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The Value of Extruded and Expelled Soybean Meal
Balancing feed costs with weight gain is an ongoing challenge for cattle producers. South Dakota State Extension Feedlot Management Specialist Warren Rusche says adding extruded or expelled soybean meal at the right time may help improve carcass weight and feed efficiency.
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[Brad Mills, Program Host]
Nebraska Extension Almanac.
On a previous program, Dr. Warren Rushi from South Dakota State University has discussed a research program that is looking at extruded and expelled soybean meal as a replacement for distiller's grains in the finishing process.
The study pointed to some promising gains and carcass weight.
On today's program, Dr. Rushi says, the biggest response in Gaines depends upon a few critical issues.
[Warren Ruschie – South Dakota State Extension Educator]
The other interesting part is when when that gain response occurs relative to what we use for growth promoting technology.
So, you know, we weigh cattle every roughly every 4 weeks.
When we've seen the biggest response is right after we put that the implant in them.
And at the end, when we're feeding in, in this case, we're using Experior, dramatic differences, 10 to 15% improvement in average daily gain during those phases.
In between, essentially the same with distillers.
And so that, I think some of our next steps are to really dive into, you know, some of the metabolism and the nutrient physiology to see what's going on.
My theory is that as we're providing that technology that boosts the potential for gain and protein deposition, that there is a need or a response to an improved amino acid profile.
So, can we back up, that 1st study we talked about with the Expeller process where we saw the £20 response, in that study, we did not use a beta agonist.
And so I think we might have seen a bigger response, more online what we saw in subsequent studies, where when we saw the 27 and £30, that was when we also included Experior.
So I think there is a, there may be a case where depending upon an operation's larger strategy in terms of technology use, how well some of this changing in diet formulation may fit.
It may be a case where if an operation is feeding, you know, NHTC or all natural cattle that this becomes less compelling.
We haven't tried that yet, we may let someone else do that work, but that's our suspicion is that based on our pattern response, corresponds a little bit with what we're using for growth technology.
The challenge on what we're doing with heat treated soy is, it's a more expensive product than distillers, you know, flat out, about double the cost.
And so if we can target for those time periods when we get the greatest response, we might be able to optimize feed costs and optimize returns by doing some targeted planned approaches.
The reason on the study that I just talked about that we are doing right now, that I want to use soybean meal, is I mentioned on the outset.
We had done some studies with conventional soybean.
Conventional soybean meal, solve and extracted.
The final analysis wasn't all that impressive.
It was, you know, essentially the same as distillers or as modified distillers.
But what we did notice in that study is we got this really big response right after we put an implant in them.
And we brushed it off initially is kind of a fluke.
Now I want to take another look and perhaps, and it, and it also goes along with some of our work, my colleague, Dr. Anamanezes, has done valuating protein flows and diet, and it may be a case where, you know, we might be able to make this soybean meal carrier for Experior look really good.
And, and the advantage of that to the, to the feeding industry is he traded soybeans.
You can find it, but you have to do a little bit of looking.
You know, there's not a roaster in every small town on the flip side, every feed company in North America can sell you soybean meal.
And so we want to take a look at a 2nd look at this area of protein quality and combination with technology and see if we can't unlock some things in terms of growth.
[Brad Mills, Program Host]
Today's program is a portion of an interview taken from a recent Beefwatch podcast offered by Nebraska Extension to hear the entire interview.
Go to beef.unl.edu, or download from Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
For Nebraska Extension Almanac.
I'm Brad Mills.
Nebraska Extension Almanac is a production of IANR Media and Nebraska Extension.
For more information on how your university is serving Nebraskans.
Go to extension.unl.edu.
Fall Grazing Prussic Acid Risk
After several years of dry conditions, moisture and moderate temperatures are setting up the potential for some extra annual forage growth heading into the fall. Nebraska Extension Educator Ben Beckman talks about the benefits and risks associated with fall annual grazing.
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[Brad Mills, Program Host]
Nebraska Extension Almanac.
