WOOSTER, Ohio — Dairymen have many things to consider when formulating rations for their herd, including nutrient availability, composition, quality, consistency and price.
“There are a lot of different feeds, at least 150 feeds in the U.S., and probably more than that,” said Bill Weiss, professor of dairy cattle nutrition at The Ohio State University.
“You cannot compare feeds based on a single nutrient unless that’s the only nutrient in the feed,” Weiss said during a Hoard’s Dairyman webinar. “We have to price a feed based on all the important nutrients it provides.”
When comparing feeds, it is important to evaluate them within a market.
“You have to consider transportation so price the feed at the farm,” Weiss said. “If it is a wet feed, you should also incorporate shrink because you’re not going to be able to feed it all.”
For a lactating cow, Weiss said, about one-half of the feed cost goes for energy, one-third for protein and 12% to forage fiber.
“With energy, protein and forage fiber, we account for the vast majority of the economic value of most feeds,” he said.
Feeds can be bargains, overpriced or breakeven, and this will change as the prices for them change.
“You want to consider bargain feeds, but that doesn’t mean you want to use them because the feed has to fit the diet,” Weiss said. “Alfalfa and gluten feed are high in protein, but too much of a good thing can be a bad thing.”
In addition, some feeds have different effects that are not easily explained.
“Molasses is sometimes added to stick things together in a TMR, so it has a value, but I can’t put a price on it,” Weiss said.
Other feeds do things that are not understood by researchers. One example is distillers grains, which are almost always a bargain-priced feed, Weiss said.
“We did a study a couple of years ago with distillers grains fed at 30% at a price of $194 with a nutrient value of $244 and it saved $1.10 per day in feed costs,” he said. “However, the 30% diet lost me about one-tenth of a pound of protein per day and seven-tenths of a pound of fat per day, so I saved $1.10 on feed, but I lost $2 on gross income of milk.”
The bargain feed, Weiss said, ended up costing 90 cents per day.
“At 10% distillers grains a lot of times it works fine,” he said. “It doesn’t mean don’t feed distillers, it means cheap distillers at high inclusion rates really isn’t that cheap, but feed it in moderation and it could be a good buy.”
Certain feed ingredients do better or worse than other ingredients for reasons that are not completely understood.
“For some feeds, nutrients don’t adequately describe performance and for those we have to make adjustments,” Weiss said.
Canola is an example when it is priced at $60.
“That is overpriced and you wouldn’t feed it, you would feed bean meal,” Weiss said.
Weiss discussed studies that compared feeding canola to soy to dairy cattle.
“When feeding 5.6 pounds of canola, the cows ate half of a pound more and produced more milk protein and fat than the control,” Weiss said.
“The canola increased the income over feed cost by 13 cents per day so because of what canola does for milk it is worth about $50 per ton more than the nutrients,” he said. “It went from an overpriced feed to a breakeven feed.”
Better quality forages in a dairy ration means more intake and more milk, Weiss said.
“It’s not just the nutrients, that’s why we need an adjuster for quality,” he said. “Relative forage quality accounts for variation, but we don’t know the relationship between RFQ and milk production and it doesn’t work well for corn silage.”
Variation within a RFQ unit far exceeds the variation across RFQ, Weiss said.
“That means if you’re buying hay on RFQ, you can be getting a good deal or a bad deal because RFQ doesn’t account for protein,” he said.
Weiss advises using in vitro NDF digestion to adjust the nutrient value of forages.
“Studies show as fiber digestion increases, intake increases,” he said. “Measure the in vitro NDF for your forage, compare it to the standard, adjust for the expected change in milk production and expected change in intake to determine the price.”
For example, Weiss said, if a forage is seven units better than the average that should result in 3.5 pounds additional milk above the average.
“But the cows are going to eat 1.8 pounds more feed than average, so with $18 milk and $10 feed, that increases income 45 cents per day,” he said. “Using 22 pounds inclusion, that seven-unit improvement is worth $25 in forage quality because it is expected to increase milk production and feed intake.”
Forage quality is worth a lot when milk is expensive and feed is cheap, Weiss said.
“Forage quality is still worth something, but less when milk is cheap and feed is expensive,” he said.
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December 28, 2020 at 04:39AM
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Price feed based on important nutrients provided in ration - Agri News
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