The Nutritive Value of Corn Cobs in Beef Cattle Rations

The nutritive value of corn cobs obtained in 13 digestion comparisons with four steers each, averaged 51.6 pounds of total digestible nutrients in each 100 pounds of corn cobs. This average figure suggests that cobs for cattle are 64 percent as valuable as the grain itself for energy or fattening purposes. In feedlot experiments, consisting of eight comparisons using a total of 192 cattle, the corn cob replacement value of the corn grain averaged 62 percent. This value is regarded as tentative rather than as final with respect to all situations of cob utilization. The chemical nature of corn cobs, along with variations obtained in this and other experiments points to fluctuations in cob utilization, the partial cause of which is believed related to micro-biological digestion in which the influencing factors are little understood at present.