The feedstuffs menu: gluten feed, gluten meal, hulls, cottonseed

The feedstuffs board is a menu, and each feed on it fills one job in a ration. Some are protein, some energy, some fiber, and knowing which is which is how a buyer reads the board past the price. Beyond DDGS, the workhorses are the corn-milling feeds, the oilseed meals, the hulls and whole cottonseed.

Corn gluten feed and corn gluten meal

The two corn gluten feeds sound alike and are not. Both come from wet corn milling, the process that makes corn starch and sweeteners, not from ethanol. Corn gluten feed is the fiber and steep liquor left over, a mid-protein energy feed at roughly 21 to 24 percent crude protein on a dry-matter basis. Corn gluten meal is the concentrated protein fraction, a very different feed at around 60 to 66 percent crude protein, fed in small amounts where a dense, rumen-resistant protein is wanted. Same mill, one word apart, nearly three times the protein.

The hulls: fiber, not nutrient

Soybean hulls and cottonseed hulls are fiber feeds. Soybean hulls carry surprisingly digestible fiber and some real energy, so they earn a place stretching forage or adding gut fill without much starch. Cottonseed hulls are close to pure roughage, very low in protein and energy, bought for bulk and handling more than for what they feed. On the leaderboard a hull ranks poorly on cost per pound of nutrient, which is the point: you buy it for fiber, not to hit a protein or energy number.

Whole cottonseed, the dairy triple

Whole cottonseed is the one feed that brings three things at once, which is why dairies prize it. It runs high in fat for energy, high in effective fiber and around 23 percent crude protein, a package that lifts milk without a lot of grain. The fat is also the limit: extension sources put a common feeding rate near 5 to 8 pounds a cow a day, held there by the oil and by gossypol, the natural compound in cottonseed. Those are magnitudes from the research, not a recommendation this site makes.

The oilseed meals

The oilseed meals fill in around soybean meal. Canola meal, sunflower meal, cottonseed meal and linseed meal are what is left after the oil is pressed or extracted from each seed, protein feeds that run lower than soybean meal and trade against it on cost per pound of protein. Which one pencils depends on the week's price and the freight, which is exactly what the leaderboard sorts out.

Worked example

The board above ranks the whole menu by cost per pound of protein this week. The gluten meal and the oilseed meals cluster near the top on protein, the hulls near the bottom, and whole cottonseed sits on its own because you are also buying its fat and fiber. Read the menu by the job each feed does, then let the ranking tell you which is the cheap way to do that job now.

The Ration prices every feedstuff on the menu and ranks it on cost per unit of nutrient. It reports what each feed is; it does not tell a reader what to feed or at what rate.