lumber mill.
“They are a happy bunch of cattle,” said Tara Wellman-Gerdes, a West Point veterinarian who is monitoring the health of Batey’s 50-cow herd of Angus and Charolais near Mount Pleasant.
The cows, who are expecting calves in March, are the picture of health, she said.
Animals can barely digest untreated sawdust, which consists of more than 50 percent cellulose and about 30 percent lignin.
Stephanie Hansen, an assistant professor in the animal science department at Iowa State University, said lignin wraps itself around cellulose, giving wood its strength and rigidity and acting as a barrier to the digestibility of cellulose.
“You could potentially free up the cellulose, which has high food value,” she said.
Breaking the cellulose-lignin bond is precisely how Batey extracts feed value from sawdust, he said.

[gone-a-milkin]

haypoint,

I was out working in the woodpile today and got to thinking about this.
Kicking around through the sawdust and stuff.

It reminds me of one of my neighbors who raises about 500 head of angus cow/calf pairs each year.
Every summer when the pasture wears down, he goes out and pushes down a few trees for his cows every day.
The cattle will eat every branch that is under an inch around.
I find it a bit gruesome to watch.

To be fair though, I have gotten to know this rancher because I asked him if I could access one of his 'pastures' to cut browse for my goats.
He said yes, of course.

But still.
What do they actually do to sawdust in order to break it down so the cattle can access the nutrients?

I guess it is 'green' since the sawdust would be considered a waste product,
but it hurts my heart to think of cattle having to get their groceries that way for any extended time.

[Yvonne's hubby]

A friend off mine was feeding his cattle sawdust twenty years ago. They did very well with it! What he did was to mix it with water and a bit of molasses, then let it ferment a couple weeks before feeding it. His cattle were fat, slick, and healthy, and they loved the stuff. He was one of those guys that thought outside the box all the time.

[tab]

Yeah, the local mill is sellng chips to some dairys. You can do it if you like.

[Copperhead]

If it is green (as in green firewood) pine with the limbs and needles, then I imagine you wouldn't have to process it much for digestibility at all.

Hardwood might be another story, especially if its dried or cured.

Hmm, might have to throw a scoop of the pine chips the Asplund tree trimmers just dumped in my driveway . . . to the goats!

P.S. I did cut down 2 maple trees in the goat pen. They LOVE the buds, twigs and bark!

[francismilker]

I could see this working quite well. I just can't see how a ruminent animal would keep their ph balanced correctly. Tree wood has different ph level depending on the acidity content in the resin.

If the sawdust had dried considerably and allowed to ferment a little, I could see where that would be a little more palatable.

Sad thing is, IF this starts a fad and ends up being a good alternative to being raped by the feed salesmen, sawdust will go through the roof in price. Right now it's like propane was 40 years ago. The gasoline refineries used to actually give it away or sale it dirt cheap as it's a "FREE" byproduct in the process of making gasoline. Now, they know we depend on it so it follows the cost of gas.