Several of the past fall seasons have been plagued with dry conditions that limited pasture growth, but this season may look a little different.
On today's program, extension educator Ben Beckman will look at fall sorghum grazing issues with a freeze, and what risk that can bring to grazing cattle.
[Ben Beckman, Nebraska Extension Educator]
This is a bit of an unusual year.
We usually try to put this reminder out and just get folks thinking about the risk that we can have with our annual forages and temperature fluctuations.
But when temperatures do start to make their march towards closer to winter temperatures, you know, our annual forages have some risks that come with them and we need to be aware of that, and knowing them can help us make sure that we're making proper management decisions.
And so the biggest one that we always talk about when we've got frost risk that comes up is prussic acid.
Prussic acid is kind of a cyanide compound.
It's present in all sorghum species.
And so whatever type of sorghum that you might be having, whether that's a sorghum sedan hybrid, a forage sorghum, grain sorghums, sedan grass is in the sorghum family, all of them have a risk of prussic acid causing problems to our animals.
And basically, if you graze them, you're probably already aware of this because prussic acid is highly concentrated in the new shoots.
And so we kind of have to make sure that we've got a certain amount of height before we turn animals out onto a field where we're grazing something like a sorghum sedan or a sedan grass.
Ben says a fall freeze presents a particularly dangerous risk when it comes to sprouted sorghum and the production of a toxic prussic acid.
When we have a frost that comes in, it basically freezes those cells, the ice crystals puncture the cell walls, and they release and make all of this prussic acid, this cyanide compound, highly mobile, and so it can overwhelm the animal, basically, if they're grazing shortly afterwards.
So, uh, anytime that we have a risk of a frost and part of the plant's getting damaged.
We've got this risk again for prussic acid poisoning.
It's going to be the highest in our true sorghum variety.
So grain sorghum, forage sorghum, our highest risk.
Sorghum sedan hybrids are somewhere there in the middle and then our sedan grasses are of lowest risk, but they still have risk to them.
And what we kind of need to do is think of it as kind of a timer gets set every time that we have frosty van occur where the plant gets damaged.
We've got about 5 days after that, that we need to give that prussic acid time to dissipate off.
It turns into a, you know, a gas and dissipates out of the plant.
So every time that we've got damage to the plant, 5 days after that, we need to be aware that we're at pretty high risk for prussic acid poisoning.
And so, um, if we've got a frost and then 3 days later, we have another frost and another part of the, the plant gets killed.
We got to restart that again, unfortunately, if we can make grazing in this fall period if we've got some staggering frosts that don't totally kill a plant fully.
It can make it kind of difficult to time that out, but keeping aware of that is something that's going to help us minimize that risk.
And then with the temperatures that we've got this year, and especially, you know, we've got some good moisture in a lot of parts of the state.
If we do have regrowth, then we've got a really potentially dangerous situation.
Because as I mentioned before, those new shoots are of the highest concentration of prussic acid.
If we get frost on those then we can, you know, really run into some issues pretty fast.
So if you do see, you know, the plant gets killed off because we get some frost, and then there's some warm weather, weather, and we get some new shoots that can come out sometimes from a lot of our sorghum species and forage sorghums, those new shoots can be really dangerous, if we have a frost on those.
And so we really want to be respecting that window of pulling off for at least 5 days before we go out there and regrace that plant again.
[Brad Mills, Program Host]
Today's program was a portion taken from a recent beef watch podcast offered by Nebraska extension.
To hear the entire interview, go to beef.unl.edu or download from Apple Podcasts.
For Nebraska Extension Almanac, I'm Brad Mills.
Nebraska Extension Almanac is a production of i.e. And our media, and Nebraska Extension.
For more information on how your university is serving Nebraskans, go to extension.unl.edu.
Pheasant Decline and Game Bird Habitats in Nebraska
Ring-necked pheasant numbers in Nebraska have declined significantly over the past several decades due to habitat loss. Nebraska Extension Habitat Management Specialist Andy Little talks about why pheasant numbers are low and what landowners can to help increase populations.
