Sawdust as feed for cattle

[jamshundred]

Lancaster Farming: National Ag News Section A Page 10


Headline: Iowa Farmer Cuts Costs by Feeding Sawdust to Cows

This is a lengthy article. A number of years ago the owner noticed his cows were eating sawdust washing into his pasture from a nearby papermill.

The farmer has a lumber mill on his farm and he discovered a way to treat and cook sawdust that results in digestible feed that cows find tasty. He mixes it with forn, vitamins, minerals and " a few other ingredients" which creates a nutritional value equivalent to grass hay.

A veterinarian confirms this farmers cows are healthy, and there is a section which comments that cows CANNOT digest untreated sawdust because it is 50 percent cellulose and 30 percent lignin. The lignin wraps around cellulose in plants, including trees, giving them rigidity and strength, and this cellulose has to be broken free of the lignin to make the sawdust digestible.

Judy

[lakeportfarms]

Both our Highlands and Dexters eat a good share of the apple branches that we trim. I would say they eat everything up to 1/2" in diameter.

Gene, our goats strip the bark just like yours do. Both cows and goats seem to develop nice deep colors and hair coats from whatever they're getting from the bark and branches, it's quite noticeable a couple of months after they started eating them.

[Cascade Meadows Farm - Kirk]

Mar 6, 2013 17:14:31 GMT -5 lakeportfarms said:

Both our Highlands and Dexters eat a good share of the apple branches that we trim. I would say they eat everything up to 1/2" in diameter.

Gene, our goats strip the bark just like yours do. Both cows and goats seem to develop nice deep colors and hair coats from whatever they're getting from the bark and branches, it's quite noticeable a couple of months after they started eating them.

Our dexters will kill monster douglas fir trees that are 200 feet tall and 10 feet in circumference, by stripping the bark. We heat our house with wood (from our woods) so I drop a bunch of trees in the winter, for next year's firewood. The Dexters eat the needles and the bark off of the entire fallen trees and this helps keep them away from trees I'd rather they didn't destroy.

I've found that they do this more when they are starved for minerals, especially phosphorus. When I feed a mineral mix containing more phosphorus, it reduces the tree destruction behavior.

One thing to keep in mind is that if you ever have fertility issues in your herd, then a diet low in phosphorus could be the problem. Phosphorus is a key element for fertility. So if you see the cows chewing on wood and bark, you might want to try a mineral mix with a good amount of phosphorus (and calcium and magnesium too).

[lakeportfarms]

We're pretty religious about having both loose mineral and mineral blocks of various kinds scattered around, but I'll check the composition of them. I think with the apple trees they just like the taste of them. I don't really have the issue in the summer.

Like you, we trim a lot of branches in the fall when they are done with the grazing, it's not the best for the apple trees, but ours are so old and mature I'm really not concerned with how they fill out, it's more to keep them from getting so large that they split off branches. But they really love the green bark and branches all throughout the winter months, since the parts of the branches can still be above the deep snow so they can get to it. The stripping of the bark has the added advantage in helping to dry out the wood for burning in the wood stove. We have the BEST smelling wood burner around, I tell my wife it's like we're constantly baking cookies.