feed

[smo]

i have a friend that feeds lima beans to his sheep because he can get them for $130 per ton and it cuts his hay bill way down cause the cheapest i can get hay around here is $10 per bale has any one herd of feeding them to cows if so how much should i feed them any knowledge will help thanks

 

[smo]

bump

 

[RidinHeifer]

Where is your friend located and what type of sheep is he feeding? I have started looking into some alternative feeds and they happened to be on my list. How much does he feed?
I would be concerned with cattle choking on them since they don't understand the concept of chew before you swallow most times.

 

[smo]

bump

 

[CAB]

I don't have any personal experience with Lima beans, but I would ck them out well B4 you feed them, talk to a nutritionist. The thing that I am wondering is if they are similar to soybeans. You can feed raw soybean up to a point. If cows eat too many of them dry they'll then swell once in the cow and will kill them, so proceed with caution. I'm sure that you can feed them, but be careful and ck out the amounts that you can feed per feeding.

 

[nkotb]

Given the cost to crack/grind these feeds, I have to wonder why you would feed them whole?  You get so much more uptake of nutrients/protein from any of these feeds when they have been cracked/ground.  Don't know anything about feeding lima beans, however, would want to talk to a nutritionist and at a very minimum send some in and have a feed test run on them so you knew protein content, minerals, etc.

 

[vc]

I have seen them in feed before, but not in high volume just a part of the mix. They were whole, but I would guess it was less than 5% of the mix.