feeding livestock

[Rob30]

Hello
I am trying to find out if I can get a bulk feed that will be suitable for all livestock. I don't have alot of livestock, but I am aquireing more. I want to be able to feed goats, sheep, cattle, pigs, and some layers. All will have plenty of food in the summer. I have 50 acres to let them graze. But in Northern Ontario our winters are 5 months long with plenty of snow.

[Tracy in Idaho]

Sure, plain old COB (corn, oats, barley) or even just barley/corn. I use the plain stuff -- no molasses, and everything on the place eats it.


Tracy

[TwoAcresAndAGoat]

I just mxed up some
50# cracked corn
50# oats
50# barlie
10# sunflower seed
25# of soy meal (48% protein)

Makes a 17% protein grain ration ( if my caculations are corrrect )

feed it to everyone with my girl goats getting alfalfa hay or pellets, boy goats get grass hay. All goats have free choice salt and mineral + baking soda. Would be OK for horses too.
Laying hens get ostyer shell, Laying hens and pullets right now are being mixed 2/3 laying/grower pellents and 1/3 grain mix.

[Vicki McGaugh TX Nubians]

Pretty much the same here, now just goats and layers, but donkeys, pigs, rabbits and sheep at one time, and all where on the corn, oats and little barley (although today barley was cheaper than oats at the feed store...go figure.) Then I upped the calcium (without added calcium my hens just didn't lay well enough to feed) and protein in the laying hens with alfalfa pellets and soybean meal...the goats get alfalfa pellets free choice...the soybean meal would also be great for adding protein to the basic cob mixture for your growing goatlings and lambs. In fact there is a feed mix at pipevet.com that is based on soybean meal feeding period. Our hogs where raised on barn leavings, some grain but mostly goat milk, our sheep pastured and only given grain when heavy bred and nursing, the donkeys only got a handful of grain to keep them coming to me daily (donkeys are not horses).

Whole clean oats, same with barley, and limited amounts of corn would be a better way of doing it rather than the old heavy corn ideal.

Know what minerals your animals need for the area, this keeps feed conversion high. Don't make any changes quickly, once you find a mixture that works, stick with it, don't be tweaking this and that. Vicki

[marvella]

hmmm. what am i missing? i feed all stock, then add things like alfalfa pellets or shelled corn or oats as needed. they all seem to be happy and healthy....

[Vicki McGaugh TX Nubians]

Read your tag, rarely do horse and mules or allstock pellets contain anything but by products. You are usually paying the same price as a sack of oats, a sack of barley, a sack of corn, yet are really getting chaff, no derm, cottonseed hulls, soy hulls, and literal sweepings off the mill room floor, and anything they do want to put into it, and then it is molassased, which would make animals eat cardboard, has only the most basic of minerals, and has a price tag of whatever the area prices will bear. The digestiable nutritients are usually very low, which means they actually have to eat twice as much as a real grain, to get the very same nutritient quality.

You simply don't feed non ruminant feed (horse, pig, dog, rabbitt) to ruminants that contain byproducts, because you don't know what those byproducts are. You hope that your animal byproducts are something benign like chicken feathers, but it can also be from the dead animal itself.

Worse is that every time the sack of byproducts feed is mixed at the mill, they can pick and choose from a whole set of products to make the feed, meaning that everytime you purchase fresh feed from your feed dealer you have switched your animals menu. This makes for upset stomachs, rumen problems, diarrhea, founder etc. Vicki

[Sondra Peterson]

OK I have chicken , a cow, rabbits and goats all get the same thing but I mix my own.
100# whole oats
100# rolled barley
25# Black Oil Sunflower Seeds
25# Beet Pulp
25# corn
Alfalfa Pellets, grass hay
I give the alfalfa pellets to the chickens and rabbits mixed in their feed.
I personally never give any more corn to any of the animals.
If some milking does or babies need a little more protien I add a 1/4 cup of calf mana or animax which is less exspensive
Loose goat minerals rather than licks for goats and the cow gets the same.