Comments and opinions by James I. Sprague, Nutritionist

Feedlot's Reasons for Using High Moisture Corn
Feedlots have important reasons to consider high moisture corn, including: fast and efficient material handling; lower energy cost of processing compared to flaking; harvest time discounts in price; moisture discounts over actual moisture content; and potential for excellent feed efficiency.

A WHO Tub Grinder processes high moisture corn.

Grain Producers' Reasons
One of the important reasons for developing, harvesting and storing high moisture corn was due to farming efficiency. The grain producer has less field losses, and the fields can be worked for wheat or other fall planted crops. Feedlots often work out deals to supply manure to the producers of the high moisture grain.

Fast and Efficient Material Handling ... "A key reason."
This is very important and covered in another article in this issue of Feed*Lot Magazine.

Lower Energy Cost of Processing Compared to Flaking
With high natural gas or other energy costs to produce steam for the flaking process, the use of high moisture grain is a viable alternative for all or part of the grain fed to finishing cattle.

High moisture corn, if processed and managed, can be very competitive to flaked corn in our opinion if all costs are considered.

In my opinion, there is no question that flaked corn is usually superior for grain utilization than other processing methods, but if high moisture corn is processed fine enough, with enough moisture and excellent bunk management, it can compete with flaked corn.

Harvest Time Discount in Price
This can be an advantage, but if the market turns, it can be a disaster. Feedlots can protect the price with risk management.

Advantage of Moisture Discounts
We recommend using the southwest scale or Colorado scale of discounts of moisture and foreign material. The discounts are 1.5 per point of moisture. Some feedlots only shrink 1.3 per point. That only makes up the difference back to a dry basis. They do this to be competitive with other marketing channels. Certainly high moisture corn requires drying if sold into the normal grain channel and this drying change can be discounted at the feedlot.

We have noted that some feedlots do not monitor foreign material. Some combines will deliver considerable pieces of cobs and stalks with the grain. It does take time to test for foreign material, but it will pay the feedlot to consider this extra step of managing the inbound grain.

Potential for Excellent Feed Efficiency
This author has been observing feedlot use of high moisture grain for 40 years. Plus my former consulting associate, Dr. John Thornton, has several years of "on-hands" feeding of high moisture corn and now 10 years of consulting experience with high moisture corn of all types and moisture contents. We believe there is a lot of art and science in the harvesting, processing, preserving and feeding high moisture corn. We suggest feedlots work with their nutritionist to evaluate the steps of the process. For example, we believe a finer product will achieve better feed efficiency, but it must be accompanied with excellent bunk management. We believe the moisture level should be over 30 percent and preferably near 35 percent. To achieve this goal takes very fast harvesting. We believe the finer product must have more roughage in the ration.

Adding Water to Corn Below 30 Percent Moisture?
The answer to this question is not clear. Once the grain moisture drops, the sugar content and fermentable fraction to ensile the grain diminishes. The added moisture helps seal off the air, which is important. But if this grain (with moisture added at ensiling) is as good as field moisture grain (that is ensiled at 30 to 35 percent moisture) has not been determined to my knowledge. We think that it is not as good as 30 to 35 percent high moisture corn.

But if water is added to corn, it takes a large supply of water to keep up with the fast harvesting and grinding of the modern high moisture corn storage operations. To make adding water work for high moisture corn operation the water must delivered fast and in volume. ©