EFFICIENT FEEDING


Advaced Nutrition’s vet nutritionist Debby Brown discusses ways to efficiently feed cows for production without increasing costs to suit the current market


urnout should in theory bring welcome respite by offering the opportunity to ease back on supplementary feed and subsequent input costs to help ride out current low milk prices. On the contrary. In practice it’s all about stepping up dry matter intakes with quality feed in order to achieve those marginal litres which can deliver improved returns.


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“The highest rate of profit is made at the margin, at the last bit of production, the last animal tended to and the final productive input.”


“A farm’s financial averages are made up of the outcome of a series of marginal decisions. The aggregate is the sum of a series of increments.”


“Previous average profitability is irrelevant to the decision being made.”


These three statements were made by USA nutritionist, John Fetrow from the University of Minnesota who was recently in the UK offering advice on how to step up herd management and subsequent profitability. I believe each is really important to consider when making decisions relating to what and how we feed and manage our animals.


Feed makes up on an average 38% of total variable costs, consequently we need to evaluate our feeding systems and cost control. In general, we use comparative benchmarks such as cost per cow or cost per litre. We need to be careful though since production drives the system.


80 THE JOURNAL APRIL 2015 The single best measure of the financial


efficiency of a feeding programme is the following equation


Herd income -----------


Feed cost/milking cow/day


To quote Dr Fetrow, it’s those marginal litres that give more income than average yields see table 1, so everything we can do to add to production by reducing bottlenecks and increasing dry matter intake will give a better return.


Table 1: Costs and revenue by production level Production (litres) Maintenance costs (£) Feed cost for milk (£)


Dry 10 20


Total feed cost per day (£) Feed cost per litre (£) Milk revenue (£)


Income over feed costs ( £)


1.50 1.50 1.50 - - - - -


1.50 1.50 3.00 3.00 0.15 0.15 6.00 6.00 3.00 3.00


Source: Fetrow J, 2015 30


1.50 2.25 3.75 0.13


40


1.50 3.00 4.50 0.11


9.00 12.00 5.25


7.50


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