Whole cottonseed price

Whole cottonseed is a protein feed, fed to raise a ration's crude-protein content. On a dry-matter basis it runs about 23% crude protein and 94% TDN, roughly 1 Mcal of net energy for lactation per pound of dry matter, at about 92% dry matter as fed. Those figures come from University of Arkansas Cooperative Extension, Composition of Selected Livestock Feeds (FSA3043), from NRC Beef Cattle 1996 + Dairy One. Fat+fiber+protein triple; the very high TDN is its added fat. The leaderboard uses them to convert this week's board price into a cost per pound of protein and per pound of energy, so it can be ranked against corn and soybean meal. Prices are quoted per ton, and the cheapest board price is not the cheapest fed price once freight and moisture are counted (see the FOB-vs-delivered guide). Whole cottonseed is sold straight off the gin without going to a crusher, making it one of the few feedstuffs offering protein, fat and fiber together, a combination dairies have long valued for milk fat production. It comes from the same cotton belt acreage as cottonseed meal and hulls, and competes directly against the crusher for that seed supply: when crush margins are strong, more seed is pulled toward oil and meal and less stays whole for direct feeding. Its fuzzy lint can bridge in augers and bins, a handling quirk feed mills design around, and its gossypol content caps how much a dairy cow can be fed each day.

The dairy ration's three-in-one ingredient. Whole cottonseed is unusual on this board for delivering protein, fat and fiber in a single feedstuff, without a crushing step in between. Alabama Cooperative Extension documents dairies feeding it for exactly that combination: the fat lifts energy density and milk fat test, the protein contributes to the ration's crude-protein target, and the fuzzy lint still on the seed adds effective fiber, three jobs one feedstuff normally cannot do at once. That versatility is also its main constraint: because gossypol and its fat load both cap daily intake, it works as a component of a ration, not the ration's backbone.

Supply follows the gin, on a fixed calendar. Whole cottonseed becomes available exactly when cotton is ginned. EPA's technical profile of the ginning industry puts the US ginning season between October 1 and December 31, with the bulk of any single region's crop ginned in six to eight weeks. That concentrates the year's whole-cottonseed supply into one harvest window the way a grain crop arrives at harvest, rather than the steady, mill-driven flow a true byproduct like wheat middlings has. A dairy that wants cottonseed year-round is buying against that seasonal supply, from on-farm storage built at gin time or from a merchandiser holding inventory into the following season.

Two grades, two markets. USDA quotes whole cottonseed in two varieties, fuzzy and pima, priced separately because pima cotton's longer, finer fiber commands its own premium in the textile market and pulls its cottonseed along with it. This site's regions, Alabama, California's San Joaquin Valley (both fuzzy and pima), Memphis and the Pacific Northwest, follow the same fuzzy-vs-pima split USDA reports. The whole cottonseed vs soybean meal spread compares it against the protein benchmark, though the comparison is only ever partial: soybean meal supplies protein alone, while whole cottonseed's price also buys the fat and fiber that spread cannot capture.