What makes the best ration? The answer is all relative to the feeding location. In other words, what choices do you have in your area? What are the most available feed stuffs and what's the lowest priced product that can be fed to cattle for a profitable cost of gain? A variety of regional products exist and are utilized for feeding cattle, like fruit, such as apples, vegetables, such as carrots or potatoes and, of course, a variety of grains, which are the more traditional feed.

Of the various grains -- corn, wheat and milo -- corn is the grain most utilized for fattening cattle. It can be fed in several ways: whole, flaked, dry milled, milled high moisture and silage.

The supply is relative to the finished product for whole, flakes or dry milled corn. The corn can be stored on site or purchased as needed from suppliers over a large area. Dry corn has considerable flexibility in the supply since it can be stored, and then transported greater distances from locations such as Iowa, Nebraska or Kansas to Texas.

High moisture corn must be purchased in an area relative to the feedlot. Silage is the same; it must be raised and cut near the feedlot.

High moisture corn has considerable flexibility for several reasons. It is shelled and processed when it still has a high moisture content. It can be harvested early -- no waiting for it to dry. It is out of the field when field conditions may be at their best, before fall rains.

The availability and lower transportation costs may account for more difference than the difference in how the corn is processed and it's efficiency in the ration.

In the central high plains, where irrigation water is available, corn can be grown generally within the practical distance of a feedyard. This makes high moisture corn, corn silage and other types of silage practical.

This availability of corn within a given distance of the feedlots created a need for specific equipment to process high moisture corn. Several manufacturers who produce the types of equipment have met this need. W.H.O Manufacturing, Inc. of Lamar, Colorado, manufacturers large, heavy-duty tub grinders. These grinders can be equipped with special features for grinding corn, such as hoppers. The hoppers enable the corn to feed directly into the cylinder. W.H.O.'s cylinders are 86" long. These machines can grind from 5,000 to 14,000 bushels of corn per hour, depending on the size of the power source.

DKS Dozing and Roller Mills Inc. of Dighton, Kansas, produces mills from 1 roll up to 10 rolls. The 10-roll mill can process 25-30,000 bushels of high moisture corn per hour. Ken Gustafson, also of Dighton, produces mills up to 5 rolls. Haybuster of Jamestown, North Dakota, produces tub grinders.

Large feedlots using high moisture corn may have two large bunkers that they feed out of alternately so they are feeding out of one as they are filling the other. The amount of corn needed for a large feedlot, 40,000 head and up, requires very large bunkers. Caprock's Feedlot, north of Leoti, Kansas, has a very large bunker for high moisture corn - the bunker is in a "U" shape. This bunker holds about 6.5 million bushels of high moisture corn. (See photo below).

The size of the John Deere tractors gives you some idea of the size of this bunker. One advantage of the "U" shape is that is can be used year round, filled at one end while using out of the other, then the next year filling from the other end. The equipment processing the corn is a10-mill unit and a 5-mill unit by DKS Dozing of Dighton, Kansas.. Together they can process 300,000 to 400,000 bushes of corn a day. Coordinating the number of trucks to haul corn and combines to cut that much corn is no small feat. ©