"Oz" wrote in message
...
Jim Webster writes

Was it fed to sheep? or do any of our nutritionalists know if oats can
be fed to cattle un-rolled and still digested.

Barley certainly can be (and is), so I guess oats would be fine too.
Wheat is not so good as I understand it because the gluten makes it too
sticky, and stock don;t like it so much.

Wheat is not an ideal feed for cattle but it works ok if you keep it to half
the grain and the rest of the ration is decent. We feed it in Oklahoma
because there is always some that is not fit for human consumption every
year. Some years it is as cheap or cheaper than corn by the time we pay
freight to get it here. There have been some cattle fed wheat for all the
grain in the ration but I think that there was more hay than normal in the
ration. I think the gains were comparable with anything else but I don't
know of anyone actually doing it but the college.

In small amounts it works well because our wheat runs 12 or 13% protien or
higher if the grain is low test weight.

Feed lots will add it at 5 or 10% if they get some on an irregular basis and
will go as high as 50% if it is cheap enough.

Hogs do better on wheat than cattle and can do alright with wheat making up
all the grain. But it is safer to have some other grain in the ration.

Feeding wheat it is important the it be in self feeder and the feeder always
have feed and that they are brought up on it gradually. Letting them run out
feed one time can be a real costly mistake when feeding a hot ration. They
will eat too much when you fill the feeder and at best have serious
digestive problems. Foundering and death of a substantial number would be
expected if they had been out of feed very long.

I expect that the kind of wheat would have some bearing on how it fed.

Gordon

Dan writes

I suspect that you might have miss read the question - I am unaware of any
cereal grains that can be fed to cattle whole successfully. Barley passes
straight through judging by the evidence I have seen from when they have
found the grains in straw and eaten them whole.

1) I don;t have sheep.
2) I have seen it said in FW and elsewhere many times that feeding neat
barley to sheep is effective.
3) I am *certain* I have seen trials results of it's use.

Remember that barley ex-fm is but 60/T, if even 20% goes straight
through, it's still a cheap feed.

--
Oz
This post is worth absolutely nothing and is probably fallacious.
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