Hi,
After a lifetime of buying feed ingredients, it's difficult for me to believe
that molasses would ever be priced where it would be reasonable to use it as
an energy source instead of corn. Remember that corn has a substantial
protein component.
I have bought and fed many truck loads of molasses over the years since 1969.
The trucking cost is the price problem with molasses.
It does cut the dust and improve palatability. The improvement in
palatability is more so with calves, and less so with milking age, but still
is an important factor with cows.
There are other problems with molasses besides price.
You have to have tanks and pumps to handle it.
You almost always have to take a full semi load to get a reasonable price.
Trucking is expensive as independent truckers are not set up to haul it. You
have to use the supplier for trucking. The supplier generally has a very
strong bargaining position in negoiating hauling charges for molasses.
Even with additives it is difficult to handle in cold weather.
If you get water into it, it spoils somewhat, and it frequently has water
added by persons unknown before arrival at the end user farm.
It is slow and irritating to run it into a mixer wagon.
It builds up on the surfaces of some types of mixer wagons.
BUT, we milk in self-locks, and our biggest problem with self-locks in the
milking parlor has always been getting the cows to reach down to the grain
and lock themselves up.
Cows that are full of excellent pasture usually have no interest whatsoever in
eating grain, so they don't usually lock themselves up in self-locks at
milking time.
If the cows won't lock up, it is sometimes is more difficult to milk as they
sometimes wander off with the milking machines attached.
I have milked countless times with only a few cows locked up. It is possible
to milk that way but it makes the person milking a little anxious.
Making the grain more palatabile with molasses works fairly well to encourage
cows that are not hungary to eat grain (and lock themselves up in
self-locks).
However top dressing with a small amout of roasted soybeans or wet beet pulp
works far better than adding molasses.
Soaking beet pulp with hot water really brings out it's aromatic qualities,
and is extremely effective as a means to get cows to eat grain they otherwise
would ignore.
--
Kindest regards,
=======================
F. W. Owen
Owenlea Holsteins
9430 Spencer Road
Homerville, Ohio 44235
e-mail fwo@bright.net
home page http://www.bright.net/~fwo
voice & fax 330.625.2369
=======================
