Now, maybe more than ever, controlling harvested feed costs is important to sustain margins in the cow-calf herd.
1. Inventory your harvested forage supply. Keeping accurate records of current available feedstuffs and reviewing previous year’s feed usage will allow you to more accurately predict winter feed needs. If you don’t have these records available, now is a good time to start keeping these records for use in future years.
2. Assess your forage storage. Research at the University of Tennessee has shown hay storage losses can be anywhere from 5 to 40 percent depending on storage methods used. Fairly low-cost storage modifications such as covering bales and getting them off the ground can reduce losses significantly. Moreover, improved storage conditions usually result in reduced waste at the feeder as well.
3. Critically evaluate your feeding methods. With limited and expensive forage resources, limit-feeding cows may be most valuable to you. Switching to a TMR likely requires infrastructure upgrades that can be costly upfront but are almost always a profitable investment in the long run.
Another option is limit-feeding forage by restricting access to the hay feeder to reduce intake and waste. Purdue research has shown cows can consume their maximum daily intake of dry matter in as little as six hours per day. Limiting access to hay and supplementing energy and protein as needed will likely be cheaper than ad libitum hay access if or when hay prices increase.
4. Use alternative forages. Do not overlook the value grazing cornstalks can bring to your winter feeding strategy. Although moisture has been limited this year, and grain yields have been affected, seeding cover crops provide an opportunity to capitalize on any fall rainfall and may provide an opportunity for additional grazing.
5. Analyze your harvested forages. While release of CRP acres for emergency haying and grazing provides another forage resource, variability of the forage quality is huge. Without a forage analysis on any type of hay, any supplementation strategy implemented is purely a guess and rarely mimics the true needs of the cow herd. 
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Erika Lundy
- Extension Beef Program Specialist
- Iowa Beef Center - Iowa State University
- Email Erika Lundy
