When I was a kid, I worked on my uncle's farm. I had the bad luck to come across four bloated steers in the time I was there. He who finds them, has the job of disposing of them. Yuck.

So now I have a little farm with some cows and goats. I'm so worried about them bloating, that I hve now discovered that I have fed them too little protein.

I've done a great deal of reading now on how much alfalfa (and I assume other bloating legumes) one could feed these animals depending on their state of pregnancy, nursing, etc.

I'm exploring planting alfalfa in my hay field instead of fertilizing the grass.

What is in alfalfa (and other bloating legumes) that causes bloat? How are the non-bloating legumes different?

-- Paul Wheaton (paul@richsoil.com), April 15, 2002

Answers

Most legumes, as they break down in a cow's first stomach, turn into a frothy bubbly mass. (Actually all the hays do this...) But there is something about most legumes that causes this froth to be thicker foam, and the cows cannot belch the gas out - it stays in their stomach & expands until it kills them. If their stomachs were empty, & they totally fill it with alfalfa, there is nothing to buffer all this foam. That's a practical explination, sorry if you were looking for a scientific one! :)

Now, this is only an issue with the green fresh growing legumes. You are feeding them dry, baled alfalfa right???? Practically NOT an issue with dry alfalfa.

In general, you can let the cattle graze up to 60% green alfalfa, if there is also good grass hay growing in the field.

There are tricks to it - have the cattle _full_ when turning them into a new pasture, so they just graze some, not go totally wild & stuff as much in as possible. Wait until the dew dries off. Maybe only let them in the new field for an hour or 2 that first day. Offer them Bloat Guard blocks a few days before.

It is wise to be cautious about bloat, but legumes are the best thing for your soils & the cattle, don't be too scared of them!

Bird's Foot Trifoil is the common non-bloating one around here, it grows a little slower & finer than alfalfa, but works fine.

I graze my small heard on alfalfa (about 60/40 mix), turnip/red clover mix, oats stubble/regrowth, soybean stubble/hulls, and cornstalks in addition to the regular mostly grass, lightly renovated with legume mix pastures. I have only lost one critter to bloat, and that was a stupid move of feeding them too much oddball ground corn & cobs when they weren't used to it - never had a problem grazing - yet.

The key is to start them slowly when changing their feed, keep them full of their old feed while making the switch, and allow their stomachs to change their chemistry to work with the new feedstuffs. Takes a whole different set of microbs to digest fresh pasture than it took to digest old hay & corn....

Love to talk more about this, here or in e-mail if you want... Kinda in a hurry today, I might have skipped over some important parts. But, many dairies have gone to feeding a very high % of greenchop or grazing solid alfalfa fields - you just need to keep on top of it, let the cattle adjust, pay attention to detail, start slowly.

--->Paul

-- paul (ramblerplm@hotmail.com), April 15, 2002.

Many legumes, like alfalfa, produce a chemical called saponin (sapon = soap) The saponins cause the foam, that is normally created in the ruminants stomach, to not "release." Thus, the gases (ie, foam) stay in the stomach in the stomach and causes bloat. Birdsfoot trefoil is a decent pasture legume that does not cause bloat. It will also survive on soils with lower pH.

-- Cabin Fever (Cabinfever_MN@yahoo.com), April 15, 2002.

The steers that died of bloat when I was a kid were fed alfalfa hay. It was the middle of winter. And we were feeding them half alfalfa and half grass hay.

For the record, the no-bloating legumes that I know of are: crown vetch; sanfoin (annual?)(aka sainfoin); cicer milkvetch; birdsfoot trefoil (aka broadleaf trefoil, narrowleaf trefoil); korean lespedeza (annual).

That's good info about the saponin. So what makes the non-bloating stuff non-bloating? High oil content (just thinking that oil seems to make soap less sudsy).

I wonder if planting something like flax with legumes will counter the bloat?

-- Paul Wheaton (paul@richsoil.com), April 15, 2002.

What causes the "non-bloating stuff" to not cause bloat is a low or non-existant level of saponin in the plant. The use of Bloat-Guard (poloxalene) will help "brake-up the foam in the stomach so the animal does not bloat. Never heard of using oil.

-- Cabin Fever (cabinfever_mn@yahoo.com), April 15, 2002.

