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US cattle owners go to alternatives due to corn feed prices: gummy worms, fruit loops

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XiaNaphryz

LATIN, MATRIPEDICABUS, DO YOU SPEAK IT
Reuters - Sweet times for cows as gummy worms replace costly corn feed

By Carey Gillam
KANSAS CITY, Missouri | Sun Sep 23, 2012 12:18pm EDT

(Reuters) - Mike Yoder's herd of dairy cattle are living the sweet life. With corn feed scarcer and costlier than ever, Yoder increasingly is looking for cheaper alternatives -- and this summer he found a good deal on ice cream sprinkles.

"It's a pretty colorful load," said Yoder, who operates about 450 dairy cows on his farm in northern Indiana. "Anything that keeps the feed costs down."

As the worst drought in half a century has ravaged this year's U.S. corn crop and driven corn prices sky high, the market for alternative feed rations for beef and dairy cows has also skyrocketed. Brokers are gathering up discarded food products and putting them out for the highest bid to feed lot operators and dairy producers, who are scrambling to keep their animals fed.

In the mix are cookies, gummy worms, marshmallows, fruit loops, orange peels, even dried cranberries. Cattlemen are feeding virtually anything they can get their hands on that will replace the starchy sugar content traditionally delivered to the animals through corn.

"Everybody is looking for alternatives," said Ki Fanning, a nutritionist with Great Plains Livestock Consulting in Eagle, Nebraska. "It's kind of funny the first time you see it but it works well. The big advantage to that is you can turn something you normally throw away into something that can be consumed. The amazing thing about a ruminant, a cow, you can take those type of ingredients and turn them into food."

PRICING VARIES

Feed is generally the largest single production expense for cattle operators. Whatever is fed needs to supply energy and protein levels that meet the animals' nutritional needs. High prices for soy has operators seeking alternatives for both corn and soy.

Corn alternatives are in particular demand as supplies are so tight that in some areas of the country, feed corn is not available at any price.

Pricing and availability of the many different "co-products" as they are called, varies from place to place, but buyers report savings of 10 percent to 50 percent.

The savings for operators are shrinking, however, as savvy resellers tie pricing for their alternative offerings to the price of corn, which surged to record highs this summer due to drought damage.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture said last month the harvest now underway will yield the smallest corn crop in six years due to the drought that is still gripping more than half of the nation.

"They are using less corn in a number of these rations, but as corn prices go up, prices for really every other co-product go up too," said Greg Lardy, head of the animal sciences department at North Dakota State University.

Operators must be careful to follow detailed nutritional analyses for their animals to make sure they are getting a healthy mix of nutrients, animal nutritionists caution. But ruminant animals such as cattle can safely ingest a wide variety of feedstuffs that chickens and hogs can't.

The candy and cookies are only a small part of a broad mix of alternative feed offerings for cattle. Many operators use distillers grains, a byproduct that comes from the manufacture of ethanol. Other common non-corn alternatives include cottonseed hulls, rice products, potato products, peanut pellet.

Wheat "middlings," a byproduct of milling wheat for flour that contain particles of flour, bran, and wheat germ, also are fed.

And every now and then, there is a little chocolate for the hungry cows.

Hansen Mueller Grain out of Omaha, Nebraska, which markets chocolate bars alongside oats and peanut pellets, said it all comes down to fat, sugar and energy.

"That's all it is," said Bran Dill, a spokesman at Hansen Mueller. Demand is high, he said.

But he also said increasing prices are making alternatives less attractive.

"The price of this stuff has gone up so much it's gotten ridiculous," he said.
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H

Hot Coldman

Banned
I'm guessing they go here

jzeOT.jpg
 
GungHo

GungHo

Single-handedly caused Exxon-Mobil to sue FOX, start World War 3
Jesus Christ. Now we're animals what we feed human children. Next thing, they're going to start posting on NeoCALF about how the neighboring cows have sharp knees.
 
Hydrargyrus

Hydrargyrus

Member
Joni said:
Indeed. Wasn't this exactly what caused a massive outbreak in Europe? (Feeding remains of dead bovines to bovines.)
Click to expand...

That was not massive, at least in the continental Europe.

And that was not because feeding with remains of dead bovines. The most accepted theory is that the cause is a prion protein. The cause is not feeding with animal protein, it's to feed with an untreated animal protein (ovine, bovine...).

Nowadays, the most part of animal proteins are not allowed in animal feed by R(EC) 183/05.

It was a UK problem and a problem for who imported cattle and feed from the UK between the 80s and early 90s. This and other public health problems (dioxins, coca-cola...) makes the EU to re-write the public health normative in the 00's
 
J

Joni

Member
Hydrargyrus said:
That was not massive, at least in the continental Europe.
Click to expand...
I would call 5 million slaughtered cows and quite a big panic in Europe massive. I still remember it was massive in the media here, probably because we imported a lot of meat from the UK.

Drazgul said:
FAIL-sisko%20facepalm.gif
Click to expand...
What is so stupid about my reasoning?
- The massive outbreak of mad cow disease in Europe was linked to grinded bone remains in the food for cows in the media. A couple of diseased cows infecting entire cattle due to the grinding of their bones, while not noticing they were sick due to the long incubation period.
- Gummy bears contain gelatin, something that is famously made using bones of mammals including cows. Around the same time as the mad cow disease outbreak of Europe the link between the disease and gelatin was questionned, but never thorougly investigated.
- The outbreak caused 200 deaths due to Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease.
But feel free to post more gifs instead of actually saying why I was wrong so I don't learn why I was wrong.
 
