cornstalk bales

[gary in neb.]

not really sure where to post this but thought this might work. do any of you folks feed large round bales of cornstalks to you cattle and if so, do you do it via a bale feeder or what? i have several old cows i was thinking of getting some corn stalk bales for just to make my grass hay last longer but i dont grind or anything just put a bale in a round bale feeder and am wondering how that has worked out for others.
thanks.

 

[CumminsMan]

They will waste most of them that away. Best to be able to mix them with some wet distillers in a TMR. You would probably be better off buying some more grass hay, or feeding them some grain to stretch your current hay supply.

 

[gary in neb.]

kinda wondered about that if they would not waste it. i feed them ddg now plus hay so sounds like i best just keep it that way.

 

[rdandersom]

We have used cornstalk bales for feed to wintering beef cows. When I had lots of hay we dropped a bale of stalks in the pole barn for bedding and found that it stretched the hay supply. The cows would tear the bale apart to get the husks and leaves and any kernels in the bale. Later we fed a bale of stalks in a round feeder then a bale of hay after they had eaten most of the stalks. The parts they didn't eat were always wet and was wasted. I found that the cows didn't eat the coarser parts of the cornstalks very well. I like to unroll bales in the pasture near the barn. I have unrolled hay and stalk bales alternately in the field with good results but not expecting them to clean up all of the cornstalks.

 

[James P]

We fed corn stalks for a couple years thru the drought because hay was scarce. We fed in hay rings & once they got down to the bottom we either salted the pile or even threw out a few handfuls of some sweet feed & they generaly took it to the ground

 

[Bkpigs]

We feed out a couple of steers every year and we give them cornstalks in the winter. Since the corn stalks are harder to digest it will create more heat and keep them warmer (that is what I was taught in my nutrition classes at college). They will mostly eat everything except the stalk. I think they would eat that too if it was shorter in length. We just throw enough on the ground to last them a day. What they don"t eat just adds to the organic matter in pasture.

 

[paul]

They like the leaves & husks. Stalks will build up. Good feed in your setup.

You could drop a bale out in the field or 'waste' area, and they will eat the good out of it, bed themselves down in the stalks. Waste some that way, but works. It can get messy in a small yard with near freezing temps....

Or, feed them in a feeder, and they do a better job cleaning up the good stuff, left with some tougher stocks in th bottom that will build up a bit, but they do get a lot out of them for what it is.

--->Paul

 

[ChrisLSD]

i baled a few small square cornstalk bales - just raked them no shredder used - before feeding I run them through a silage cutter with a recutter screen (it is what I have) and fill a silage wagon - then feed them in a fenceline feeder out of the wagon - I am pretty small time - but I would say they eat 90 - 95% of the total

 

[tomstractorsandtoys]

Yes it works great. We feed corn stalks to our dairy heifers and dry cows. We feed a bale of stalks then bale of hay. Good stalks are better than poor hay. We like to bale as soon as possible after combining. They usually eat about 80% of a bale and use the rest for bedding. We feed ours in ring type feeder. The best we ever baled were behind an 8 row combine with the spreader turned off. We mowed the 3 rows behind the combine and baled without raking. Great feed.

 

[rrlund]

I feed hay in the morning,stalks in the afternoon. They clean both right up. I just drop the stalk bales on the ground on end near the bale feeder. What they don't eat makes a good manure pack. They seem to prefer to lay outside on that to laying in the barn anyway.
I tried putting them in the round bale feeder,but I got too many stalks piling up in there too quick.

 

[Fern{Mi}]

We've rotary re-cut; raked 2 windrows combined corn stalks together and baled s quickly as we could get behind the early combining. Get the cornstalks early they contain more moisture than one may think. Then the bales were wrapped and fed 90 days later. Cornstalks baled later I've baled dry and mixed their feeding in with baled haylage. There's more waste from dry fed corn stalks. The wrap, once they've pickled in the wrapper the cows tend to better clean up their feedings.
I use hay rings for grasses and alfalfa. The cornstalks I set out in the open. I'm thinking the better the Cattle can tear these bales apart the better they clean up the feeding site.
Fernan

 

[LarryT]

Kind of interesting. I haven't work in the dairy industry for many years but we used to have a silage pit. It was bout 300 ft long and 30 feet wide and the floor was 12 feet deep and we would use these choppers that would just shred the corn and blow it into the dump trucks. The trucks would drive into the pit and dump load after load and it wasn't that bad and with another tractor we would push the corn around and fill the corners and level it out and pack it making it ready for the next layer and we would do this until the entire silo was full to overflowing. Then after packing the last layer we spread a thick covering of black plastic and then we put old tires around the edges and down the middle to hold the plastic and then covered the edges with dirt. Enough until about August the next year when while the hard working lads are out bucking hay I am assigned to open the pit. With youthful exuberance I jump on the 4020 John Deere and carefully scrape the dirt from around the edges and remove the tires from about half the length of the plastic so that the plastic can be rolled back and the wonderful cheep feed could be revealed.
I reached down and loosened the corner of the cover and with all the effort I could muster I rolled the plastic towards the other end of the pit. About that time the thought of the smell of the fresh cut corn came to mind. But it was suddenly accosted by reality and I totally lost breakfast. From that time until the first of January I was in an alcohol induced stupor that started every morning at 5:30 am. Now I understand why dad said it made for contented cows. Hell they were drunk all the time. Lends a whole new meaning to corn squeezings. So when it comes to feeding corn stalk all of the other alternatives that I have read in here sound so much more palatable than my experiences. But if you didn't tell anyone what it was made of, you could sell it for sinus cleaner, Or a great replacement for syrup of ipecac. The results from the silage works much quicker. Aren't old memories wonderful??? May God bless all of you. LarryT

 

[Farmallb]

Good reading, as I intend to feed cornstalks myself. Ive bought a McCormick corn binder, and a NI husker shredder. Im wishing I could find out, if cows would eat OP stalks more and better than hybred stalks. Also wish I could figure out how big to make a wire silo to hold them in off a 4 or 5 acre field. Do they need to be covered if im going to feed them the winter after being cut? There not covered when left in the field.

 

[fixerupper]

The Idea I have here is off-the-wall like lot of my ideas, but if you are young and able and want to be cheap you can pitch the bales through an old pull type sileage chopper. Mix the ground stalks with some hay that you ran through the chopper along with a little shelled corn. Then feed it in a bunk or old tire or something like that.

I did that back in the 80's when I was broke, young and dumb,er, ambitious. I had some old round hay bales that sat outside too long and were going bad so I hand pitched the hay bales, along with some corn stalk bales through an old Gehl fan type chopper and fed it to some old bred cows I had bought. It worked OK and grinding them kept me warm on cold winter days. Jim

 

[scotc]

We just finished putting posts in the ground for winter pasture on our stalks. The cows love them. That and grass is what they go the winter on.