By Linda Geist
University of Missouri Extension specialists find that producers see up to $300 savings in feeding costs per calf when their livestock graze standing milo through the winter.
This is the third year that Green Ridge livestock producer John Chamberlin has worked with MU Extension agronomist Rusty Lee and livestock specialist Gene Schmitz to find how milo can reduce winter feed costs and improve herd health.
Milo is a drought-resistant forage that can be used as a winter livestock feed to save time and labor. It also improves carrying capacity and returns nutrients back to the soil, says Lee.
Saves labor, costs
By grazing the standing milo, producers eliminate grain harvest and transportation costs.
Strip grazing takes cattle to the feed rather than feed to the cattle, saving time and money, says Lee. He has grown milo on his east-central Missouri diversified farm for more than 10 years.
Producers control daily feed allocation by creating strips with polywire electric fencing. This encourages cattle to utilize the fodder leaves and portions of the stalk in addition to the high-energy grain head of the plants.
Chamberlin says strip grazing saves him hours of feeding time daily for the approximately 400 head since it takes only 30 minutes a day to move the polywire instead of the hours it took to unroll hay and fill feed bunks.
Toxicity still a problem after frost
Like other Sorghum specie forages, temporary but toxic levels of prussic acid are present in milo after frost injury. To avoid this, delay grazing for about two weeks after frost to avoid cyanide poisoning in cows.
Chamberlin recently did in-field research to see if he could avoid this prussic acid poisoning window by mowing milo down prior to frost. “The idea was to start the two-week clock for volatilization in an area that would then be usable once the remainder of the field was in the frost-induced grazing restriction,” says Lee.
He left mowed stalks on the ground to dry and waited for MU Extension specialists to test the downed milo for prussic acid or cyanide. Eight days after mowing, their tests still showed that prussic acid levels were still too high to safely turn cattle in to graze.
Lee and Schmitz say that while the head of the plant may be dead, the stalk continues to create regrowth that appears to contain cyanide. While palatable to livestock, it can be deadly.
Source : missouri.edu