Don’t Let Your Forages Wash out Your Feed Ration
Dec 03, 2025
Justin Crocheck
Senior Cattle Consultant
As we are now in the heart of this winter-feeding season with our latest snowstorm, now is the time to take samples of your hay and other forages that you have available on the farm. Some Key producers have already taken me up on the sampling of their 2025 forages, coming up with balanced rations and a plan to get the most out of their forage for this feeding season. If the testing is done and the results show that the forages are nutritionally deficient, then we have the ability to fill in the “holes” and balance rations before the winter-feeding season. Whether we have a TMR mixer or not, we need to know the quality of these forages and what we can do to meet the nutritional needs of the cow for her stage of production. These cows and future calves are too valuable to take the chance. We have an opportunity to balance rations and add protein supplementation to fill any nutritional “holes” in our forages.
The addition of supplemental protein from products like QLF® Pasture Enhancer 40 liquid and Ignite® 30 or 40 tubs allow cows to get more out of your forages. The protein works to feed the “fiber bugs” with nitrogen so they can breakdown the fiber in hay and other forages. With this, the animal has the ability to consume more forage because of an increased rate of fiber digestion. The use of non-protein nitrogen (urea) in the liquid and tubs helps to increase fiber digestion over using “natural” protein alone. Urea readily breaks down to feed the “bugs” and provide degradable protein to the cow in the rumen and bypass protein in the small intestine. Urea (46%) provides us with the equivalent of 287% crude protein, so it only takes a little of it to make a big impact in the rumen of the cow. The major drawback of urea is that it’s not very palatable to the cow, so we need to mask the taste with molasses to get them to consume it.
Molasses provides us with the added power of sugars to work with protein to improve the digestibility of forages. The combination of the two creates a synergy that improves the ability of the “fiber bugs” to unlock nutrients like energy in the ration. This is a more efficient way of getting energy to the cow than adding corn. Corn has the tendency to increase the energy of the ration but reduces the forage intake and fiber digestibility as the inclusion increases. The effect of corn in a forage-based ration is that the energy that we were hoping to receive from the corn in the diet is nullified by inefficient fiber digestion. This results in us washing out the nutritional needs of our cows.
One last thing that I want to mention before I go is that the salt levels of our grass-based forages can be washed out as well. Producers who have our Wind & Rain 4 Complete mineral available to their cows may see an uptick in consumption. If consumption stays elevated above our normal 3 to 4-ounce rate for longer than a week or two, I recommend the addition of salt blocks for the herd. This will give them the additional salt that they’re needing while saving your pocketbook from the cost of extra mineral consumption.
Don’t let your forages wash out your ration. Have Key Cooperative sample your forages today. Please contact the Key Feed Team with questions. You can also contact me at 515-291-0763 or via e-mail.
Senior Cattle Consultant
Washed Out!
The summer of 2025 will certainly be a grazing and haying season to remember. After a few summers of drought conditions, the Key Cooperative trade area was blessed with abundant moisture. We had some areas that were overly blessed, causing an abundance of washy grass that, at times this summer, could not meet the dry matter (DM) needs of a lactating cow. The levels of some nutrients in the grass were also washed out along with DM. This quality of grass was also baled for feeding this winter. If you’ve never tested your forages in the past, then you’ll want to test this year to ensure that you don’t wash out your winter ration.As we are now in the heart of this winter-feeding season with our latest snowstorm, now is the time to take samples of your hay and other forages that you have available on the farm. Some Key producers have already taken me up on the sampling of their 2025 forages, coming up with balanced rations and a plan to get the most out of their forage for this feeding season. If the testing is done and the results show that the forages are nutritionally deficient, then we have the ability to fill in the “holes” and balance rations before the winter-feeding season. Whether we have a TMR mixer or not, we need to know the quality of these forages and what we can do to meet the nutritional needs of the cow for her stage of production. These cows and future calves are too valuable to take the chance. We have an opportunity to balance rations and add protein supplementation to fill any nutritional “holes” in our forages.
The addition of supplemental protein from products like QLF® Pasture Enhancer 40 liquid and Ignite® 30 or 40 tubs allow cows to get more out of your forages. The protein works to feed the “fiber bugs” with nitrogen so they can breakdown the fiber in hay and other forages. With this, the animal has the ability to consume more forage because of an increased rate of fiber digestion. The use of non-protein nitrogen (urea) in the liquid and tubs helps to increase fiber digestion over using “natural” protein alone. Urea readily breaks down to feed the “bugs” and provide degradable protein to the cow in the rumen and bypass protein in the small intestine. Urea (46%) provides us with the equivalent of 287% crude protein, so it only takes a little of it to make a big impact in the rumen of the cow. The major drawback of urea is that it’s not very palatable to the cow, so we need to mask the taste with molasses to get them to consume it.
Molasses provides us with the added power of sugars to work with protein to improve the digestibility of forages. The combination of the two creates a synergy that improves the ability of the “fiber bugs” to unlock nutrients like energy in the ration. This is a more efficient way of getting energy to the cow than adding corn. Corn has the tendency to increase the energy of the ration but reduces the forage intake and fiber digestibility as the inclusion increases. The effect of corn in a forage-based ration is that the energy that we were hoping to receive from the corn in the diet is nullified by inefficient fiber digestion. This results in us washing out the nutritional needs of our cows.
One last thing that I want to mention before I go is that the salt levels of our grass-based forages can be washed out as well. Producers who have our Wind & Rain 4 Complete mineral available to their cows may see an uptick in consumption. If consumption stays elevated above our normal 3 to 4-ounce rate for longer than a week or two, I recommend the addition of salt blocks for the herd. This will give them the additional salt that they’re needing while saving your pocketbook from the cost of extra mineral consumption.
Don’t let your forages wash out your ration. Have Key Cooperative sample your forages today. Please contact the Key Feed Team with questions. You can also contact me at 515-291-0763 or via e-mail.