Steer doesn’t like cottonseed hulls....

[4Rcattle]

We feed cottonseed hulls along with finisher. This year’s steer has started not eating all of his feed and I think it’s the cottonseed hulls. What can I do to get him to eat them? Is there something I can substitute for them?

 

[knabe]

how long have the hulls been added to the feed?

 

[4Rcattle]

Since we brought him home about a month ago. He was eating them just fine, then he started leaving more and more feed behind with a majority of the cottonseed hulls. If I pour straight feed on top, he will eat all of that until he gets back to the part with the CSH.

 

[cflem]

I would try mixing it good and adding some watered down molasses to make it more palatable. Dry hulls couldn’t be real appealing if they aren’t mixed in well.

 

[4Rcattle]

I have tried adding watered down molasses to help with the dryness of the CSH - I will see how that goes. I'm used to steers cleaning up feed within an hour of being fed - but this one eats on his feed all day, then ends up eating his afternoon feed overnight. Maybe I just need to pull back and feed him less and work him back up to the amount I'm feeding now. I'm still not sure he's gotten over the respiratory stuff either - so that could be part of it, along with the heat/humidity. I'm stressing myself out because I don't want to lose time when it comes to him gaining. I weighed him this morning and figured out he's gaining 1.85 lbs/day - which I know needs to be more. Any advice/suggestions are appreciated!

 

[WT]

Swap the hulls for PreCon. After a month or two he'll get tired of the PreCon and you can go back to the hulls. It's a vicious cycle.

 

[cflem]

Tell your feedmill to run the mixer longer. Getting inconsistencies in a batch of feed is from not running mixer long enough for it to completely mix. I have had this problem before with small Co-op mills that change help frequently.