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Brad Mills, Program Host]
Nebraska Extension Almanac.
We've been focusing on promoting Pheasant Habitats recently in our program.
On a previous show, extension specialist Andy Little, discuss what factors make up a good habitat for these game birds to nest, reproduce, and have adequate protection.
On today's program, Andy focuses on the issues that have caused decline in pheasant populations in the state.
[Andy Little, Nebraska Extension Habitat Management Specialist]
So in general, you know, we've been losing habitat on the landscape since about the 1960s, uh, particularly, you know, obviously, as we have, you know, moved more towards corn soybean, um, fields, kind of more monocultural based crops.
Um, and I, and well, I talked to a lot of farmers out there, especially ones who remember the 60s and uh, time frame and they would say, man, we used to be able to go out in the back 40 and harvest a limit of pheasants.
Well, that back 40 does not look like the back 40 today.
And so the, essentially, a lot of those areas we obviously have with increased mechanization, you know, and a lot of other technologies, we now have the ability to not have smaller fields, we can have larger fields.
Well, pheasants love those smaller fields because you usually would have a lot of little hedgerows, and areas where they could take them, have a diversity of cover types for nesting, brooder, and fall winter cover, and they could move about the landscape, kind of like think about stepping stones from one point to another.
And then you get in some places now, you don't really have a lot of connectivity of those patches of cover, and so that makes it harder for them to get from point A to point B. But on the flip side of that is, you know, we were my lab, and when we do an applied wildlife ecology and spatial movement lab, or because that long, long name, we have an acronym of awesome labs, we have the awesome people work for us.
Um, within our lab, we're really focused on how do we take in, uh, work with our landowners to find innovative solutions, whether that's using precision ag, precision conservation technologies, to help them optimize their operation from a production standpoint.
And then from a habitat standpoint, and benefiting pheasants, or and then also benefiting other byproducts.
So soil health, water quality.
You know, I think a lot of folks are very familiar with those challenges we have in the state.
And so it's an opportunity, and what we really have kind of pride ourselves on in our lab is finding these innovative solutions to help optimize the overall profitability of your operation.
So kind of take it from where it's currently at and find new stackable enterprises that can help you diversify, doing it in a simplistic way, so it's not overly complicated, and then helping you actually make more money on the land.
So now you start seeing all those benefits.
Andy says the same techniques you used to promote pheasant habitat will also help a wide variety of other game birds.
There could be some little differences, but one of the things that, um, we always talk about, and actually the the project, um, that we developed in collaboration, the rest game parts commission, uh, in my lab, it was folks on identifying prioritizing areas for conservation delivery.
And the point is, is how do we identify and prioritize focus areas when you have limited people, limited money, and you got limited time.
You can't be everywhere in all places, that's just totally unrealistic.
And so, part of that conversation is I've had people ask that same exact question.
Can you, as you're thinking about habitat enrollment, and thinking about some of these innovative stackable enterprises benefit other species?
The answer is absolutely you can.
Every species is going to be a little bit different.
But what I always say is meet medium with the landowners developing the objectives of what they're most interested in and addressing.
You know, obviously they're not going to be able to address everything under the sun, and that would be anything else in life.
You know, you kind of find 2 or 3 really key objectives that are most critical to them.
And like from a, you know, pheasant standpoint or a turkey standpoint or quail.
You can say, hey, you know, um, what are you interested in, you know, game birds?
Okay, which ones?
And then we can start customizing things that best fit, what their interests are?
And again, you have groups like pheasants forever, and quail forever out there, and everybody's game parts commission, private lands division, all those different organizations who actually have private lands, folks, and can meet with you as an individual and talk through what your potential options are in your land.
[Brad Mills, Program Host]
On a future program, Andy takes a look at some of the financial considerations for farmers that might help convince them that preserving pheasants and game birds could be another line of revenue for their operations.
For Nebraska Extension Almanac.
I'm Brad Mills.
Nebraska Extension Almanac is a production of IANR media, and Nebraska Extension.
