Act early to capture the best value from dry feeds and stubble

Regardless of whether you’re in a beef or sheep operation, dry feed utilisation is an important issue. In our climate, broadly speaking, we have periods when standing dry feed and stubble are an important part of our grazing and nutritional program.

What’s really clear is, regardless of region, the quality of standing dry feed and stubble at its best early in the season. As these feeds age and are exposed to weather events, including rain, their value to our animals is reduced.

It’s for this reason that every effort should be made during the early part of the season to turn as much of our standing dry feed and stubble into weight gain, fertility (and wool growth) as we possibly can. That’s particularly important in a year when feed is less abundant.

Dry feed utilisation using intelligent supplements

Early in the season standing dry feed and stubbles have residual seed, grain and leaf material that when supported with an intelligently designed supplement, delivers a better production result.

The most cost effective ‘intelligent supplements’ are in lick form. They bring a range of high quality ingredients together to meet the protein, energy and micro-nutritional requirements of animals in our production systems;

• Protien
  Proteins that come from a range of different sources that are either by-pass, rumen degradable or non-protein nitrogen (urea) along with new technology that delivers a significant increase in rumen microbial mass supporting better digestion, health and growth.
• Energy
  Providing highly fermentable compounds is key to driving higher levels of rumen microbial activity, offering the best chance of standing dry feed and stubble to be used efficiently.
• Micro Nutrition
  Supporting animals with increased rates of available nutrients is important to maintain health, support breeder fertility and allow progeny to grow to their genetic potential at a time when performance is expected to be lower. Reducing incidence of pinkeye, snotty nose and coughing are part of that.

As the season rolls on towards February, the best early feeds are degraded from exposure to summer weather events and the best material has been consumed. The feeds that remain are most often incapable of achieving maintenance.

When feed values have deteriorated so that stalks and little else remain, supplement’s can no longer deliver the value they do when feeds are younger and fresher. A supplement is no substitute for feed and should be removed if supplementary feeding is not introduced.