Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Agricultural Experiment Station Reports LSU AgCenter 1945 Fattening steers on corn, rice products, and rice straw M G. Snell Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/agexp Recommended Citation Snell, M G., "Fattening steers on corn, rice products, and rice straw" (1945). LSU Agricultural Experiment Station Reports. 142. http://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/agexp/142 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the LSU AgCenter at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Agricultural Experiment Station Reports by an authorized administrator of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 1945 Louisiana Bulletin No. 389 February, FATTENING STEERS ON CORN, RICE PRODUCTS, AND RICE STRAW By M. G. Snell, C. I. Bray, F. L. Morrison, and M. E. Jackson In cooperation with Swift and Co., Lake Charles, Louisiana LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY AND AGRICULTURAL AND MECHANICAL COLLEGE AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATIONS W. G. Taggart, Director SUMMARY 1. Rations composed principally of rice by-products produced good gains on fattening steers. Due to high price levels on rice feeds the profits from feeding these were not as great as from feeding a corn and cottonseed meal ration. The relative values for the rice products compared to corn in these tests were not as high when fed to steers as when fed in mixed rations to. swine or poultry. Rice bran and polish might have shown higher values if combined with other feeds, with some other roughage than rice straw. 2. Rice polish ranked second to corn as a fattening concentrate, with a feeding value of 86% to 89% that of corn, considerably less than its value in fattening swine. A small reduction in the price of rice polish would have made rice polish as profitable as corn. Rice polish might preferably be fed in combination with other concentrates, rather than as the only carbohydrate concentrate. 3. Ground rough rice produced satisfactory gains but should sell at 84% to 86% the price of corn to be a profitable stock feed. Where rough rice costs more than corn it is too expensive to feed at a profit. 4. Chicken-feed rice showed an estimated value of 70% to 72% that of corn. It might have been more satisfactory if ground. Chicken-feed rice has shown a much higher value when fed to lambs. 5. Rice bran, when used as the only carbohydrate concentrate, was not entirely satisfactory for fattening steers, showing a value of only 64% to 68% the value of corn. Steers fed principally on rice bran sold for the lowest prices per 100 pounds, and made the lowest gains per day. Rice bran showed to better advantage in combination with corn or molasses. Its greatest advantage is its low price compared to corn. 6. Rice straw, supplemented with a small amount of alfalfa hay and ground oystershell was a more economical roughage than mixed legume and ^rass hay at the prices paid in 1942. The value of rice straw as a feed is generally underestimated. Good rice straw has about 9/10 the nutrients contained in good oat straw, and from 75% to 80% the digestible nutrients in some of the grass hays. If fed in dry lot, that is, without access to green forage, some well cured legume hay of good color will supply Vitamin A, which is necessary to good gains on fattening steers. FATTENING STEERS ON CORN, RICE PRODUCTS, AND RICE STRAW By M. G. Snell, C. I. Bray, F. L. Morrison, and M. E. Jackson In cooperation with Swift and Co., Lake Charles, Louisiana Louisiana's rice production is confined largely to twenty parishes in the southern section of the state, but is only grown to any appre- ciable extent in about ten parishes in the southwestern part. These ten parishes produce 95% of the total rice grown. As a cash crop, rice ranks second only to cotton in the state, producing in 1943 an estimated cash return of over $42,000,000. The rice industry furnishes as by-products a supply of feeds such as rice bran, rice polish, rice screenings or fine broken particles of polished rice, chicken- feed rice which is largely broken rough rice removed in thrashing, and rice straw. In some years, certain grades of damaged rough rice are used for feeding. As more than 30% of the beef cattle of the state are produced in the ten parishes referred to above, the combination of rice products, rice straw, molasses and cattle makes this section a potential feeding