Pulverizing juniper into feed supplement might prove useful to landowners By Heather Smith Thomas
A
scientist in the sheep and goat country around San Angelo is researching a new use for an old problem — and might have an-
other income stream for ranchers and landowners. Dr. Travis Whitney, Texas A&M AgriLife Re-
search, has found that abundant — most of us say invasive — juniper can be converted into low-cost livestock feed. In his “Wood to Feed” project Whitney started
looking at feeding juniper leaves to sheep and goats as a nutritional roughage source. He has expanded his study to feeding the entire tree. Whitney arrived in San Angelo in 2005 to re-
search sheep and goat nutrition. He looked through literature and studies done by his predecessors and found that up to a third of a goat’s diet can be fresh juniper leaves, especially during winter. “I wondered if it could be economically viable for ranchers to cut down trees, let the trees dry, shake the trees and use the leaves,” he says.
Juniper versus cottonseed hull nutrition “The leaves themselves are about 65 percent digested, which is very close to alfalfa. The leaves
are between 6 and 7.5 percent protein,” says Whit- ney. The neutral detergent fi ber in mature red- berry juniper trees (the whole ground-up tree) is about 66 percent and acid detergent fi ber about 56 percent. Neutral detergent fi ber is an indicator of intake, and acid detergent fi ber is correlated to digestibility,” he explains. Compare this to cottonseed hulls, which are
about 21 to 28 percent digested with 5 to 6.5 per- cent crude protein, 80 percent neutral detergent fi ber and 70 percent acid detergent fi ber. However, labor costs of getting the leaves off
the trees more than offset the advantages. “It’s like getting the needles from a dry Christmas tree. It’s a lot of work for very little pay.” He started grinding limbs less than 2 inches in
diameter with the leaves to make a good rough- age source. The material was chipped, blown into a peanut-drying trailer and dried for about 4 hours. “It goes from about 60 percent dry mat- ter to about 92 percent dry matter. We put that dried material into a hammermill to reduce it to small particles, putting it through a 4.75 millime- ter screen (nearly 3/16 inch) to make a nice feed