overwinter cow cost

[spin cycle]

help me out...doing some costings

500kg suckler....eats 50kg fresh food every day.....lets say 40kg fodder beet + 10kg hay......beet at £30/t....4ft round hay £30....200kg?....so £2-70 /day.....£20/week plus labour £5? plus straw £5.......£30/week ......how on earth do sucklers pay?.....or am i way off?

 

[Woolless]

help me out...doing some costings

500kg suckler....eats 50kg fresh food every day.....lets say 40kg fodder beet + 10kg hay......beet at £30/t....4ft round hay £30....200kg?....so £2-70 /day.....£20/week plus labour £5? plus straw £5.......£30/week ......how on earth do sucklers pay?.....or am i way off?

I had done some but don't have them with me. Give me a nudge tomorrow. This is fag packet stuff, not from reality.

 

[Rod Dumbreck]

And 50 litres of water...

 

[Pebd99]

My costings were 1.10 a day in 2017. If I’d had to buy in silage and straw last year it could of been 3-4 a day.

 

[Werzle]

help me out...doing some costings

500kg suckler....eats 50kg fresh food every day.....lets say 40kg fodder beet + 10kg hay......beet at £30/t....4ft round hay £30....200kg?....so £2-70 /day.....£20/week plus labour £5? plus straw £5.......£30/week ......how on earth do sucklers pay?.....or am i way off?

Beet will not be £20/t this winter and hay will be a tenner

 

[Woolless]

help me out...doing some costings

500kg suckler....eats 50kg fresh food every day.....lets say 40kg fodder beet + 10kg hay......beet at £30/t....4ft round hay £30....200kg?....so £2-70 /day.....£20/week plus labour £5? plus straw £5.......£30/week ......how on earth do sucklers pay?.....or am i way off?

AHDB better returns book suggests 9.5kg hay and 0.5kg rape meal as dry cow ration. I think your cows would get very fat eating all that beet!

 

[Dog Bowl]

Few folks around me who will keep their cows out all winter. Chew up the grass, cart feed out all winter long in feed trailers through the mud. A complete mess by the spring with poaching, ruts and cows that look terrible. Some even ploughing up cracking perm pasture, putting into kale and trying to graze this in the depths of winter.

The mess this ground ends up in is not conducive to a positive public image but more importantly to me, so many hidden costs to the producer what with long term soil damage, expensive reseeds more frequently, the fact that they still have to use machinery to feed some forage out in the field, cows looking pretty ropey come spring etc etc. To me it also seems quite time consuming to keep them outside with fence moves, time spent getting catch crops established in the autumn, carting feed out etc. I can feed, bed and scrape 120 cows in 3 different groups every morning in an hour. I'm fairly happy with that and cant see how out wintering would benefit me any further and I farm on so called dry brashy ground! Just my few thoughts on the matter.

 

[S J H]

AHDB better returns book suggests 9.5kg hay and 0.5kg rape meal as dry cow ration. I think your cows would get very fat eating all that beet!

They should gain weight on good hay alone if they're dry.

 

[M-J-G]

A 500kg cow will do well to eat much over 10kg of hay alone, let alone eat 40kg of beet as well.

 

[Rod Dumbreck]

One bale of silage per 20 cows per day, at £10 per bale is 50p, at £20 is a quid. Plus 25p per day for straw. And 6p for water.

 

[spin cycle]

One bale of silage per 20 cows per day, at £10 per bale is 50p, at £20 is a quid. Plus 25p per day for straw. And 6p for water.

ok i'm well off target....which is just as well....thanks for all replies

 

[neilo]

Few folks around me who will keep their cows out all winter. Chew up the grass, cart feed out all winter long in feed trailers through the mud. A complete mess by the spring with poaching, ruts and cows that look terrible. Some even ploughing up cracking perm pasture, putting into kale and trying to graze this in the depths of winter.

The mess this ground ends up in is not conducive to a positive public image but more importantly to me, so many hidden costs to the producer what with long term soil damage, expensive reseeds more frequently, the fact that they still have to use machinery to feed some forage out in the field, cows looking pretty ropey come spring etc etc. To me it also seems quite time consuming to keep them outside with fence moves, time spent getting catch crops established in the autumn, carting feed out etc. I can feed, bed and scrape 120 cows in 3 different groups every morning in an hour. I'm fairly happy with that and cant see how out wintering would benefit me any further and I farm on so called dry brashy ground! Just my few thoughts on the matter.

