Feeding fields beans to finishing cattle

Herefordshirefarmer4321

Member
Mixed Farmer
Currently finishing Lim x cattle on maize silage, grass silage, brewers grains and 5.5kg of barley/wheat mixture. Beans grow well here and interested in if they would have a place in our finisher ration.

Thanks in advance
 

Matt77

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
East Sussex
Put 25% bean's in our basic finishing ration, barley and a bag of GP minerals make up the rest, if you milling yourself check your mill can do it, I upgraded ours when started years ago as the old single roller just jammed all the time and didn't do a good at all, dust or left whole.
 

dogjon

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Western Oregon
By field beans do you mean dried beans? We do have some access to cull dried beans here and I've seen them used for sheep in the counties to the south of me. As I understand it they are a pretty hot feed and need to be rationed out.
 
As above, they are an excellent feed. There is a surprising amount of starch in beans as well as protein. However, based on the lab analyses I used to have done, I would not say beans are as high in protein as rapemeal or soya (to be fair not much is). From memory they used to be around 22% crude protein. For finishing cattle this is not such an issue as they don't need heaps of protein, just 'enough'.

They do contain tannins but I reckon you would need to feed a lot of them before it became a palatability or digestibility issue. I used to buy hundreds of tonnes of beans to put in rations. They are an ace feed and should be used more often IMO. Dairy and beef rations are both worthwhile homes for beans.

I seem to remember a farmer telling me he thought beans put a lovely 'shine' on his cattle too. I don't know if they contain much oils etc though.
 

le bon paysan

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Limousin, France
When I grew cereals for home finishing the mix was 250 kgs beans 725 kgs barley and the rest was minerals and molasses. DLG was between 1.4 and 1.8 kgs but was adlib. Lorry came from Stratford on Avon.
 

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