Fodder Corn Leaves and cobs?

[CrealCritter]

Any nutritional value in dried corn (maze) leaves de-kerneled cobs for cattle?

Wind blew some corn stock.leaves into the pasture. Cattle were almost waiting for them to blow in so they could eat them. That's why I'm asking.

Thanks

Jesus is Lord and Christ

 

[baymule]

Because of the drought here, I’ve seen bales of corn stalks for sale. That and a protein lick will get cows through the winter. Yes cows will eat them. Not sure about the dry cobs, it might be a choke item. My grandpa took shucked corn to a mill and got it ground for his cows, cob and corn kernels.

 

[Hinotori]

Green stalks can be chopped and fermented for grazers. That is very nutritious. I know small batch silage is possible at home, but can be difficult.

There might not be much nutrition left in dry but it would be filling and mixed with other things get them along. I'd let them have it as you feed plenty of variety from what Ive seen.

 

[flowerbug]

corn cobs would be a pretty definitive form of roughage... ouch.

 

[baymule]

corn cobs would be a pretty definitive form of roughage... ouch.

Cows aren't wiping their butt with corn cobs. By the time cobs reach that area, they will be mushy poo.

 

[flowerbug]

Cows aren't wiping their butt with corn cobs. By the time cobs reach that area, they will be mushy poo.

i know, i was just funnin'... i lived kitty-corner from the neighborhood small dairy farm for 14 years of my childhood (it's still there as a field but no cows that i've seen). all of us kids spent a fair amount of time over there.

 

[Fixit]

I would think that as long as you grind the cob it would be fine. A large part of cattle nutrition come from the bacteria byproduct in the digestive system and the bacteria would feed on the cobs.
Here's another feed source you never hear about except in bad feed times .

He Turns Sawdust Into Nutritious Cattle Feed

Instead of buying hay to feed his beef cattle last winter, Bob Batey fed them a blended feed of corn, vitamins, minerals and 70 percent sawdust. The 85-year-old inventor/entrepreneur is patenting the ...

www.farmshow.com

Every once in a while when hay is hard to come by out west it gets mentioned on the news as a feed extender .

 

[baymule]

I can remember ranchers in west Texas, in severe drought, using a flame thrower to burn spines off prickly pear for the cattle to eat.

 

[farmerjan]

Dried corn stalks have little nutritional value. Average protein will be in the 4-6% range usually and the digestible nutrients in the actual fodder will be in the 35-50% value. What it also does is provide a little trace potassium and phosphorous and that is usually good to get off the fields if you use any amount of poultry litter.
The greatest value is in the ROUGHAGE... it provides the microbes in the rumen something to "digest" ... provides bulk and in cases of drought areas, if fed as a good part of the diet, a farmer can get by quite well with adding protein in the form of liquid protein lick tanks or a high protein feed or cubes of some sort.
They will love them and they are certainly not going to hurt them. If you have some grass, and feed a little grain, it is great to extend the available forage. Many places will actually turn cows out in harvested fields to "glean " the lost grain and to eat the stalks/leaves/fodder left behind.