What does it cost per day to feed your dry suckler cows?

[Chae1]

I took 28 tons of stewardship hay to a man with 250 sucklers and they ate it in 6 days‍.

A 800kg cow will eat 2% of its body weight on a DM basis.

So 16kg DM per day x 250 = 4t per day

Hay 80% DM so 800kg per ton.

Will eat 5t per day Fresh weight.

So 28t should last 5.6 days?

Sorry I'm a nerd needed to work that out.

Sounds like a huge amount, but he's correct.

 

[S J H]

All these cheap diets giving the cows enough protein and energy pre calving??

Mine only have good hay, I’m not saying I’m doing it right, but I think some people can over complicate it.

 

[Anymulewilldo]

All these cheap diets giving the cows enough protein and energy pre calving??

Vets love things like that. A suckler cow needs feck all over the dry period. Minerals and a sniff of decent grub. Give me lean cows to calve in spring over fat cows any day of the week

 

[Anymulewilldo]

Mine only have good hay, I’m not saying I’m doing it right, but I think some people can over complicate it.

Exactly why pile all the expense of feeding dairy cows on sucklers which just don’t need it.

 

[Whitepeak]

40 cows and 12 bulling heifers are eating 2-3 bales of hay/haylage per day. What do I cost my bales at? Potential sale value or cost to make?
Cows will be min bolused next month and be offered lifeline buckets nearer to calving.

 

[Anymulewilldo]

40 cows and 12 bulling heifers are eating 2-3 bales of hay/haylage per day. What do I cost my bales at? Potential sale value or cost to make?
Cows will be min bolused next month and be offered lifeline buckets nearer to calving.

I’d go at cost to your pocket selling fodder isn’t all bells and whistles like the experts want us to believe

 

[high plains drifter]

Just feed my spring calving cows on hay normally but this year I'm short of hay but have plenty of barley straw and home and dry treated oats. How much oats should I feed them if I put them on to straw? Start calving Mid April

 

[Anymulewilldo]

Just feed my spring calving cows on hay normally but this year I'm short of hay but have plenty of barley straw and home and dry treated oats. How much oats should I feed them if I put them on to straw? Start calving Mid April

Not helpful perhaps but I’d save the oats for something else and get a decent Mollasses blend to pour on your barley straw. Be cheaper than oats I think and it’s all they need. They’d look grand on straw and Mollasses. Ours have before now when I can’t get hay/haylage to mix in

 

[Oldmacdonald]

Vets love things like that. A suckler cow needs feck all over the dry period. Minerals and a sniff of decent grub. Give me lean cows to calve in spring over fat cows any day of the week

It's not the cows I'm thinking about. It's the milk, colostrum and calf's energy.

 

[Anymulewilldo]

It's not the cows I'm thinking about. It's the milk, colostrum and calf's energy.

A cow in decent (not THIN, but not fat) will milk. Get the minerals and vitamins right and the colostrum/calf energy will be right. And you don’t want them giving vast quantities of milk at calving anyway. As long as that colostrum is there you can feed the milk volume onto her as the calf gets strong enough to take it.
Bit I will say that most of my cows are first cross dairy. So milk isn’t an issue, if it were she’d be off down the road and the calf on powder.

 

[Fat Lamb]

40 cows and 12 bulling heifers are eating 2-3 bales of hay/haylage per day. What do I cost my bales at? Potential sale value or cost to make?
Cows will be min bolused next month and be offered lifeline buckets nearer to calving.

You have to put your bales in at what they cost you to make. Even if you thought you could sell them at double the cost of making them. You can’t do that any way because you need them to feed your cows! Your trying to make a profit on your cattle enterprise, not your bales.
Some people will disagree with this but common sense dictates that it can’t be any other way as you not making the bales to sell.

 

[puntabrava]

Roughly £2500 of hay / 250 beasts £10 each for 6 days. £1.66 a day.
Not daft but it adds up quickly.

I have to take him another load at the weekend and yes was 2.5k

 

[harperfarmer]

I've added rape/soya this year as a trial to see if it improves colostrum quality. Quantity of colostrum was never an issue when on ad.lib wholecrop oats but we have a constant scour problem in young calves every year (fingers crossed we don't lose them they just scour) and we are going to analyse colostrum quality this year. Its frustrating and I think with protein sat at 8-9% quality was suffering. The kg of rape/soya brings it up to 12%. I observe calves suckling and/or tube them to ensure they all get enough so its not an issue of how much they are getting. Time will tell. With store cattle/finished cattle increasing in value all the time I'm happy to spend a little more on the cows if it means an economical increase in performance.

 

[Kiwi Pete]

What does it cost per day to feed your dry suckler cows?

Feed cost only.

Does feed cost count the opportunity cost of the return we could make feeding it to something with a better return than a cow?

Eg we could feed 2.3 calves the same amount of pasture as our cow eats and they earn us X amount per week, so that's how I view their "cost", $1435/ year (this year as I put my grazing price up).

So, their daily cost is between zero and $3.95, all grazed grass.

 

[unlacedgecko]

4 bales of silage and 2/3 bale of straw, plus 3m of Swift/stubble turnips per day for 140 cows.

 

[johnflimston]

Cows getting half and half straw and hay. All bought in straw at £80/t and hay first 2 loads were rough stuff at £95/t and now on some more expensive better stuff. Say it averaged £110/t it would be near enough. So half way between that is £95/tonne for their feed.
They are eating about 10kg of dry matter each per day as they are quite small cows. Hay and straw is about 90% dry matter so there is 900kg of dry matter in a tonne of that feed. A tonne at £95 would feed 90 cows for a day so £1.05 a day per cow.
Bigger cows would eat more than 10kg of dry matter though the limousines I had before would be nearer 14kg.

Do you give anything else in run up to calving?

 

[AftonShepherd]

This was a couple of weeks ago just after I started giving mine a bale a day. Doesn't seem much but they seem content, although I occasionally wonder if I'm mistaking a lack of energy for contentment .

They'll come in late February for Johnes bloods and stay in for calving this year. If calving all goes ok they might go back out for an extra few weeks in future years.

 

[willie waver]

3/4 of my little 600kg sucklers are getting about 50p worth of pit silage and a nibble of their bedding straw. the other 1/4 were leaner at housing and are getting about 75p worth. a month before calving, they'll all get a kilo of blend which will add another 35p this year

 

[hendrebc]

Yes fields bring rested for calving so they will have some grass as well by calving. Calving starts mid April they should be out by late march hopefully. They will gradually get their hay increased until then though depending on how they look.

Do you give anything else in run up to calving?

 

[Andrew1983]

My £1.20 a day for silage would be massively increased to reflect the cost of fertiliser from 2021 to 2022 silage area would have cost £40/acre to fertilise, now £120 plus. It was a dry summer so yields were down. Quality was very good though. So on a bale basis it was costing £4 a bale based on 10/acre, 2022 was more like 8 bales per acre, so £15/bale!! Then additional fuel/net/wrap costs too! I’m calling a bale £32, or pit silage at £42/ton would probably have been half that 2021.