“Whole cottonseed and cotton byproducts are some of the most underused, underestimated and undervalued feeds for beef cattle,” says Buck Chastain of BC Consulting. The benefits for cow-calf, stocker and finishing feeds or as a creep feed are many.

Chastain is one of the foremost ruminant nutritionists working with cottonseed in cattle diets. After working for Albion Advanced Nutrition for 31 years, he helped start a plant in New York to make amino-acid trace minerals. He then started BC Consulting and has done nutrition work for purebred beef producers, commercial cow-calf and stocker operations, and feedmills all over the United States and in Canada, Europe and some in South America.

“A number of years ago, we started working with Hollybrook, a company in Louisiana that was delinting whole cottonseed and running it through an extruder to obtain the cottonseed. We shipped about 25,000 tons each year to producers all over the country,” Chastain recalls.

“Whole cottonseed and cotton byproducts are some of the most underused, underestimated and undervalued feeds for beef cattle.”

Later he built a plant called White Gold Mills in Arkansas.

Some companies make a cake or cube from cottonseed, which can be easily fed as a supplement. Operations with total mixed ration (TMR) mixers might put it with triticale silage or corn silage, rye baleage or other wet forages to help dry up the ration.

One ton of whole cottonseed has 500 pounds (lb.) of cottonseed hulls, an excellent fiber.

“Many people don’t understand the importance of fiber, plus we need a type of fiber that absorbs moisture. It will swell, which increases rumen pH, which increases cud-chewing. As the animal chews its cud, it mixes the feed with saliva, which is high in sodium bicarb,” Chastain says. Ruminant pH needs to be 6.9 to be optimally functional and healthy. Grass is 7, which is neutral.

“If you are feeding corn silage, that pH will be 3.5 to 4, which is too acidic,” Chastain says. “You need to get the pH up to 6.9. Baleage has only a pH of 5.”

“If that’s what you are feeding cows, you’ll be lucky to get 40% first-service conception,” he says. “You have lowered the pH of the rumen and changed the blood pH. This sets up the immune system to interact with the egg that’s ovulated and the embryo, and consider it foreign protein. It also reacts to sperm and semen.”

Chastain says this can result in poor conception or early pregnancy loss.

A TMR diet needs to have the dry matter higher than 60% so the animal can re-ferment the feed. Cottonseed plays a very important role with soluble protein and bypass protein, plus it’s a very absorptive fiber that will increase rumen pH and cud-chewing.

Cottonseed is an excellent fat source, at 18%-20% fat.

“Fat has 2.25 times as much energy as a carbohydrate,” Chastain says. “In the fermentation of digestion, fat doesn’t create lactic acid, like what happens with carbohydrates. You don’t get histamine production that can cause sore feet, swelling blood vessels, etc., and set up immune reactions to increase cortisol and L-dopamine from the brain, which causes problems with the whole system.”

Cottonseed is a good protein, fiber and fat source. According to Chastain, old-time cattlemen from Oklahoma knew if they fed 2 lb. of cottonseed cake, cows would slick up their hair coat and breed quickly. Hair is the last thing to respond to nutritional status. If the hair coat is rough and unthrifty, the nutrition is not right. Adequate nutrition helps cattle shed off quicker, and the hair coat blooms.

Part of the reason for this is omega-3 fatty acids. All fats are not the same. “Cottonseed has an excellent omega-3 to omega-6 ratio,” Chastain says. “Research in Montana showed that omega-3 affects the immune system and the quality and quantity of colostrum — the antibodies in the cow’s colostrum.”

It is also an excellent fat source for a cow prior to calving, to put more fat in the calf so it is born stronger and more able to withstand cold temperatures. It will get up and nurse its mother quicker, he says.

Editor’s note: Heather Smith Thomas is a freelance writer and cattlewoman from Salmon, Idaho. [Photos courtesy Buck Chastain.]