Grass vs cake

Talking sheep here. It's been a largely accepted doctrine that grass is good and cake is bad. I've always thought this is over simplistic because the cost of grass should include rent field maintenance etc.

However ignoring that, with fertilizer at £700 to £800 per ton the cost of producing grass has shot up so 100% grass produced lambs are not going to be as cheap to produce after all.

Is it time to question what the"experts" tell us and accept that feeding cake as a supplement to grass is not heresy and will probably be more cost effective this year. It also means that it is more cost effective to feed lambs that are going to be worth £3 per Kg than rather than £2.50 given they have the same conversion rate, although I expect the better lambs will convert better.
 

Agrivator

Member
Lucky is the farm that can produce good quality stock off grass alone - regardless of the cost of fertiliser.

And you are right, home produced grass and silage etc requires land, labour and machinery. Bought-in concentrates ( used efficiently) only need a few cubic metres of storage space. And they tend to compensate for any deficiencies in home-grown grass.
 
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Humble Village Farmer

Member
BASE UK Member
Location
Essex
The fertiliser cost of the cake is going to be a consideration in the next couple of years. If wheat stays at these levels cake is going to be even more expensive.

Grass still grows without chemical fertiliser. We never use any, it doesn't run out of steam after a few weeks like when the fert runs out and you feel you have to give it another dose.
 

Bury the Trash

Member
Mixed Farmer
'Free' N can be got from clover types but p and k ultimately other basics will deplete relative to what amount is removed and need topping up as it goes of in the animals there's alot of P (and Calcium ) in bones ,simply.
Thats the facts of farming im afraid.

and if you are a livestock producing grass /forage growing only farm ......buying in and Feeding concentrate actually is adding fertiliser as well dont forget.
 

Derrick Hughes

Member
Location
Ceredigion
Hardly ever used Nitrogen on sheep ground , it did help that we had a fair bit of conservation ground , that gave us good clean aftermath for lambs , then stubble turnips , never used cake
 

neilo

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Montgomeryshire
Even on grazing ground, you need to replace the nutrient offtake, or you will be steadily depleting reserves. This place was set stocked for years before I arrived, with no fert inputs at all on the grassland. P&K indices were 0 or 1, across the board, pH was 5.1-5.4 and grass was all old twitch and buttercups. That won't grow or finish stock.

Now, after liming & feeding it some, and reseeding where I can, I can grow lambs as well on some fields as well as they do on ad-lib pellets in a shed. Unfortunately I don't have enough of those acres though, and still have plenty of sh*te that I can't improve.

Even with a tripling of fert costs, grazed grass is still a fraction of the cost per kg of DM of bought in concentrates, which are also climbing in cost of course.
 

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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