Quantity and Economic Importance of Nine Selected By-products Used in California Dairy Rations

¹ Department of Animal Science, University of California, Davis 95616-8521

Food processing representatives, brokers, nutritionists, livestock producers, and trade associations were surveyed to quantify 9 by-products used for feeding livestock during 1992 in California. The commodities were almond hulls, dried beet pulp, wet brewers grains, wet citrus pulp, pressed citrus pulp, wet corn gluten feed, corn gluten meal, whole cottonseed, and rice bran. The 9 byproducts contributed over 2.5 million tonnes and about 27% of the total feed concentrate moved within California during 1992. Market value of these 9 byproducts was almost .25 billion dollars. Whole cottonseed accounted for about 31% of the total tonnage of these 9 byproducts and provided about 66% of the total CP and 53% of the total NE_L of these 9 by-products. The by-products were more valuable as energy sources than CP sources compared with NE_L from corn and CP from soybean meal, respectively. Calculations of milk production, based on the CP content or NE_L content of the by-products, showed that these 9 by-products could have contributed sufficient CP or NE_L for over 31% of the milk produced in California during 1992. Ration formulations demonstrated that the economic value of by-products changed with feedstuffs available and, in general, would be used in rations over a range of market prices.

Key Words: quantity • by-product • economic • dairy rations

Submitted on September 7, 1994
Accepted on November 14, 1994