Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com/Dudarev Mikhail
December 26, 2013
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In addition to the old standbys of corn, soy, hay (
and,
uh,
drugs),
"there's a lot of stuff which the general public might not think of as
feeds which are actually quite common," says Cory Parsons, a livestock
nutrition expert at Oregon State University. For example:
Sawdust: Decades ago, when Bob Batey, an
eastern Iowa entrepreneur, observed cows
gobbling up sawdust hosed down from his paper mill, he had an idea: Why
not make the stuff into a commercial cattle feed? Sawdust is made
largely of cellulose, a carbohydrate, but it's bound together with a
compound called lignin, which makes it hard to digest. To strip the
lignin, Batey soaked some of the stuff in nitric acid, and voilà! The
cows were ready to chow down. "They like it," he says. "It's good for
them. It's economical. And it's green."
But it was only after a 2012 drought laid waste to local hay and
grass that Batey put his idea into action. He teamed up with local feed
producers to devise a mix of sawdust, corn, vitamins, and minerals.
While ranchers have not yet widely adopted the sawdust feed, Byron Leu, a
regional beef specialist at Iowa State University, said with corn
prices high, the stuff could catch on "pretty fast." The Iowa City
Gazette noted that in tests, the cows ate the stuff "like candy." Speaking of which…
Candy, wrapper and all: Ranchers report feeding their beef steers and dairy cows a variety of bulk candy, including
gummy worms, marshmallows,
hard candy,
sprinkles, chocolate,
candy corn,
and hot chocolate mix. Candy provides sugar that cows would usually get
from corn, giving them more energy and making them fatter. When corn
prices skyrocketed, the practice became popular: In fall 2012, one candy
supplier who sells farmers and ranchers
"salvage" chocolate—that's imperfect and broken chocolates—said the price of the stuff had recently doubled.
In some cases, ranchers found, the candy feed comes wrapped. Asked if he was concerned about his cattle eating plastic,
one animal nutrition expert in Tennessee said he was not worried. "I think it would pass through just like excess fiber would."
Chicken shit: What's not to love about the fecal waste of America's
36-million-plus broiler chickens? It's plentiful and cheap. But according to a recent
OnEarth story
by Brad Jacobson, the problem may be less the poop itself than the
smorgasbord of other substances it frequently comes with, including
feathers, heavy metals, bacteria, antibiotics, and bits of rodents.
Jacobson also notes that the practice could promote the spread of mad
cow disease.
Ground limestone: Strange as feeding rocks to cows
may sound, limestone can be found in cattle troughs all over the United
States. The stuff is a cheap source of calcium, and it also seems to
promote growth. As
one study put it, cows that ate limestone late in life "tended to have more desirable carcasses" than cows that didn't.
Crab guts: For ranchers and feedlots near the coast,
the guts and other undesirable parts of fish, crabs, shrimp, and
crawfish can be an abundant source of cheap protein. Ground up into a
tasty meal, seafood byproducts can be mixed into other feeds. Fish-meal
cattle feed isn't a new idea; Marco Polo observed in his
diary that cows ate it "without any sign of dislike."
Alex Park is an editorial fellow at Mother Jones.
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