Take a careful look at bottom-line profit when considering up-front savings with by-products.

Some by-products are relatively good feed ingredients. By-products often appear to be higher in protein and might be thought of as "better." It is important to remember that by-products are a result of grain processing, where something of greater value like starch or oil has been removed. It's still the same amount and quality of protein as was in the parent grain, just a higher percentage because the "whole" is now smaller.

Examples of by-products that are good feed ingredients are distiller's grains, corn gluten feed, wheat middlings, or soy hulls. There are other by-products that should not be considered when feeding livestock. Examples are corn screenings, grain dust, fescue screenings, oat hulls, rice hulls, cottonseed hulls, peanut hulls, tea leaves, etc.

Since the good by-products are readily available and they are higher in protein than corn, many think that they are exceptional buys. The fact of the matter is that all ingredients that can be hauled and stored similar to corn and soybean meal are priced accordingly to corn and soybean meal. The only real steals out there are if the product cannot be easily handled, stored or isn't readily available.

Many have looked at these major feed ingredient by-products as a sole feed and compare them to Cattle Charge and/or TrendSetter SLR. To check the value of these by-products, I did four different research trials simultaneously at four different locations. I compared Cattle Charge and TrendSetter SLR to soy hulls, dried distillers grain (DDG), wheat middlings and corn gluten feed. The results are in Table 1.

There were 10 head in each treatment with each by-product being compared to Cattle Charge. The results from calves fed Cattle Charge are combined. This is the reason why there are 40 head for Cattle Charge but only 10 head for each by-product.

The cattle fed Cattle Charge gained 3.54 pounds per day and out-gained each by-product: 2.08 pounds more than soy hulls; 1.38 pounds more than distillers grains; 2.23 pounds more than wheat midds; and 2.31 pounds more than corn gluten feed. Cattle Charge had a cost of gain of 63 cents per pound versus 60 cents for soy hulls, 88 cents for distillers grain (including death loss), 49 cents for wheat midds and 76 cents for corn gluten feed (including treatment cost). Even though the cost per pound of gain was lower on some by-products, Cattle Charge gives you extra gain. The Cattle Charge cattle had 87, 59, 94 and 97 pounds more gain in 42 days than soy hulls, DDG, wheat midds or gluten feed respectively.

The extra net value that Cattle Charge would have generated is calculated by taking a 90 cents per pound market price for calves minus the 63 cents cost of gain for Cattle Charge and multiplying by the extra pounds of gain. Cattle Charge would increase net value per head by $23.49, $15.66, $25.38 and $26.19 as compared to the soy hulls, DDG, wheat midds and corn gluten feed.

Furthermore, there were no deads, treatments, or sick days with Cattle Charge. This is the most compelling argument to feed Cattle Charge. There was one steer on the DDG that was treated for polio and died. There was another steer on the corn gluten feed ration that got polio, was treated with Thiamine and recovered.

This research trial was not a typical feeding situation as the cattle were on Cattle Charge for 42 days, then changed to TrendSetter SLR for an additional 45 days. Typically cattle would not be on Cattle Charge this long. This is the reason the daily consumption of Cattle Charge at 20.6 pounds is so great. I usually recommend changing cattle from Cattle Charge to SLR after 21 days. Though the cattle gained extremely well the cost per pound of gain for Cattle Charge is higher than what the average Missouri cattleman would expect. So in everyday situations the profit per animal would be even better than the numbers generated in Table 1 in favor of Cattle Charge.

Table 2 shows the results following the Cattle Charge trial. The cattle on TrendSetter SLR out gained the commodities per day by 0.53, 0.48, 0.92 and 0.60 pounds for soy hulls, distillers grains, wheat midds, and corn gluten feed respectively. The cattle on the SLR consumed less feed per head per day, but the exact amount was not able to be determined. The trial is still going and when it ends all feed intake data, feed conversions and cost per pound per gain will be available.

When I combine the Cattle Charge and the SLR data into Table 3, I get an ADG improvement of 1.26, 0.91, 1.52 and 1.38 pounds for the Cattle Charge and SLR cattle over the entire 87 days. Furthermore, none of the cattle on Cattle Charge and TrendSetter SLR showed any signs of sickness. On the other hand, one animal on distillers grain died due to polio. Another animal on corn gluten feed was treated for polio and recovered.

In another trial we compared TrendSetter SLR to hay only. The results are shown in Table 4. Cattle consuming SLR gained 2.0 pounds per day more than the cattle on hay only. For the 117-day period, the extra 234 pounds was achieved at a feed cost per pound of gain of 50 cents. Actually, the cattle fed hay only ate twice as much hay as the SLR cattle. However, since I do not have accurate weights of these big bales I refrained from including the data. The hay intake would make the SLR gain even cheaper.