For more information on how your university is serving Nebraskans, go to extension.unl.edu
Round Up Resistant Palmer Amaranth in Western Nebraska
Glyphosate-resistant Palmer amaranth is creating serious management challenges particularly for specialty crops like sugarbeets and dry edible beans. Neven Lawrence, Nebraska Extension Integrated Weed Management Specialist talks about strategies for controlling this highly aggressive weed.
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[Mike Straub, Program Host]
Nebraska Extension Almanac.
Palmer Amaranth, a fast growing superweed is known for the destructive threat it poses to sugar beet production.
Until recently, the plant did not have a major presence in Western Nebraska, but early this decade, Nevin Lawrence, a scientist working at the University of Nebraska Lincoln's Panhandle Research Extension and Education Center in Scott's Bluff, began pointing to the possible threat.
[Nevin Lawrence, UNL Scientist]
There's a number of weed scientists within the state, and I'm the one out here in the panhandle, and the reason I'm here is because we have a lot of crops that are more common or uncommon, even in eastern Nebraska.
So I work in corn.
I do a little bit with soybeans, but I also work in alfalfa, potatoes, dry beans, sugar beets, sunflowers, sometimes peas, sometimes black eyed peas, and a few other things as well.
Top three weeds that we face out here, number one in irrigated crops is Palmer Amaranth.
That's a new one since about 2020, is when we started seeing it out here in Western Nebraska.
The big problem we have with Palmer Amaranth is, if you compare our Palmer to the Palmer in Eastern Nebraska, we do not have as many cases of herbicide resistance.
So our Palmer is really only resistant to the ALS inhibiting herbicides and glyphosate at this point.
Which sounds like not that bad if you're a farmer in eastern Nebraska.
But unfortunately, in our sugar beet crop, and also our dry, edible bean crop.
Those two types of resistance means we have zero post emergent herbicide options.
And so if the polymer amaranth emerges late in the year, or if it escapes a pre application, you have no herbicide options for the remainder of the year to control that.
You're going to be stuck with things like cultivation and hand weeding, which gets very expensive very quickly.
Research indicates that if left uncontrolled, Palmer Amaranth can potentially lead to an average yield loss succeeding 70%.
In the face of this threat, Lawrence's pioneering work provided a scientific contribution of direct value to the industry.
I, I, uh, like to explain my research is, um, I I make mistakes so farmers don't have to.
So I do as much as I can.
We are looking into, um, novel herbicides, which may or may not be registered, both in sugar beets and dry beans.
We try to, um, look to see if there's something that might have been missed, or that we can move over from similar crops.
That's ongoing.
We also do a lot of what I, well, my job title, integrated weed management specialists.
So integrated approaches.
I've done research into cover crops, we've done research into different tillage things.
We also look at cropping systems as well.
So, we do have a lot of options to manage polymer amaranth and kosha in our corn crop.
And if you're a dry bean or sugar meat producer, You also grow corn.
And so using that rotational crop to help out is really important.
We're also starting to get into some more futuristic precision technologies as well.
We've been looking at what's called an eco robotic sprayer the last few years.
And that's a sprayer, which can identify just the weed or just the crop, and only apply to just the weed or just the crop.
And so we've been experimenting with that, both in dry beans and sugar beets, where we're using some contact herbicides, which can avoid the crop, and potentially control those weeds, if there are escapes from the pre emerging herbicides.
Agriculture in Western Nebraska is distinctive regarding the environment, the crops grown, and agricultural practices.
That is why the university places major ag research and extension there, to tailor assistance to local needs.
[Mike Straub, Program Host]
For Nebraska extension almanac, I'm Mike Straub.
Nebraska Extension Almanac is a production of IANR Media and Nebraska Extension.
For more information on how your university is serving Nebraskans, go to extension.unl.edu.
Fall Grazing Problems with Nitrates
Cool temperatures and abundant moisture are setting up the potential for some extra grass growth heading into the fall. Nebraska Extension Educator Ben Beckman says producers can take advantage of fall grazing but warns about the risks of nitrate toxicity.
