Most livestock producers don’t think much about moisture in rations – but Dave Lalman believes they should.
“It is a fundamental principle of nutrition,” Dr. Lalman, a professor of Animal Science at Oklahoma State University, told Ozarks Farm & Neighbor. “If you’re talking about beef, swine and poultry producers, they deal with ingredients that are fairly dry to begin with, from the 9-13 percent moisture range; the feedstuffs are fairly dry, so we don’t consider them as often as we might otherwise. Dairy producers use a lot of wet distillers grains and silage, and those will be from 30-40 percent moisture, so it’s critical to consider the moisture in those situations.” Dry distillers grains, by comparison, are only around 10 percent moisture, so the moisture can be a factor if a producer is going to attempt to use wet distillers. “A person needs to know what he’s getting into before he purchases a commodity like that,” Lalman said.
The higher the moisture of the feedstuff, the greater the risk of spoilage. “If it’s going to be something that is stored in flat storage or an overhead bin that has oxygen available to it, it could spoil if it has over 12-13 percent moisture,” Lalman said. “The wet distillers grain is going to be 30 percent-plus moisture, and if you just store it outside on a concrete slab somewhere, in the warm weather it’s going to start to spoil in about a week.”
Moisture is a concern in hay feeds, too, said Eldon Cole, University of Missouri southwest region livestock specialist at the Lawrence County office in Mt Vernon. “As far as putting up dry hay, we try to get it dried down to somewhere in the neighborhood of the mid-teens, 15-18 percent moisture, if you were putting it into a large round bale,” Cole told OFN. “If it’s got a lot of moisture in it and you’re putting it up as dry hay, you run the risk of having some moldiness develop, and probably create a little more unpalatable hay even if it was in that 15-18 percent range.” Small square bales aren’t as prevalent as they once were, but wetter hay with moisture in the upper teens could be used there; Cole said some of the moisture is driven off in the curing process.
If mold does develop on feed, it’s not likely to be injurious to cattle, although they may refuse to eat it. Horses are another matter, and should not be given moldy hay. “They are more sensitive to it from problems with their respiration system,” Cole said. And if feed supplements develop mold as a result of getting wet, they shouldn’t be used.
Corn and sorghum silage, though, is very wet. “We’d like to have it dry in that 70 percent moisture range,” said Cole. “A lot of farmers are new to the silage business. Since we had so much of our poor corn put into the silo this year, I did notice that some of them were putting it in a little too wet. If you get over 70 percent moisture I would be pretty nervous; we’ll probably have more seepage around the silo, and it will be more what they would call a ‘sour’-type silage that wouldn’t be palatable to the cattle.”
Haylage can be put up in a big round bale, or wrapped in plastic or placed in a tube liner. “Then you would be looking at a moisture that is going to be somewhere in that 50 percent range,” Cole said. “I think more and more people are utilizing moisture meters to try to accurately assess how much moisture is in the forages that they would be harvesting, and for someone just getting started with a new type of hay system or forage system, owning a moisture meter would be a big asset.” If hay is too wet some producers will attempt tedding it with a rake, but Cole warned that can knock off leaves and reduce quality. He added, “Particularly with a leafy forage like Alfalfa or some of the clovers, if you think it is too dry you may want to bale when the dew is on, and there’s a little more moisture to it.”
But the key, Cole affirmed, is that moisture does count. “It’s often bad to go out and buy hay that’s carrying a lot of moisture, because the high moisture is not going to add very much nutritional value to it and could detract from the palatability of it,” he said.
