Cake Price Tracker

jimmer

Member
Location
East Devon
What have they seen then? The highest yielding herd in dk is somewhere between 16 and 17.000 liters on 600 cows, and i don’t think there is much they haven’t seen 🤔
And how much yield is enough to qualify to the group you mention?
I meant cake as in a processed nut from a mill
We in the UK are one of only a handful of countries that rely so heavily on in parlour feeding
 

Serup

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Denmark
Many ways to skin a banana,
I've used the cashflow savIng to grow a property portfolio that returns greater than your £35.000 and as such I don't need to milk 400 cows.
Then you are particular good at something i’m not. I have three ingredients i get in artic loads. I would get a blend in artic loads and would need something else for heifers, drycows and what not, so at least two different kinds. So instead of having somewhere between 0 and 100 tons i could have between 0 and 70 tons in stock.
My current ingredients are maybe £12k average for a load, so that is what i don’t lock in storage if i used blends. If i had an opportunity to make what you did, by having an extra £12k in cash, i probably would have found them anyway.
How i do it, doesn’t take options away from me because of cash-flow restrictions. I can usually lend more if there are good opportunities available. With a business like mine, it’s not viable to be cash-flow restricted and my bank knows that.
 

Serup

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Denmark
Unreal yield
It is also the highest. The national average is about 11.000 liters.
I meant cake as in a processed nut from a mill
We in the UK are one of only a handful of countries that rely so heavily on in parlour feeding
Ahh yes, then it makes sense. Here it’s almost only robot farms that use feeding outside the tmr. Many also make their own blend for those. The premium for blend/nut/cake or whatever it’s called, compared to buying straights and mix it yourself is eyewatering.
i make a premix two times per week, so on daily feeding i also only have one pile to load from.
 

Serup

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Denmark
Fair play want to say my bank wouldn’t be so accommodating
It not just a matter of calling and say “hi, i just found a good opportunity, can i take out an extra 20k today?”
But if we put it in the budget and i pencils out, they have not said no yet. They need a plan and a good explanation, both on why it’s a good idea and how it fits within the business. But they always want that, i don’t have any “extra” money i can spend how i see fit.
 

coomoo

Member
It not just a matter of calling and say “hi, i just found a good opportunity, can i take out an extra 20k today?”
But if we put it in the budget and i pencils out, they have not said no yet. They need a plan and a good explanation, both on why it’s a good idea and how it fits within the business. But they always want that, i don’t have any “extra” money i can spend how i see fit.
Yeah I agree with that and if yours works like ours then feed rate, expected yield nominal feed price etc is all forecast. It shows the difference with your scale with artic loads.
 
Location
cumbria
Is that just cake in the parlour ? or in a tmr or out of parlour feeders, have you lost any/much milk, thanks.

Sorry, with you now.
Part tmr. Upto M+40 at peak with top-up in parlour. Cake in both instances.
Currently it's M+33 with parlour top up. That's at 4.6/3.4

Again another benefit is I can tweak feedrate while keeping inclusion similar.

Do I lose potential yield? I do think there are limitations to what I do, yes.
 

Serup

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Denmark
Does your milk price adequality reflect the premiums you have to pay for non gm soya? In the UK it didnt and then it was dropped.
No, but Arla has decided it’s the only kind of milk they buy everywhere, except in the uk. We don’t have anyone else to sell to, so no reason to think too much about it. I think it’s a bigger problem that Arla only get the small premium back on a small part of their sales. Most customers don’t want to pay for it, so i won’t really understand the wish to make us spend the money.
 
No, but Arla has decided it’s the only kind of milk they buy everywhere, except in the uk. We don’t have anyone else to sell to, so no reason to think too much about it. I think it’s a bigger problem that Arla only get the small premium back on a small part of their sales. Most customers don’t want to pay for it, so i won’t really understand the wish to make us spend the money.

Are all Arla contracts GM free in Denmark?
 

