Good news for this year's rainfall-drenched cattle operations: Sprouted wheat can be used efficiently in beef cattle rations, as long as an aflatoxin screening is performed if mold is present. Ingestion of aflatoxins in contaminated food or feed can result in poisoning called aflatoxicosis. Once an accurate assessment of the potential health risk has been verified, a producer still should follow a series of general guidelines when feeding sprouted wheat to cattle. Sprouted wheat can be fed...

It is now widely accepted that the future of ethanol is cellulosic: Rather than distilling corn for ethanol to fuel our cars, accepted wisdom is now that we will be able to replace a large fraction of our current fuel consumption with ethanol distilled from agricultural and forestry waste, as well as dedicated energy crops, such as switchgrass and hybrid poplar. It is now widely accepted that the future of ethanol is cellulosic: Rather than distilling corn for ethanol to fuel our cars,...

Cattle producers more than some other livestock producers can use a greater variety of feed sources. Nebraska cattle producers have good access to distillate grains, a byproduct of ethanol production that can be used for feed. A recently unveiled website, balancedfoodandfuel.org, sponsored by cattle, beef, dairy, poultry and egg producers, focuses on side effects of the booming ethanol sector, including rising feed and food costs. Higher corn prices mean higher feed costs for cattle, hog...

The British Columbia purebred dairy cow, reported in May with bovine spongiform encephalopathy or mad cow disease, was fed rations that were processed at a feed mill that also handled material fed to pigs and poultry, the agency said. BSE is spread when cattle eat feed that includes protein rendered from diseased livestock. Canada completes probe of May mad cow case.Reuters. Pigs and poultry were allowed to eat feed made from cattle protein until a ban on the practice came into effect...

The cheapest and easiest method of using these residues as cattle feed is field piling or field collection with an attachment on the combine, followed by field grazing. Instead of the crop residue being baled and hauled to the cattle, the piles are left in the field for the livestock to graze on during fall and winter, Klein explained. It collects the chaff and straw and dumps the material in piles approximately three feet high, four feet wide, and five feet long. It s only mid-summer, but...