I found this page: http://www.ansci.cornell.edu/plants/toxicagents/saponin.html

It says what you just said: non-bloating legumes have reduced amounts of saponins. Apparently there are alfalfas that have reduced saponins, but they can still cause bloat.

-- Paul Wheaton (paul@richsoil.com), April 15, 2002.

Here is another article: http://www.forages.css.orst.edu/Topics/Pastures/Species/Legumes/Animal _issues/Bloat.html

Apparently, bloating legumes contain about 18 times more of a certain protein (18S) than non-bloating legumes. And the non-bloating legumes also contain more tanins.

The article states that bloat can be countered with plants containing tanins and/or oils. Sudangrass is suggested for the tanins and for the oils: well the quantity would have to be too large to make too much of a difference.

In Australia, apparently they feed their cows detergent. Yuck!

-- Paul Wheaton (paul@richsoil.com), April 15, 2002.

For a longer term pasture, I would not plant flax, but a compatible grass hay with the alfalfa - in that 60/40 mix, or more hay if you are nervious about it. :) This will regrow, and provide a long-term pasture that you can graze or make hay. Extenstion office or local seed sellers can make good recomendations on what works together locally.

For short term, in my location I would plant oats with the alfalfa - flax is a thin crop, expensive here. Oats would do better at what you want for one year. At least, in _my_ location.

I have heard of switching suddenly to day alfalfa bales bloating cattle. It does happen, but is rare. Just like my stupid move that killed one with corn/cobs ground up - it is rare, and really takes some exceptional stupidity (I'm talking about me here!) to actually kill a steer with dry crops. A relative of mine had one bloat when feeding grass/alfalfa mix, so now he does _not_ use grass, only pure alfalfa... someone told him it was the grass in the mix that caused the problem, and since he has had no problems since he believes that. I guess whatever a person believes, or gets used to, or works for them.

With cattle, make changes slowly, giving their stomachs time to adjust to the changes, and make changes on full stomachs, and generally you won't have any troubles. They will adjust nicely without problems.

Of course, I still get nervious when I turn them into that alfalfa/hay plot every mid-summer, wondering if I got the details right. :) So, it's good to be cautious about it. :)

--->Paul

-- paul (ramblerplm@hotmail.com), April 15, 2002.

Bloat, Univ. Nebraska, http://www.ianr.unl.edu/pubs/beef/g149.htm Bloat occurrences can be reduced through several pasture management methods:

1. Plant pastures so that no more than 50 percent of the forage mixture is alfalfa or clover. Consider planting non-bloating legumes. 2. Fill cattle on dry roughage or grass pastures before turning to legume pastures. 3. Provide grass pasture, hay, crop residue (cornstalks, milo stubble) or grain along with the legume or wheat pasture to reduce pasture intake. 4. Graze in a rotation using different grass and legume pastures. 5. Fertilize and graze to stimulate grasses in the grass-legume pastures. 6. Strip graze or rotational graze grass-legume pastures to force cattle to eat most of the plant material rather than just the succulent top growth.

Plan with your veterinarian for emergency treatment for bloat before the grazing season. Equipment needed includes: 1. good handling facilities, 2. a rubber hose about 3/4" to 1" in diameter and 8 to 10 feet long, 3. a supply of defoaming agent, and 4. a large trocar (and a sharp knife suitable for opening an incision into the rumen if the trocar fails to relieve the bloat).

-- BC (desertdweller44@yahoo.com), April 15, 2002.

Most of the above. The strip-grazing is good. A good practice can be to let the cattle graze their old pasture until fairly well-fed, then introduce them to the new lush pasture for a couple of hours, then take them out of it again. Do this for three days or so, then start increasing the time on the new pasture each day until you can leave them there.

Paul, I wouldn't know about feeding detergents to cattle in Australia, although I'd certainly beive anti-foaming agents. However, you're right in part about oil. One old treatment for bloat which was not too severe was to drench the animal with vegetabl oil, or even clear mineral oil. Another preventative treatment used to be to spray the fresh lush spring pasture with vegtable oil before turning the cattle in on it - I'd tend to go with limiting the amount of grazing before I did that though - most of us can better afford time to use in better management than money.

-- Don Armstrong (darmst@yahoo.com.au), April 15, 2002.

Another non-bloating green feed is kudzu.

-- Soni (thomkilroy@hotmail.com), April 15, 2002.