area. These experiments at Lake Charles were planned in 1939 by Dr. M. G. Snell, Associate Animal Husbandman, in cooperation with Swift and" Company of Lake Charles, Louisiana, the cattle and feed being furnished by Swift and Company and supervision and labor furnished by the Louisiana Experiment Station. The experimental work was first in charge of Mr. F. L. Morrison, Research Assistant, given military leave in November 1940, and succeeded by Murl Jackson. Dr. Snell was called into military service in February 1941; was commissioned as Major in the fall of that year; sent to the Philippines in November of that same year, and made a prisoner of war at the fall of Bataan. C. I. Bray assumed charge of the work from the fall of 1941. The Louisiana Experiment Station and the cattiemen of Louisiana are indebted to Swift and Company for providing the equipment and cattle which made this experimental work possible, and for the cooperation of the officials of the company at the Lake Charles Branch, particularly Mr. John T. Powell, former manager of the plant, V. A. Gilpin, present manager, and Robert T. Harper, superintendent and head buyer of the Swift stock yards. TABLE L Production of Rice in the United States and Louisiana in 1942 With Estimated Percentage of Mill By-Products United States Louisiana Rice production—bushels 66,333,000 25,758,000 barrels 18,426,000 7,155,000 Estimated By-Products Per Cent Tons Tons Rice bran 8.64 100,000 38,630 Rice polish 1.85 21,310 8,278 Brewers' rice - 2.10 24,142 9,379 Rice screenings 3.10 35,650 13,950 Total other than rough rice 181,102 70,237 Chicken feed rice 0.5 7,100 2,759 Total feed products — tons 188,202 72,996 OFFICIAL DEFINITIONS OF RICE BY-PRODUCTS AS ADOPTED BY AMERICAN FEED CONTROL OFFICIALS* Rice Bran is the pericarp or bran layer of the rice, with only such quantity of hull fragments as is unavoidable in the regular mill- ing of rice. Rice Polish is a by-product of rice obtained in the .milling opera- tion of brushing the grain to polish the kernel. Rice Meal is ground brown rice or ground rice after the hull has been removed. Ground Rough Rice is ground rice from which the hull has not been removed, or ground paddy rice. Rice Stone Bran is the siftings from the materials secured in removing hulls from rice and contains rice germs, broken rice and some rice hulls. Rice HuUer Bran is a product secured by the huller and cones from brown rice and consists mostly of the bran and germs. * Reports of Analyses of Commercial Feed Stuffs. Season of 1939-40. Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Immigration. FEED NUTRIENTS AND MINERALS IN RICE FEEDS The following table, adapted from Morrison's Feeds and Feeding, 20th edition, shows the digestible nutrients of rice products compared with corn and other common feedstuffs. 4 J Phosphorus in TABLE II. Percentage of Protein, Total Nutrients, Fiber and Calcium and Rice Feeds Compared to Other Common Feeds Per Cent Per Cent Per Cent Per Cent Mineral Elements Dry Digestible Fiber Digestible Nutrients Calcium Phosphorus Matter Protein Total j 1 Rice polish 90.5 9.3 3.0 85.7 0.04 1 1.10 83.5 0.01 0.28 No. 1 corn 87.2 7.3 2.3 i No. 3 corn 83.5 7.0 2.2 79.0 0.01 1 0.27 Brewers' rice 88.0 5.4 0.8 79.7 0.04 j 0.10 Wheat shorts 90.1 15.1 6.2 76.3 0.09 1 0.72 1.32 Wheat bran .90.6 13.1 9.5 70.2 0.12 1 67.7 0.08 1.36 Rice bran 91.1 8.8 13.0 I Rice, bran, low grade 90.1 5.3 20.2 45.2 0.21 Rough rice 88.6 6.3 8.8 69.1 1 The Process of Milling The work of the rice miller is to remove the hulls, germs, and outer seed coatings of the rice grain in such a way as to leave a high percentage of whole grains or head rice with a low percentage of broken grains, such as second heads, screenings, and brewers rice. The rough rice is first put through a cleaning process to remove dirt, trash, long beards, stems, and light or blighted grains, and goes next to the hulling stones which crack or split the hulls. The mix- ture of partially hulled rice and hulls is then put through a revolv- ing screen called the "stone reel" or a shaker called a "rotex", which separates out all fine particles of hulls, rice germs and true bran. This material is called "stone bran" which has a much larger per- centage of fiber than huller bran. The loose hulls are removed by aspiration or screening and used as fuel. Any remaining unhulled grains are separated out by the paddy separator and passed through another set of huller stones to complete the hulling process.