Farmer Focus: Stockpiled grass is a winter winner at 20p/day
Daniel Mushrush © Kandace Giffin We have had a great winter so far, but the first blizzard of the year is almost upon us.
It’s not a surprise to get a blizzard here in February, but that doesn’t mean it suits people with cattle.
There are many people whose herds calve outdoors. This is still something I don’t understand. They are preparing for a hard time.
My slightly lighter-weight calves that are alive always bring more than the older dead ones.
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We are transitioning into our most costly part of the year. Feed has gone from “expensive” to “hard to find”.
Usually when I call the broker for dried distillers’ grains from the ethanol plants, I can have a truckload the next day.
I have had an order in for two weeks now and ran out several days ago, so I had to adjust cattle rations.
We just ran out of stockpiled grass for the fall herd and have had to finally start supplementally feeding them.
We use a standardised system of animal days an acre, but an animal unit is 1,000lbs (453kg). So, a 1,200lbs (544kg) cow and a 300lbs (136kg) calf equal 1.5 animals.
Using this maths, we grazed 77 animal day acres off our winter stockpile, worth US$170/acre (£311.79/ha) in feed value from November to February.
To say we will miss that is an understatement. The spring herd also came off its “cheap feed” as animals entered their third trimester and needed extra feed.
They were on dry dormant grass, eating 0.22kg of a mineral and non-natural protein supplement.
This cost just 20p a head a day on land I owned. Dried distillers’ grains are $250/t (£185/t) if you can source them, and poor-quality hay is now getting to about £100/t.
These cattle will now cost me more than £1.50 a head a day.
The silver lining is that I only have to face these costs for 60-90 days, and then I will get some relief. Many others have been feeding at these prices for 60 days now and have another 120 to go.
If I can control costs below other producers, I should be ready for opportunities as national cattle inventories shrink and prices rise. That’s the plan, anyway.