I would suggest those guys could be making the outwintering a lot easier & cheaper. A lot doing just that with cattle will place the bales out soon after drilling the fodder crop, then just move the fence up and move the rings over the fresh bales on each break. No need of taking a tractor into the field until the Spring. As part of a reseeding program, it’s not a bad system.

That said, I would rather house the cattle, assuming sheds & machinery are already there, and outwinter sheep, even if it was somebody else’s.

 

[neilo]

They should gain weight on good hay alone if they're dry.

There’s hay and hay. Over on the haymaking threads, there are folk talking about hay that’s been rained on for several weeks still being ‘good hay’. It would be a damned good cow to fatten on that alone.

 

[neilo]

Beet will not be £20/t this winter and hay will be a tenner

I sincerely hope you’re wrong on those prices, but I agree, the op has priced both at top dollar.

 

[Derrick Hughes]

help me out...doing some costings

500kg suckler....eats 50kg fresh food every day.....lets say 40kg fodder beet + 10kg hay......beet at £30/t....4ft round hay £30....200kg?....so £2-70 /day.....£20/week plus labour £5? plus straw £5.......£30/week ......how on earth do sucklers pay?.....or am i way off?

Are they dry . Spring calve . Winter on straw and a bit of silage

 

[onthehoof]

Lot of difference between hay at £200/t last year and probably £50 this year need to take average over long term.
Straw price has killed suckler job last 3 years especially if you’re paying transport to Cornwall and West of Scotland

 

[topground]

Depends on the ground and the cows but feeding on a hardcore pad close to the water trough in round feeders limits poaching. They dont walk far if they don't have to. The cows get a round bale between twenty per day costing this year £23.50 / bale delivered in June here.
Chain harrows, a bag of grass seed and the roller in the dry spell that always comes along in March sorts out the aesthetics and they take their muck with them. Two bales on the fore end loader and one on the three point linkage bake spike limits the amount of traffic. Machinery cost probably the same as if they were housed, same with water. There is no straw to buy or muck to move.
It works for the average size suckler herd but then the average is said tobe between 20 and 50. It would be a different game with 300 in the same bunch.
If you already have the sheds the housing might be easier for the keeper but I am not sure it would be economic to build steel frame sheds for sucklers.

 

[Timbo]

To the op- my cows are costed on a self feed / run out system at ~25p/day based on a 6month period.

 

[M-J-G]

Few folks around me who will keep their cows out all winter. Chew up the grass, cart feed out all winter long in feed trailers through the mud. A complete mess by the spring with poaching, ruts and cows that look terrible. Some even ploughing up cracking perm pasture, putting into kale and trying to graze this in the depths of winter.

The mess this ground ends up in is not conducive to a positive public image but more importantly to me, so many hidden costs to the producer what with long term soil damage, expensive reseeds more frequently, the fact that they still have to use machinery to feed some forage out in the field, cows looking pretty ropey come spring etc etc. To me it also seems quite time consuming to keep them outside with fence moves, time spent getting catch crops established in the autumn, carting feed out etc. I can feed, bed and scrape 120 cows in 3 different groups every morning in an hour. I'm fairly happy with that and cant see how out wintering would benefit me any further and I farm on so called dry brashy ground! Just my few thoughts on the matter.

These people sound like they either don't know what they are doing, or have unsuitable cows and/or land for the job.

I have been outwintering cows for most of my farming life and the majority of housed cows wouldn't look as well as they do.
But they are kept on sandy land and the cows are of a type that can handle weather.

 

[livestock 1]

help me out...doing some costings

500kg suckler....eats 50kg fresh food every day.....lets say 40kg fodder beet + 10kg hay......beet at £30/t....4ft round hay £30....200kg?....so £2-70 /day.....£20/week plus labour £5? plus straw £5.......£30/week ......how on earth do sucklers pay?.....or am i way off?

A 500 kilo suckler cow can’t eat 50 kilos of food a day unless you give them pee wet silage would be the only way to get that much into them