Brewers Grain Transition Feed

BREWERS GRAINS The oldest and most trusted Transition Feed One of the undisputable facts when feeding dairy cattle is that transition feeding makes a huge difference to optimal milk production and a reduction in metabolic disorders such as milk fever, ketosis and retained foetal membranes.

Brewers Grains plays a critical role in this practice and has a long history as a transition feed. The well known term of “steaming up” originated in the UK many years ago and referred to the steam coming off warm Brewers Grains when it was used as a transition feed pre-calving. Brewers Grains has a number of very important characteristics that make it attractive as a transition feed:

• It is very palatable
• It is low in Potassium and Sodium, helping to achieve a low dietary Cation-Anion balance. Recent Dairy Australia guidelines for transition diets stress the importance of reducing the base levels of these two elements as part of the strategy to increase the absorption and mobilisation of Calcium, which helps to prevent the metabolic disorders mentioned above. 
• The moist fine texture of Brewers Grains helps bind the other ingredients such as straw and hay, cereal grains and vitamin and minerals, preventing sorting by the cow.
• Provides a great by-pass protein source pre-calving. Brewers Grains is the ingredient of choice to maintain the 15% protein needed in the pre-calving diet, as urea is not recommended and although vegetable protein meals can be used they are not as satisfactory due to their high phosphorus content (almost twice as much as Brewers Grains).  Dairy Australia guidelines clearly show that too higher levels of phosphorus can provoke milk fever.
•  It is also good practice to maintain an amount of Brewers Grains in the diet for the recently calved cow. Its high fibre content assists in the maintenance of good rumen health at a time when the cow is challenged with rapidly increasing amounts of cereal grain coupled with varying daily allocations of wet, low fibre grasses. The small energy dense particles (Space Occupying Fibre) of the Brewers Grains also assist in maximising total Dry Matter and metabolisable energy  intakes after calving, thus reducing body condition loss.

FEEDING GUIDE
Brewers Grain is suitable for supplementary feeding or as an ingredient in total mixed rations for dairy, beef cattle and sheep.

Dairy Cow
Recommended daily intake up to 25.0% of total dry matter intake. E.g. 20kg total daily DM intake = 20.0kg of brewers grain as fed or 5.0kg of brewers grain on a DM basis
Sheep
Recommended daily intake up to 10.0% of total dry matter intake.
Beef
Recommended daily intake up to 20.0% of total dry matter intake.

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