Are Whole Beans Good
i Continued From Page 1)
back meal, said that although it
looks like the farmer’s getting
robbed, this isn’t the case.
“Soybean oil is worth a lot of
money to the processors, more
money than its worth to the
farmer,” he said. “The oil is what
pays for all the freight and
handling charges. Besides, most
of the beans from this area don’t
go any farther away than
Maryland, so there’s not really
that much freight involved.”
Assistant Lancaster County
Agent N. Alan Bair said that the
economy of feeding raw, cooked
or extruded beans is in serious
question. “Remember,” Bair
said, “that the whole bean is only
34 to 38 percent protein, while
soybean meal runs around 44
percent. So a farmer who feeds
his own beans is feeding less
protein in a pound of feed. The fat
in the beans also means that
you’ve got to be careful you don’t
get too much fat in the cows’ diet.
The upper limit on feeding whole
beans is 25 percent of the grain
ration. With bean meal, a
dairyman could go higher than
that, although normally he
wouldn’t.”
Feeding whole beans - raw,
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cooked or extruded - to dairy
cows is a practice many
dairymen have adopted because
they feel whole beans, with their
higher energy content, are worth
more than bean meal, even if
they do give up some protein.
Some have had good luck with the
feed, some have been disap
pointed.
It’s hard to argue with success,
especially the kind of success
that produces world records in
dairy production. Allen Rearick
of Millheim, Pa., is a firm
believer in extruded soybeans,
and he’s got the world’s butterfat
record to back up his claim that
it’s top-notch dairy feed. His
Gladell Governess Bess, a four-
year -old Registered Holstein,
recently finished a 359-day lac
tation in which she produced 39-
969 pounds of milk and 1913
pounds of butterfat, a world fat
record for all breeds and all ages.
One amazing thing about this cow
is that she gets no special
treatment, no special feed. She’s
just one of the girls.
Another of Rearick’s cows
finished a lactation with 40,600
pounds of milk, 1686 pounds of
, fat. In fact, in Rearick’s 36-cow
herd, 14 animals have pushed
DISTRIBUTORS TOR:
through the 1000 pound fat mark.
Rearick told Lancaster Far
ming that he’d been using ex-,
traded soybeans for just about a
year. He buys beans on the open
market, and runs them through
an extruder which he owns.
“When those beans come out of'
the extruder,” Rearick said, “I
can give them to a cow that’s
been off feed and she’ll gobble
them right up. I think they help
me to maximize production
because the cows like them.”
Rearick feeds his beans as a
top dressing on the grain ration.
He grows most of his grain needs
and buys brewers grains and he
feeds his cows all the top-quality
alfalfa hay they’ll eat.
Gary Stoltzfus, who works for
his father on a dairy-farm in
Elverson, said they tried feeding
extruded beans to their herd of 65
Holsteins last year. “Our fat test
went up about 2 points to maybe 4
or 4.1 percent,” Stoltzfus said,
“but I just didn’t feel we were
getting the milk out of the cows
we should have been getting.”
The dairyman said that it
would probably take about 40
acres of ground to raise enough
soybeans to fill their needs for a
year. “And then we’ve got to pay
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to have them cooked, we’ve got to
haul them to the cooker and haul
them back.”
Processing costs for a ton of
beans is running about $lO to $ll
locally, a cost which can’t be
ignored in figuring the economics
of home-grown beans versus
purchased bean meal. Another
item that can’t be overlooked is
the cost and availability of
custom combining, since most
farmers don’t have their own
combines.
Stoltzfus said they had har
vesting problems last year. “We
couldn’t find anybody to harvest
our crop,” he said, “and the
beans don’t do you much good if
they’re sitting out in the field.”
Harvesting problems and-or
equipment costs were factors
mentioned by several other
farmers in their decisions to stay
out of soybeans. And at least one
farmer said he stopped growing
soybeans when his custom
harvester left a lot of the crop in
the field. “It wasn’t his fault,
really, it was just that his four
row header couldn’t handle the
steep slopes that I farm,” the
fanner said.
Kenneth Rutt, a Quarryville
dairy farmer who also raises a
considerable quantity of
soybeans, said he had never been
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able to make the figures favor
feeding his own beans. He sells
all his beans, sometimes under
contract, sometimes on the open
market. “Right now, for
example,” Rutt said, “we can
sell our whole beans with 38
percent protein for about $2OO a
ton. We can buy 44 percent
soybean meal for about the same
price. So I can’t see any reason
for feeding the beans. I know you
get the oil, but I’m not so sure I
want to give the oil to my cows.”
Perhaps the most ardent
detractor of feeding whole beans
was Dr. Richard Adams, Penn
State’s extension dairy nutrition
specialist. He said, “With beans
selling at $6 a bushel, a guy would
have to have rocks in his head to
feed them to cows.”
Adams also said that
historically, it’s been
economically advantageous to
sell beans rather than feed them,
but that he wouldn’t rule out the
possibility of market changes
temporarily favoring the feeding
of whole beans.
Summing up, there seems to be
a lot to say against growing or
buying whole beans and feeding
them to dairy cows. If the whole
bean is fed, it must be ground,
and there can be no urea added to
the ration. Urease, an enzyme in
the uncooked bean, reacts with
urea to release ammonia before
the feed reaches the rumen,
thereby detracting from the
ration’s nitrogen content. Steam
cooking or extruding kills the
urease, but costs about $lO a ton
for the treatment. And growing
beans means relying on custom
operators or buying a combine.
Nevertheless, the practice
does have its strong supporters,
many of whom claim con
siderable success with whole
beans, raw or cooked, and at
least one dairyman who claims
extruded beans have brought him
a world record in fat production.
Farmers who want to feed
processed beans will find
processing services available
from Garber & Shenk, Mount
Joy, Mark Hershey, Lebanon,
and Stevens Feed, Inc., Stevens.
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