OSU Offering Weekly Feed
Commodity Bulletin On Web

STILLWATER, Okla. — Livestock producers who shop around for feeds in bulk can obtain weekly price quotes from several suppliers through Oklahoma State University. The OSU Feed Commodity Bulletin is updated every Friday afternoon on the OSU Animal Science Department's homepage on the World Wide Web.

The web address for accessing the bulletin is: www.ansi.okstate.edu/exten/feedbull/

Information given includes the name and location of the supplier, type of feed available and in what form, special notes such as minimum size loads, employee to contact, and phone and FAX numbers.

The weekly Feed Commodity Bulletin is a team effort headed by David Lalman, OSU Cooperative Extension beef cattle specialist, and Dan Waldner, OSU Cooperative Extension dairy specialist.

"A livestock industry mechanism such as the weekly bulletin simply gives a producer an opportunity to find the best value in feed sources for his needs," Waldner says.

"Sometimes during a year there are opportunities to take advantage of underpriced commodities for livestock feeding. Some feed sources will dip sharply below their normal levels for short periods."

Several factors prompted OSU to start the feed bulletin this year, including increasing awareness and use of alternative feeds, providing livestock feeders with contact information about places and prices, and providing resource information about nutritional qualities of raw feeds and supplements available, Lalman says.

A chart accessible on the web page of the bulletin provides figures about typical nutrient composition of corn plus other feed commodities such as wheat middlings, whole cottonseed, cottonseed meal, soybean meal, soybean hulls, corn gluten feed and rice bran.

Figures in the chart include percent dry matter, crude protein, undegradable intake protein, soluble intake protein, neutral detergent fiber, acid detergent fiber, percent fat and starch, total digestible nutrient content, and secondary nutrients.

Typical feed sources currently listed in OSU's weekly commodity bulletin include cottonseed meal, pelleted cottonseed meal, cottonseed hulls, pelleted soybean hulls, alfalfa pellets, pelleted grain screenings and pelleted malt sprouts from Oklahoma suppliers; cottonseed cake, cottonseed meal and cottonseed hulls from Texas; soybean meal, soybean hulls, cubed or pelleted wheat middlings, and raw or pelleted sunflower meal from Kansas; pelleted corn gluten feed from Iowa; and pelleted corn gluten feed, pelleted corn gluten meal, pelleted soybean hulls and dried distiller's grain from Illinois.

Other feed commodities can be added to the bulletin as sources become known, Lalman says. However, he adds, the listing must remain focused on availability and price of raw commodities and won't be opened up for advertising commercial feed products.