Brief Summary of Minutes of Annual Meeting

Summer annual forage evaluations that are established in Nebraska, Kansas, and Iowa will provide information on yield, growth distribution, and nutritional value of these crops that is needed to efficiently and economically extend grazing seasons beyond the capabilities of perennial grass or grass/legume pastures. These data will be used to develop recommendations, educational materials, and decision aids for graziers and their consultants to improve the nutritional status and profitable production of grazing cattle using crops that require fewer agricultural inputs than annual grain crops and may have a lower risk of erosion or environmental contamination. Several experiments demonstrated that feeding supplements based on dried distillers grains (DDGS) to yearling steers or heifers consuming grass hay or grazing native range in winter or in summer resulted in improved rates of gain and reduced forage intake, potentially increasing pasture carrying capacity. Economic analyses showed that this use of DDGS was profitable at current prices. Expanded economical use of DDGS by grazing livestock may reduce the environmental risk of extension feeding in a drylot. Diet samples collected from grazing cattle as well as samples of hand and mechanically harvested forages are being used to develop a nutrient composition database of forages in the NCR for use in developing supplements to balance the nutrient requirements of grazing livestock. This database, when used together with the NRC Nutrient Requirements of Beef Cattle model, should improve animal production and profitability while minimizing excretion of excess nutrients. During the next 12 months the summer annual forage evaluations will be completed for the first growing season and a second season will commence with several sites added and, hopefully, better establishment success at all sites. Forage quality analysis of samples collected from these evaluations will be on-going and will contribute to the developing nutrient composition database. Additional feeding trials using DDGS, especially with mature cows, will be initiated to further identify effective, economical, and environmentally advantageous uses of this co-product in livestock production systems.

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