Feeding of Wet Corn Milling Byproducts to Beef Cattle

Corn milling byproducts are expected to increase dramatically in supply. Two primary types of milling processes currently exist, resulting in quite different feed products. The dry milling process produces distillers grains plus solubles, and the wet milling process produces corn gluten feed. These feeds can be marketed as wet feed, or they can be dried and marketed as either dry corn gluten feed or dry distillers grains with or without solubles. For the purposes of this article, only wet corn gluten feed (WCGF) and wet distillers grains plus solubles (WDGS) will be discussed. The majority of plant expansions are dry milling plants; however, an increase in supply of both WDGS and WCGF is expected. Therefore, these feeds may be very attractive for beef producers to use as an energy source. This article will focus on the production, composition of these feeds, energy value and implications, and economics of using WDGS. Some other management issues will be discussed as well including grain processing when these byproducts are used in feedlot diets, roughage level when these byproducts are used, and feeding combinations of WDGS and WCGF. Forage fed situations will not be covered primarily because wet byproducts are not common ingredients in many forage feeding situations. However, wet byproducts work well in forage based diets performing similar to or better than dry byproducts.