A:   Distillers grains are excellent feeds for cows and backgrounding calves. They are a good protein source, enery source, and a good source for phosphorus. In making ethanol, the starch has been removed and distillers grains are a high fiber energy source that does not negatively interact with forage digestion, which is good. When feeding distillers grains you will need to manage fat, phosphorus, and sulfur. Too much fat in the diet will decreas animal performance. At the levels I talk about later, you will not have problems with fat. Distillers are high in P and you will not need to supplement P but will need to add calcium to the diet. This is good as P is expensive and Ca is cheap. Sulfur can be toxic, but at the levels that I will discuss later, this should not be a problem if livestock have equal access to the feed and all eat their share. In calf (backgorunding calves, heifer development) diets, up to 1/3 of the diet on a dry matter basis could be distillers and that depends on the rate of gain that you want, so it may be less distillers in the ration. For cows, you could feed up to 7 lb/hd/da on a dry matter basis. If you were feeding wet distillers that is 35% dry matter and 65% water, that calculates to 20 lb/hd/da. If used as a protein source, you may only feed 2 to 4 lb/hd/da dry matter. For the forages that you have, you will need to supplement some energy after calviing and may need 3 to 5 lb/hd/da on a dry matter basis depending on the nutrient content of the forages.

Dry distillers will store for long periods of time. Wet distiller (35% dry matter 65% water) will not store for very long periods of time........one week in the summer and 3 weeks in the winter. Modified distiller (50% dry matter, 50% water) will store a little longer. You can store wet distillers in a bunker or bag if you combined it with forage. Go to beef.unl.edu and on the left hand side of the page, click on By-products and you can get our information on storage. Modified distillers can be bagged by itself without adding forage. Actually wet disillers grains can be bagged, but you can not put any pressure on the bag as it will split. We think it is important to put some pressure to drive the air out for long-term storage.