We grew a lot of sugarcane in the past and have some experience in

feeding it to our feedlot cattle. From the gist of the letter he would

like to know how best to feed the stalks and leaves.

In our experience we normally feed only the top leaves that have been

left behind by the harvesters ( manually harvested cane ). The mill does

not want this trash but makes a good roughage source. Better still,

whenever we find ourselves with excess sugarcane we feed the whole lot,

green leaves and sweet stalks to the cattle (better value due to the

addtional sugar). In both cases, there is a need to chop or shred

(especially with the whole stalks) so that the animal can readily chew

on this fibrous product.

Our low cost and simple ration was normally composed of sprent brewers

grains (from a brewery nearby) for the protein, molasses for the energy,

and chopped/shredded cane tops / stalks for all the roughage needs. Plus

a salt mineral mix. A gain of between 850 grams to 1kilo per day was

normaly achieved with this very economical ration fed to brahman and

brahman cross cattle. This answer by martin e-mail, martin@laguna.net