D

Delusibeta

Banned
Joni said:
What is so stupid about my reasoning?
- Gummy bears contain gelatin, something that is famously made using bones of mammals including cows. Around the same time as the mad cow disease outbreak of Europe the link between the disease and gelatin was questionned, but never thorougly investigated.
Click to expand...
Whoosh

Also, I suspect you've answered your own question there. The odds that the cows were being fed gelatin first time round is probably very, very low.
 
Hydrargyrus

Hydrargyrus

Member
Joni said:
I would call 5 million slaughtered cows and quite a big panic in Europe massive. I still remember it was massive in the media here, probably because we imported a lot of meat from the UK.


What is so stupid about my reasoning?
- The massive outbreak of mad cow disease in Europe was linked to grinded bone remains in the food for cows in the media. A couple of diseased cows infecting entire cattle due to the grinding of their bones, while not noticing they were sick due to the long incubation period.
- Gummy bears contain gelatin, something that is famously made using bones of mammals including cows. Around the same time as the mad cow disease outbreak of Europe the link between the disease and gelatin was questionned, but never thorougly investigated.
- The outbreak caused 200 deaths due to Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease.
But feel free to post more gifs instead of actually saying why I was wrong so I don't learn why I was wrong.
Click to expand...

I won't call massive in the continental Europe, because of those 5 millions, more than 2 were in the UK.
And of 5 millions, only 350.000 have a positive diagnosis (more than 98% were in the UK).
The cattle census in the EU is about 78 millions.

In humans, there was only 220 cases in more than 10 years... This is not a massive outbreak


The gelatin is not a problem because is a treated protein and can be used in animal feed.
Btw, thay can use agar-agar (vegetal) too.


The mad cow disease was a huge problem due to the major lack of control in feeds, in the UK, during the 80s. Because the protein that was supposed to be treated, wasn't treated.
The disease have an easy control: sacrifice and correct treatment of the corpses.

The problem was not the disease for itself, it was the lack of control that lead to that situation
 
J

Joni

Member
Delusibeta said:
Also, I suspect you've answered your own question there. The odds that the cows were being fed gelatin first time round is probably very, very low.
Click to expand...
The problem is the incubation period of BSE means it is possible for diseased animals to end up in the food chain. It is quite difficult to detect in the first period. So if gelatin can transmit the disease; it could pose a danger to feed gelatin to those animals. But, as Hydrargyrus explained it, my worries are luckily unfounded.

Hydrargyrus said:
I won't call massive in the continental Europe, because of those 5 millions, more than 2 were in the UK.
Click to expand...
My mind might be making it bigger due to the follow-up of BSE in 1996, swine fever in 1997, the dioxin affair of 1999 and the Coca-Cola crisis. During 3-4 years you had a couple of big blown-up food scandals here. So it is mixing up those together.

Hydrargyrus said:
The gelatin is not a problem because is a treated protein and can be used in animal feed. Btw, thay can use agar-agar (vegetal) too.

The mad cow disease was a huge problem due to the major lack of control in feeds, in the UK, during the 80s. Because the protein that was supposed to be treated, wasn't treated.
The disease have an easy control: sacrifice and correct treatment of the corpses.

The problem was not the disease for itself, it was the lack of control that lead to that situation
Click to expand...
Okay. I didn't know it could be made safe. I just assumed the protein itself would be infectious regardless of treatment.
 
Hydrargyrus

Hydrargyrus

Member
Joni said:
My mind might be making it bigger due to the follow-up of BSE in 1996, swine fever in 1997, the dioxin affair of 1999 and the Coca-Cola crisis. During 3-4 years you had a couple of big blown-up food scandals here. So it is mixing up those together.
Click to expand...

Yeah, that years were atrocious.
As I said, the mad cow disease was the beginning of a public health problem chain.
All of those motivated the Green Book of public health in Europe, then the White Book and finally, the "Hygiene Package", that contains a recopilation of 4 (5) european regulations that modifies the food hygiene and all the public health control in the EU (178/02, 852/04, 853/04, 854/04 and 882/04).

It's like the bible of the hygiene nowadays. But really needs an update...

Joni said:
Okay. I didn't know it could be made safe. I just assumed the protein itself would be infectious regardless of treatment.
Click to expand...

Think about it, if you can eat it, why an animan couldn't?.


PS: I'm veterinarian and I work as public health inspector in Spain
 
Hydrargyrus

Hydrargyrus

Member
Joni said:
I thought diseased animals were banned from the entire food chain, including gelatin. So theoretically the infected protein would never be in the products consumed.
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Of course, but the extraction process makes the things even harder for infected proteins to enter in the food chain.

If you are interested in this, here's the consolidated normative of the colagen/gelatin:
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CONSLEG:1992L0118:20030630:EN:PDF

Are your job related to this things?
 
J

Joni

Member
C

Chumly

Member
venne said:
How about, you know, grass?
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We're in this thing called a dought and a lot of grass is dead/dormant already for the year. We don't have even close to enough grass to feed the cattle in the us. In addition it takes longer to fatten up.
 
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