Kooiker - 11/29/2024 10:11
thinkstoomuch - 11/28/2024 05:51 Ok so adjust my numbers from 60% moisture from wet distillers discussed to 10% moisture and edible beef dry matter per bushel of corn .jumps to almost 0.2 lbs per bushel of raw corn used for ethanol. And I didn't deduct bone and other non consumables of retail beef.i also didn't research my number far enough to recall that is dry distiller per bushel. The moisture content of beef come from basic research documents. If adjusting out water to the food equation adjusts to the place all food on par. Protein. Fat, and carbs are the only means humans extract food value and most other foodstuffs are low moisture. I would like to sell corn silage if dry matter content didn't matter. 7:1 feed to gain ratio was a bit of a backhand number. I discounted general DMI to intake and probably didn't adjust low enough to account for parturition nutrient consumption. This would need to swing widely to get result of edible beef much higher. I also lacked a quick adjustment to account for protein contribution to energy utilization efficiency. So let me know where my numbers are flawed. Good numbers are the goal.
How often have you bought meat in a store that is sold by dry matter??? Ever go to a steak house and order your steak by dry matter weight???
No one buys or sells meat by dry matter content. Because it doesn't vary that much within species/cut. When you look up the nutritional content of any particular cut of meat, it is based on weight of the meat prior to cooking. Not after cooking and it is certainly not based on Dry matter.
Silage is sold by dry matter because it can and does vary greatly.
Back to your flawed and slanted numbers. The biggest problem with your "envelope math" is that you're assigning the same feed value per pound to everything that goes in the mixer wagon. Saying that distillers grains has the same feed value per pound as a pound of corn stalks is blatantly false. Its like saying there's as much nutrition in an ounce of celery as there is in an ounce of sirloin. Its not true.
I'm not a cattle feeder, I'm a hog guy with a few head of cattle for a hobby, and I'm not a nutritionist. As such I can't tell you what the exact feed value of distillers is in a cattle diet but I do know this, DDGS has a higher feed value per pound of dry matter than corn does and it has a much much higher feed value/lb than corn stalks do.
The big value to distillers to the cattle guy is that it balances a diet of cheap cheap cheap starch that otherwise isn't economical, practical or palatable to feed to feedlot cattle and you have completely ignored that. Prior to ethanol and the availability of distillers grains, corn stalks were bedding only, now corn stalks are widely used in feed rations along with distillers.
No matter how much any anonymous internet poster wants to overthink this, distillers grains have a lot of feed value. Seeing cattle guys haul corn to an ethanol plant and haul distillers back home drives this point home for anyone that isn't biased against ethanol and trying to make the math work against it.
Our end users mind set is subtlety swayed.
