In the right rations, various grains provide essential nutrients to the animals on farm

THEME:Animals and grain
The main of grains that can be fed

In the right rations, various grains provide essential nutrients to the animals on farm.

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If you ate junk food all day, you’d probably look and perform like you ate junk food all day. Likewise, if you fed your cows junk food all day, they’d probably be “over-conditioned”—a polite way of saying overweight—and not produce as well as they could, having poor-quality meat, low milk production or low birthing rates. Livestock don’t get their junk food from the grocery store, though. It comes from well-meaning owners who might not realize they’re feeding the wrong ration. It takes a balance of forages, grains and supplements to give animals what they need to thrive. Here are four common feed grains and the nutrition they provide your animals, so you can be sure you’re not overdoing it in the grain department.
Corn-Corn as a grain is fed to both ruminant and non-ruminant livestock species. It can be fed whole or crimped, and it provides energy—and lots of it.Mature corn is high in starch and provides 2,081 kcal per pound, and it’s low in protein (10.9 percent), making it appropriate in a varied feed ration or as a feed supplement. Don’t use it as the primary source of nutrition, however. In cattle rations, for example, North Dakota State University recommends that corn grain be fed in forage-based diets at less than 0.4 percent of body weight, in forage-based diets containing more than 9 percent crude protein or in combination with other protein-heavy supplements. There are many different ways to introduce corn into your cattle’s diet: Feed it in the form of distillers grains, allow your animals to graze corn fields during younger stages of growth, or harvest corn while still moist and feed it as silage. According to the USDA Economic Research Service, 93 percent of corn grown in the U.S. in 2014 was genetically modified, so if this is a concern to you, seek out non-GM or organic corn feed grains.