4 minute read
Balancing food, feed, and forage for profitable production
LORNA SHAW, RUMINANT NUTRITIONIST, SAC CONSULTING
Having the right nutrition is one of the key drivers for any successful livestock business. In 2023/24, feed costsincluding related expenses such as grass establishment and fertilisertypically made up 18–35% of total input costs for the average Less Favoured Area (LFA) livestock production system with fixed costs like housing and machinery also linked to feeding and production efficiency.
The diet offered will also be crucial to not only managing the performance of that animal but also its overall health and well-being. The balance of optimising production output (meat or milk) and managing input costs is undoubtedly the key to managing a successful livestock business.
The first step in optimising outputs from a livestock production system is to establish production goals. Not all systems will look the same; some may work on a lowinput, low-output model, whereas others may aim for high-input, high-output, and everything in between.
What is most important is that the performance achieved meets the goals set out on the farm to monitor success fully. For breeding livestock, performance will be the number of pregnant animals, and the ability to rear young (including milking and mothering ability), with the number of young alive at weaning being the most important output. For meat or milk producing animals, performance will be measured by saleable output, most importantly the ability to convert feed to meat or milk and measured by average daily weight gain in kg or kg of milk produced (also known as the feed conversion ratio).
Feed conversion is at its lowest (i.e., less food for most output) while an animal is young and going through its growth phase. This is the stage where the animal will partition most of its consumed energy into growth and, therefore, production rather than maintenance. As the animal matures, the nutrients required for daily maintenance will subsequently increase. Making the most of the growth period and optimising performance during this stage is one of the best ways to optimise outputs and use the inputs available.
The next piece of the puzzle is to manage the cost of the inputs needed to meet the requirements for production. Managing input costs is not necessarily just cutting the cost of feeds; it can be achieved in several ways, including:
• Optimising the use of grazing: grazing will almost always be the cheapest source of nutrition for a cattle and sheep farming system.
• Reducing grazing inputs: this can be achieved by introducing more diversity to swards, optimising soil health and including nitrogen-fixing plants, such as clovers, to reduce the requirement for fertiliser.
• Improving the quality of preserved forage offered: more nutrients in forage, less supplementary feed required.
• Tailor the feed system to best suit available resources: this may include forage, cereals or protein grown on farm.
• Increasing production to reduce days to finish: fewer days on farm results in less feed needed over the animal's lifetime.
All ruminant diets (any mammal with a multi-chambered stomach) must include a source of functional fibre - typically forage such as grass silage, straw, hay, or cereal whole crop - to support rumen microbes. Recognising the quality of forage offered is essential for balancing the ration, meeting all animal needs, and optimising nutritional intake and costs. Forage quality can be assessed through laboratory analysis using either near-infrared spectrometry (NIRs) or Wet Chemistry techniques. This is another essential step that should be taken to optimise livestock business efficiency.
It can be easy to focus on the value of the product being sold and the sum of the cheque coming back into the business, but the margin left after costs will be the factor that ultimately determines if that business has been successful or not. Nutrition is an essential factor to keep any livestock functioning responsible for maintenance, determining production outputs and aiding the overall health of any animal to lower intervention. But we should also consider the impact of nutrition on business profitability.
To quote Dr John Paterson, a Livestock Nutritionist at Montana State University:
“The most profitable producers are those who understand that nutrition is an investment, not an expense.”
