FEED MANAGEMENT ▶▶▶
Shrink control with smart feed centre design
The amount of feed you pay for is often not the same amount that is delivered at the feed fence and actually eaten by the animals. The difference is known as shrink. A dairy farmer in Wisconsin, USA has built a smart feed centre to keep shrinkage to a minimum.
BY EMMY KOELEMAN F
Concrete bunks for receiving a wide variety of dairy feed raw materials.
eed costs represent a large part of the production costs for milk, so dairy farmers are on top of losing as little feed as possible. A commonly used term in the dairy industry is ‘shrink’, meaning the loss of feed in-
gredients, labour and time associated with feeding and loss due to reduced accuracy of feeding. The raw materials that a farmer buys or harvests are not the same weights or volumes that are actually being fed to the animals. Shrink can there- fore be seen as the loss of resources that never have the potential for economic return. “Its impact often goes unnoticed because the operation does not have systems and protocols in place to measure or monitor shrink. However, if the operation is not actively managing shrink, then what starts out as an abnormal loss becomes commonplace and part of the routine cost of doing
business,” explains David Greene, technical services Specialist at Diamond V. He adds: “Without shrink management, losses can mount quickly. For example, for a farm with a 1,000-cow herd, where feed cost is US$7 per cow per day, figure a cost of US$25,550 per year for every 1% shrink. At 8% shrink, that’s additional cost of US$204,400 annually for the herd.”
Shrink control becoming more common There are many areas on a dairy operation where shrink can occur. The four main areas are forage (before, during, and af- ter harvest), in the feed centre, during loading and mixing of the TMR, and in the barn during and after feed delivery. Dairy farms that are located in areas with colder climates or excessive rainfall may benefit from placing the entire feed centre under a roof to eliminate moisture and wind prob- lems. The layout and design of such a feed centre is very spe- cific for each farm and can be part of an effective control plan to reduce shrink. Greene designed the feed centre of the Statz Brothers dairy farm in Marshall, Wisconsin, about 20 km east of Madison. The farm, which is run by Joe Statz, his two sons and his two cousins, Troy and Wesley, milks a to- tal of 4,400 cows on two locations (close to each other). Joe’s
6 ▶ ALL ABOUT FEED | Volume 25, No. 10, 2017
PHOTOS: EMMY KOELEMAN
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50