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[Brad Mills, Program Host]
Nebraska Extension Almanac.
In a previous almanac program, Nebraska extension educator Ben Beckman discussed the risk of prussic acid buildup, and sorghum forage after a freeze.
On today's program, Ben says other forages present different risk and focuses on nitrates and bloating.
[Ben Beckman, Nebraska Extension Educator]
Prussic acid is something that's specific to sorghums.
Nitrates are something that's gonna be a little bit broader.
You know, our sedan grasses, sorghum sedans, but even our millets, and a lot of times our small grain species are really good nitrogen scavengers, and so they can be really high in nitrate sometimes and cost some nitrate risk.
And for those, it's basically, you know, plants want to uptake those nitrates, and if we've got cooler temperatures, if we've got those frost events coming in that don't fully kill the plant, they're still wanting to grow and so they're uptaking those nitrates, but they don't have anywhere to go with them because the plant doesn't have enough, you know, daylight, the temperatures aren't right, for whatever reason, you know, it's not able to actually utilize those.
And that's the same reason that we have nitrate issues during drought.
You know, there's not enough moisture for the plant to use them.
This can happen in the in the cool parts of the year as well.
And so those nitrates can accumulate.
Nice thing about nitrates is that they're usually on the lower portion of the plant.
And so, you know, if we're doing a hay cutting or something like that, we can cut a little bit high and leave a lot of the nitrate there.
We can test those bales or whatever we're doing for harvesting it and see where we're sitting at and utilize that from a grazing standpoint.
We want to keep an eye on it, but we can kind of step animals up.
Mary Jorowski has a really nice article if you search in our beef watch archives about adapting animals to high nitrate diets, basically giving them some extra energy through some grain supplementation and kind of stepping them up to it that rooming can get used to high nitrate diets and we can graze situations where we might have a little bit higher risk safely.
But it is something, again, that we just want to be aware of that we can have some risk around, especially again, if temperatures get cool and stay cool, but it doesn't get to the point where we can actually kill off those plants, that's when we're going to see, especially in the fall, that risk of nitrate poisoning.
Vince says another serious issue with foraging after a frost is bloating.
So this is one that we probably, you know, nitrates and prustic acid are the 2 that we really think about a lot of times when we think about risks during frost events, but I think bloats one that we should throw up there as well.
And it's basically when we have high quality forages, which we might, um, you know, this year we've got rain.
We've had a really good summer so far across a lot of the state.
When those cell walls rupture, again, because the ice crystals as they freeze, those ice crystals puncture holes in the cell wall, that makes digestion a lot easier.
And so we can have a lot of nutrients as that animal eats it, especially if we're turning out into a lush pasture early in the morning, that frost is on there.
So we've got a lot of moisture, you know, on the plant that they're consuming as well.
And all of those nutrients get into the room and then they're all released at once.
And that's when where you can run into some bloat issues.
Basically that we've got way too high quality of a diet going in there.
And we really want to watch, like I said, you know, some of our typical species that have low risk with them.
A lot of our legume species.
So if we've got a pasture with some alfalfa in it, some clover, things like that.
You know, those are going to be especially of high risk because they've got a little bit of risk already.
And then we throw this additional factor into it.
So if we've got any sort of mixed pasture with some legumes and grasses, especially, that's something that we probably want to pull off of, try not to be out there early in the morning when we've got a lot to do when we've got an immediate frost, let that kind of dry off a little bit if we can, or even pull off for a little while until things dry out and we don't have quite as high quality and quite as wet, I guess, forage available for grazing.
That's going to help us with bloat risk.
And if we really want to be safe, we can throw a bloat block or something like that out as well.
[Brad Mills, Program Host]
Today's program was a portion taken from a recent Beef Watch podcast offered by Nebraska Extension.
You hear the entire interview, go to beef.unl.edu, or download from Apple Podcasts.
Nebraska Extension Almanac, Nebraska Production.
I'm Brad and Nebraska Extension.
For more information on how your university is serving Nebraskans.
Go to extension.unl.edu.