Serup

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Denmark
Are all Arla contracts GM free in Denmark?
Yes. As i understand it, it’s only in the uk they collect gm milk. In the other countries it’s only non-gm.
They send information that by a given date, we should either start converting to non-gm or we would be excluded as owners. Because Arla are forced to collect all milk in Denmark (they have merged with so many dairies that there is no real alternative buyer for most) they would then buy on contracts from anyone unwilling to convert to non-gm, at “marketprice”, which was never revealed as other than “lower than everyone else”
 

EmmaQ

Member
Livestock Farmer
Yes. As i understand it, it’s only in the uk they collect gm milk. In the other countries it’s only non-gm.
They send information that by a given date, we should either start converting to non-gm or we would be excluded as owners. Because Arla are forced to collect all milk in Denmark (they have merged with so many dairies that there is no real alternative buyer for most) they would then buy on contracts from anyone unwilling to convert to non-gm, at “marketprice”, which was never revealed as other than “lower than everyone else”
It seems buyers in UK are moving toward soya not being used at all in terms of carbon footprint and sustainability if possible, and if not, then the most favourable being US Origin so as to avoid deforestation issues. All US soya is GM. I expect the same to become of Denmark in the future.
 

som farmer

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
somerset
It seems buyers in UK are moving toward soya not being used at all in terms of carbon footprint and sustainability if possible, and if not, then the most favourable being US Origin so as to avoid deforestation issues. All US soya is GM. I expect the same to become of Denmark in the future.
the problem is compounded by a move towards GM in major growing areas, and a move against it, in the food/retailer mkt. GM is already in many of our normal everyday items, which have slipped, conveniently under the radar. Further to that, l think GM maize/soya, is many times safer, than some of the crap, some happily eat, in ultra processed foods.
 

Serup

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Denmark
It seems buyers in UK are moving toward soya not being used at all in terms of carbon footprint and sustainability if possible, and if not, then the most favourable being US Origin so as to avoid deforestation issues. All US soya is GM. I expect the same to become of Denmark in the future.
I believe Arla will ban soya all together in a few years and demanding local sourced feed only.
 

som farmer

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
somerset
I believe Arla will ban soya all together in a few years and demanding local sourced feed only.
that's fine, and could ban many other things, but they need some of the 'nasties' to produce the cheap milk, they need to buy. We need to realise it's a 2 way business, they need us, more than we need them, we could do something other than milk, on our farms, without milk, they are fudged. On the other hand, they can ban whatever they like, if they pay enough.
 

Serup

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Denmark
that's fine, and could ban many other things, but they need some of the 'nasties' to produce the cheap milk, they need to buy. We need to realise it's a 2 way business, they need us, more than we need them, we could do something other than milk, on our farms, without milk, they are fudged. On the other hand, they can ban whatever they like, if they pay enough.
It’s the same problem everytime they demand more, they never pay enough to offset the extra costs. So our own company is our own worst enemy.
I only think they should do anything “premium” if they can sell it with a bigger add-on to the price than it cost. If they can’t, the buyer is not really interested in the premium product. If the consumer want’s cheap milk, thats what we should make.
 
Would love to but several factors stop me, I don't have a mixer wagon so can't roll my own, I don't have enough cows to warrant decent size loads of different products - if I'm wanting say 18t total with 6 different products that's 3t of each which is a faff for the people supplying so it becomes more expensive and finally I feed it in the parlour so would need a way of blowing it into the cake loft which again is a faff adding to expense.
New feeders finally going in in the spring and then I'll switch to a custom blend so I can choose exactly what goes in it and therefore make sure none of the extra crap gets added
i know a few farmers milking 6500-7000ltrs herds who have bought 1 straight to be blown in a 10tn bin or tipped in a shed to replace cake in parlour, feeding for 20-25ltrs out of parlour.

that can save you a lot of money and you can bring into the diet a seriously high quality feed.
 

som farmer

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
somerset
there's many ways to utilise straights, cheaply and effectively, as much younger person, we were advised to feed outside, cake/straights/home mix, in between milking's to get 'extra' into them, also advised more time to catch bullers, reps always reckoned best to feed cake, wonder why, As a student, they fed more home mix than anything, at times we fed cake, there would be large bins, at the back of the abreast parlour, so nuts could be diluted with h/m, looking back, looks bad, but then it was normal, does x4 conc feeds still happen manually ?
OPF's replaced that pantomime. Feed wagons, like the kid, layered carefully, used to chuck out a good mix. When l started on my own, with round feeders, maize in the bottom, conc in the middle, and grass silage on top, that did a really good mix, then succumbed to a mixer.
All those way's, except the mixer, are cheap and easy to do, though time would be a problem today. Straights, or blends are usually cheaper, and better (no crap fillers) than cake, but cake is so convenient ! Complete failure trying KP through the parlour feeders, it wouldn't go through. Home mix wasn't to bad, but finished me off, trying to get it up in the loft, that, after an accident,=1 month in hos ! And never recovered properly, a warning re lifting heavy weights.
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

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Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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