H2.2 Livestock Feed
Describe your organic livestock feed products. Attach labels to this form. Update this form when you add a new product.
Describe your organic livestock feed products. Attach labels to this form. Update this form when you add a new product.
Describe all feed provided to animals, including any feed supplements. Also describe drinking water provided.
Use this worksheet at the end of the grazing season to average the Dry Matter Intake (DMI) from each feed ration. This worksheet will help you find the overall average DMI from pasture for the entire grazing season for each class of animals.
Use this worksheet throughout the grazing season to document the Dry Matter Intake (DMI) in each ration fed to each class of animal. Complete a new worksheet any time the ration for a class of animals changes.
Ruminant animals are required to graze pasture anytime during the year that pasture is available for grazing. If pasture is not available for at least 120 days per year, the ruminants cannot be certified organic. Organic standards also require that animals obtain a certain percentage of their daily diet, or ration, from pasture. Grazing must provide at least 30% of an organic ruminant’s total dry matter requirement. Ruminant producers are required to track the amount of each feed fed throughout the year and also calculate the amount of dry matter that animals graze from pasture.
No, you must use 100% certified organic feed. There are no exceptions.
Many allowed feed supplements and additives are not certified organic. These include products that contain primarily vitamins and minerals. Any agricultural ingredients in feed additives or supplements, such as grains or molasses, must be organic. Feed additives and supplements may not contain genetically modified organisms or mammalian or poultry slaughter byproducts.
Yes, you may store organic and non-organic feed in the same area ONLY if there is clear identification and labeling of feed, and you ensure there is no commingling of the organic feed and non-organic feed.
Dry matter is what remains after all of the water is evaporated out of a feed: grain and fresh or dried forages. Fresh pasture has high water content and will have a lower percentage of dry matter than an equivalent weight of dryer feed, such as hay or grain. Dry matter is an indicator of the amount of nutrients that are available to the animal in a particular feed.
Yes, breeding bulls, animals denied pasture in accordance with temporary confinement allowances (§ 205.239(b)(1-8), and slaughter stock in the finishing phase are exempt from the 30% dry matter intake (DMI) requirement. Bulls cannot be sold, labeled, or represented as organically produced if they are denied pasture. Those animals temporarily denied pasture must obtain at least 30% of their DMI for the periods that they are on pasture.