Contemplating Manure If youre a rancher, you deal with manure in many ways. Manure is a very important product for us, here on our ranch, since its our only source of fertilizer. Our 140 acre winter feeding grounds is also one of our summer hay fields. With well over 4 of snow on the feeding grounds, we spend a lot of time making sure that, over the course of the winter, we get an even coating of manure. Manure is also one of the things we watch closely for symptoms of scours in our calves and in Maria Neilsens post yesterday she noted that the calfs poop returned to normal when the milk replacer with soy filler was removed from its diet. ( Maria mentioned in a message to CCW that Working Ranch Magazine is also publishing this information.) How interesting that I opened one of my ag magazines (Progressive Cattleman) and found a story titled Manure Scoring Determines Supplementation Needs by Robert Wells of the Noble Foundation. It was interesting to find out that manure can also be an indicator of how effective your feeding strategy is in meeting the needs of your cattle to help them maintain body condition without overfeeding them. This could be a money saver. While an animals body condition indicates the nutrition history over the past weeks and months, the quality of cow manure indicates the quality of nutrition over the last one to three days. If you start with a healthy herd or animal, you can use Manure scoring to effectively adjust supplementation to prevent loss of body condition. Manure is scored on a 1 to 5 basis. Score 1-- Consistency of cream soup, scours-- indicates sick animal or a ration with excess protein, carbohydrate or mineral and low fiber. Addition of hay will slow down the rate of passage and thicken the manure. Score 2-- Consistency of cake batter, wont stack, less than 1 thick and no consistent form. Indicates excess protein, carbohydrate or mineral and low fiber. Addition of hay will slow down the rate of passage to allow for more absorption in the intestinal tract. Score 3 --- Desired score--Consistency of thick pancake batter, slight divot in the middle of the pat, deeper than 2 and consistency in form. The diet is not lacking nor in excess. Score 4 -- Consistency of peanut butter is not stacking and deeper than score 3. Indicates lack of degradable rumen protein, excess of low quality fiber or not enough carbohydrates. Supplementing with additional protein. Score 5 --- Consistency of a horse apple from a horse eating hay only. Is firm and have clearly defined segments. Indicates pour quality forage with inadequate protein and carbohydrates and high in low quality fiber which slows down passage so that excess water has been reabsorbed in the intestines. Definitely needs to be supplemented. Dont know if this has already posted as I tried to post photos of Scores 1,3 and 5 twice. Sorry if you had to look at cow pats twice.
Posted on: Thu, 07 Nov 2013 15:29:16 +0000
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