A term that is used to describe lost weight is ‘shrink’. This is the same whether we are talking about cattle weight loss, potato waste loss, or hay loss. The bottom line is that we purchased it, but don’t get to feed or re-sell it.

My favorite example of feed shrink was a silage made out of cull potatoes and alfalfa hay. First cutting remained on the field forever; it seemed like it rained every-other day for two weeks. It came to the point where it had to be removed; whether we baled it, or just piled it off the field. We decided to make silage out of it, so that we would have some feed. The rancher got a big tub grinder and fed it using two different variable drive belt loaders. He purchased cull potatoes and fed that into the chopper from one belt and fed the wet hay from another belt. The speeds of the belts were adjusted so that a mix of 1/3 potatoes and 2/3 wet hay resulted. This was calculated to give us a silage having about 35% dry matter. The silage was put into a pit that had straw bales stacked around its’ sides. The bottom was dirt. These products made a very nice silage. It compacted well, did not have a big water runoff, and smelled and looked like silage. About 1000 tons of silage was put in the pit. The ranch was feeding a mixed ration, so every load was weighed as it was mixed and delivered to the cattle. The rancher called me after the calves had all gone and said that something had to be wrong. He had gone over the figures many times and it still looked like we only fed about 650 tons of silage. The scales had been tested and were balanced daily. The feeders were experienced and wrote down how much of each ingredient went into a load of feed. We checked cattle intake figures and found that the cattle ate an amount of feed that was normal for their age and weight. He finally agreed that the lost feed was shrink. Since there were no good sides or bottom of the silage pit, a lot of feed was wasted .An uncovered pit with no cement bottom or sides will allow silage to shrink quite a bit.

Hay shrinks during storage. The amount it shrinks depends on rain or snow, bale moisture and how long and where it’s stored. . The Univ. Wisconsin Forage Extension Team presented figures that show shrink during different conditions:

This table shows huge differences within any type of storage. You can imagine that a hay shed that wound up getting a lot of wind-driven snow and rain on one side would have a lot greater loss than a hay barn with solid sides. Hay stored on cement or dense ground outside will allow the water to pool and absorb into the bottoms of the bales. Not only is the top ruined by rain, but so is the bottom. Their studies showed no difference between rectangular bales and round bales as far as storage loss when stored on the ground. Let’s do a little cowboy math using worse-case versus best-case scenario. We buy 100 tons of hay for $100/ton (obviously we didn’t have to buy any hay last year). Hay shrinks naturally as it dries out in the bale, so a bale that weighed 100 lb when put up will weigh 95 lb several months later.

You bought 1 ton bales (and these were actually weighed!!) so there were 100 of them. They were put in our barn in Sept. and were fed in Jan. We only had 2% shrink in the barn in addition to the 5% shrink as they dried. So we have a total of 7% shrink. Therefore we have 93 tons to feed. Our hay cost is $107.50/ton because we only have 93 tons to feed.

I bought 100 tons of 1 ton bales and just left them on the side of the road where we unloaded them. During fall and winter; rain, heat, snow, and wind all graced us with their presence. My hay shrunk 5% from purchase weight and 60% from damage. I know you’ll find it hard to believe, but the moldy and black bales were set aside rather than fed. Due to these circumstances I only had 35% of my hay left to feed. My hay available for feeding cost $285.70/ton. In addition to that, I had to buy more hay late in the winter because I came up short. To further confuse the issue, some of the bales I fed absorbed a whole lot of rain and snow moisture, so they weighed 2500 lb.

When grain, protein, or other by products are pelleted, steam is added. The high heat during this process kills bacteria and other microbes and allows a storage time similar to whole grain. The greater the fat content of the grain, protein, or by-product, the greater the chance for spoilage because the fat becomes rancid and cattle don’t like it as well.

Corn has the most fat of all the grains. corn distillers grain with solubles has one of the highest levels of fat for commonly fed by-products in the Northwest. We have successfully stored whole grain in piles on cement slabs during the fall. Grain piled in this manner seems to shed a certain amount of water. We have also used large straw bales stacked on a cement slab as the sides of a storage bay and then stretched a heavy tarp over the area to store grains, concentrates, and by-products during the fall and winter feeding season. Heavy snow or lots of rain wouldn’t allow this kind of storage. Many feedlots build wooden or cement bays and cover them with a metal roof to serve as permanent grain storage that can be loaded or unloaded from the front.

We were warned about storing wet distillers grain for any length of time. However we have received the WDG in September and haven’t fed it until the fall. It has the appearance of pudding and seems to form a crust on the top. We do our best not to disturb the crust. I am not aware of any spoilage or souring of the WDG since we have been using it the Northwest.

Finally, there is a question about storage of a Medicated feed or supplement. All feed additives have a certain shelf life. The manufacturer has proven to the FDA that this additive still has 100% potency for a certain amount of time. Some additives are sensitive to pH, so cannot be added to a liquid supplement that has a pH outside of a certain range. Other additives cannot be added to a supplement or feed containing bentonite, because this type of natural clay interferes with the potency.
All additives have an expiration date and should be fed before that date to insure potency.

Feed storage is taken for granted at times, but as the examples showed, can have pretty severe financial consequences when not done properly. Feeding cattle on the ground is pretty much standard practice, however there are feeders available that provide room for quite a few cows at a very reasonable cost when waste is considered.