Feeding soya hulls?

Pacoa

With the silage situation the way it is this year i was thinking of getting soya hulls to stretch out what silage i have left but thing is i have never fed the stuff before and know little about it. The rep from the feed mill was out last week and he was saying you could feed up to 10kg per day to cows along with their dairy ration but what i'd like to know is can you do this without feeding any silage or hay? Do you have to build them up slowly on it? Can it sicken them? Can it be fed ad-lib? There's a whole host of questions i could ask about it so im just looking for other peoples experience with it so i thought i'd start a thread on it.

Sam Kade

The wonders of google

Pacoa

I've already googled and youtubed the bejaysus out of it. I'd rather just hear from people who have fed it before in situations like this but thanks anyway.

Sam Kade

Pacoa wrote: »

I've already googled and youtubed the bejaysus out of it. I'd rather just hear from people who have fed it before in situations like this but thanks anyway.

I never used it, if it were brewers grains I could tell you a thing or two about that. I presume brewers grains are expensive this time of year.

Farmer Pudsey

Soyahulls can be fed to fairly high rates as they are a fibre based product. The rest of the hull is a carbodrayte as opposed to a sugar like citrus and beet pulp. Heard of a farmer that fed 5kgs/ head and straw to heifers as had run out of silage. Like any product I would imagine that idealy the diet should be changed gradually introducing 2kgs every 2-3 days. I be inclined to let cows access to straw at least and maybe some silage as well

If building up I watch the dung any sigh of an issue will first appear here. I think that 8kgs/ head would not be an issue. i know that there are farmers that feed a lot of it to cows. Why would you go ad-lib as it is only 11% protein and energy is good but not super. How much is it costing in bulk.

Pacoa

Thr rep was saying it would be about €280 a ton. Biggest problem here would be storing it. I've no shed to put it in but he did say they could do it in one ton bags. Suppose a bit of it on top of the silage to stretch it out would do no harm. I've about two weeks silage left at the moment.

himwdah

heard a milk man who was scarce a few years back and tried it, but he said nomatter how poor the silage it was still needed in the diet to keep milk up, he had no problems i dont know how much he fed but he still bought and fed silage when he got it, so i would try to use it to extend out my silage to keep the high output, soyahulls is only as good as average silage but grass still contains stuff soya hulls and other products dont that are vital to production, assuming u are milk.

sorry if adding confusion.

oldsmokey

I've been giving it to dry cows on reasonable silage ..to stretch the silage a bit..2-3 kg a day...they love it, and it seems to be keeping them happy..

himwdah

oldsmokey wrote: »

I've been giving it to dry cows on reasonable silage ..to stretch the silage a bit..2-3 kg a day...they love it, and it seems to be keeping them happy..

yes suits that very well and probly better than buying silage of unknown quality