I want to talk about something that I think most of us in the cattle business already know in our gut but have never seen anyone put numbers to. Particle size.
Not the kind of conversation you’re having at the sale barn. Nobody’s standing around talking about millimeters and dry matter intake. But here’s the thing: the science on this is deep, it’s been building for decades, and it says something pretty straightforward. How you process your feed and bedding matters more than most of us give it credit for.
I’ve spent the last few months digging into the actual peer-reviewed research on this stuff. Not manufacturer claims. Not ad copy. The real studies from universities in the U.S., Canada, Ireland, Finland, Germany, Austria. And what I found honestly surprised me, even though I’ve been in this business a long time.
So here’s some of what the research says. Take it or leave it. But I think it’s worth knowing.
The milk production number
A meta-analysis out of the Journal of Dairy Science looked at 46 different studies going back to 1998. Forty-six. Across all of them, the consistent finding was that as forage particle size decreased, milk production went up. The average was about half a kilogram per day per cow. That’s roughly a pound of milk per cow per day, just from getting the chop length right.
Now, a pound of milk doesn’t sound like much. But multiply that across your herd and across a full lactation and it adds up to real money. And this isn’t one study saying it. It’s 46 of them.
The sorting problem nobody wants to do the math on
This one hit me. Research out of Canada found that every 2% increase in cows sorting against the long particles in a TMR is associated with a 0.9 kg per day drop in fat-corrected milk. That’s almost two pounds of milk. Per cow. Per day.
If your cows are picking through their feed and leaving the long stuff behind, you’re losing production and you might not even realize it because you’re not tracking it. The fix isn’t complicated. It’s getting the particle size consistent enough that there’s nothing for them to sort against.
A 500-cow dairy that got serious about TMR consistency documented $50,000 to $60,000 a year in savings. That’s Penn State extension data, not a sales pitch.
What happens during transition
This one matters if you’re running dairy cows. University of Guelph ran a study on straw chop length in dry cow diets during the transition period. Short-chopped straw (about an inch / 2 cm) versus long straw (about four inches / 8 cm). The cows on shorter chop ate more, sorted less, and had lower ketosis markers coming into fresh.
If you’ve ever dealt with a fresh cow crashing, you know that’s not a small thing. And the research says part of the answer is in how the straw was processed before she ever calved.
Bedding isn’t just bedding
This is the one that I think the beef guys should pay attention to, not just dairy.
NDSU data from their Carrington station showed that cattle on chopped straw bedding had 49% better feed efficiency over winter compared to cattle on long straw. That translated to about $93 per head in savings over the winter feeding period. Forty-nine percent. On the same feed, same genetics, same management. The only difference was how the bedding was processed.
The reason is straightforward. Chopped bedding insulates better, stays drier longer, and the animals spend less energy maintaining body temperature. They put that energy into gain instead.
On the dairy side, the research on bedding and udder health is even more direct. UK studies found that bacterial loads on teat skin are directly tied to bedding material and how it’s managed. Wet bedding grows pathogens. One study found that Strep. uberis survived 35 days on straw but only 7 days on sawdust, and that used bedding with manure and urine present accelerated bacterial growth.
The practical takeaway: bedding particle size affects moisture retention, which drives how fast bacteria colonize, which drives somatic cell count, which drives your milk check. It’s a chain, and it starts with how the straw was processed.
The beef operation math
I talk to a lot of ranchers who tell me they started using a bale processor because it was faster than unrolling bales or ring feeding. And it is. Multiple guys have told me the same thing: what used to take two hours now takes thirty minutes.
But the feed savings are the bigger story. Cows clean up processed hay better. There’s less waste on the ground. Less hay getting stepped into the mud. When you’re buying hay at today’s prices, the waste reduction alone changes the economics.
One custom grinding operator in Alberta reported that roughly 95% of his customers became repeat customers. That’s not because they liked the guy. It’s because the math worked and they could see it in their cattle.
Why I’m writing this
I’m not writing this to sell anyone anything today. I’m writing it because I spent a lot of time going through this research and I think it deserves to be out in the open, in plain language, where farmers can actually read it and decide for themselves whether it matters for their operation.
The science has been there for decades. Sixty years of published work, if you go back far enough. But it mostly lives in journals that nobody outside a university is reading. And meanwhile, every one of us is making daily decisions about how we feed and bed our cattle based on habit, or what the neighbor does, or what the guy at the dealership told us.
I think we can do better than that. And I think the numbers back it up.
If you’ve got data from your own operation that tells a story about what processing did for your feed efficiency, your milk production, your bedding costs, or your animal health, I’d genuinely like to hear it. That’s the stuff that matters more than any journal article.
Drop me a line. I’m always interested.