Feed buying strategy?

[Daniel]

Given the drought conditions being reported across much of the world, what are your buying strategies for compound feed?

We've gone as far forward as next March but looking at harvest reports should we be going through to next harvest?

Can't see much chance of cereals prices dropping but I've been wrong before!

 

[Chickcatcher]

@Daniel
The best part of the thread p/MtrSq is that any feed/chick price rise or fall is taken into account in the calculation, to still leave the same margin for all other costs.

 

[Suffolk Serf]

I'm in a feed buying group run by a large Coop for pig grub. The raw material buying is pooled and is run by someone from the coop who also is involved in selling grain whose whole job is to be in front of a screen and speak to others in the trade on a regular basis.
All we do is give him loose parameters every two or three months and he goes away and does an excellent job for us, taking agreed percentages of our requirement at an agreed time forward but never getting carried away.
We accept that we will never be the cheapest buyers but will never be the most expensive.
It works for us, I like it as I don't have to watch the markets and can get on with focussing on production.

 

[Suffolk Serf]

Answering the original question properly though, I think that we have a small amount of cover (10%?) through to harvest 2019 and an increasing wedge backwards.

 

[Daniel]

@Daniel
The best part of the thread p/MtrSq is that any feed/chick price rise or fall is taken into account in the calculation, to still leave the same margin for all other costs.

I'm producing eggs though, and refuse to sign up to a feed tracker, had enough of being a defacto underpaid employee when I produced pigs for BQP!

 

[Daniel]

Answering the original question properly though, I think that we have a small amount of cover (10%?) through to harvest 2019 and an increasing wedge backwards.

Yeah but what does your man think is going to happen though?!

 

[Clive]

Yeah but what does your man think is going to happen though?!

Fact is he has no more idea than anyone else

If he did he would be a very wealthy man !

You rarely hear of good results from selling pools so I doubt buying ones are any better

 

[Suffolk Serf]

Fact is he has no more idea than anyone else

If he did he would be a very wealthy man !

You rarely hear of good results from selling pools so I doubt buying ones are any better

We had to get over that. We’ll never be the best bought but never the worst and mostly better than average. A person watching markets all day can take advantage of (in our case) short term dips.

 

[Clive]

We had to get over that. We’ll never be the best bought but never the worst and mostly better than average. A person watching markets all day can take advantage of (in our case) short term dips.

I hope they are better than the guys who run the various selling pools. The results of which shock me pretty much every season

 

[Suffolk Serf]

I hope they are better than the guys who run the various selling pools. The results of which shock me pretty much every season

I could easily outperform it with my “hindsight buying” strategy.
Unfortunately I’ve yet to perfect the time machine necessary to implement it!

 

[Clive]

I could easily outperform it with my “hindsight buying” strategy.
Unfortunately I’ve yet to perfect the time machine necessary to implement it!

If we had time machines we wol be doing more interesting things than farming I guess

Pool sellers do seem to have an amazing nack of being closer bottom than top and hitting an average is no more complex or genius than buying or selling the same qty every week

 

[Suffolk Serf]

Yeah but what does your man think is going to happen though?!

Don't know. I haven't spoken to him for a couple of months, back then he was quite bullish about most raw materials, with the proviso that world feed grain stocks were still high, so we decided to increase our forward buying a bit. Then we left it to him.