Waste not, want not (or at least less) -

Obviously, there isn’t much left of that old paradigm! Drought, short hay supplies, increased pressure for land use, and monumental increases in the price of all feeds have redefined what it takes to successfully feed a beef cow herd.

If nothing else, the sheer number of dollars now tied up (and put at risk) by owning and caring for cows demands a heightened emphasis on efficient feeding and management practices. And for many operations, these new economic realities have been accompanied by the need to change what and how they feed.

This all adds up to new challenges and opportunities to stretch feed investments as far as possible. Much has been done and reported on the value of various nutritional strategies, efficiency enhancers, genetics, and new technologies as possible means to achieve this goal. But right now I’d like to focus on an area that probably doesn’t get the attention it deserves – reducing feed waste.

Various studies have tagged on‐farm losses as high as 40 percent of the feed purchased or stored, with many operations falling in the 20 percent range. In other words, one-fifth of the feed most cattle producers raise or buy doesn’t even get to the cow. That sounds like a real opportunity for improvement!

Is this really my problem?

There is a fairly simple exercise that can be done with any feedstuff to estimate the amount of “shrink” or disappearance in feed volume between procurement and consumption:

Pounds purchased – number fed X pounds fed per head daily x days until gone = waste

Where does it go?

Depending on the type and quality of feeds, and feeding frequency, method, and location, significant amounts of feed can be lost in quite a variety of ways, at every point from purchase through consumption:

Original delivery weight errors
Wind
Water and weathering
Birds
Rodents and other wildlife
Moisture losses
Compositional changes
Tires and tracks; spills
Mixing errors
Cattle tossing
Refusals
Bunk heating/spoilage

It is easy to underestimate some of these potential costs, starting with the simple question of how many of the pounds you purchased actually arrived at the farm. Some of the biggest room for error comes when feed is measured by volume, i.e., bales. We provide pounds of feed to supply pounds of nutrients, and just because two bales are the same size doesn’t mean they are even close in weight.

When dealing with trucked commodities, failure to tare often enough can leave you paying for a lot of mud, fuel, or people weight – and not having as much feed in inventory as expected. With some feeds, wind can cause tremendous waste.

Data presented by Kansas State University showed that even with commodity sheds, 8 to 9 percent can be lost between dumping loads on exposed aprons and pushing the feed into a more protected area. If you were feeding 5 pounds per head per day of soy hulls, costing $280 per ton, and had 8 percent feed loss, the effective price of the remaining hulls is $304.35. That takes the cost from 70¢ to 76¢ per head per day – and means someone with 100 cows would have over $500 worth of feed just blow away during a 90‐day feeding period.

Birds can be a much bigger problem than their size suggests. Starlings, for example, can consume 50 percent of their body weight a day! A commonly used figure is .0625 pounds of feed per day, meaning just 100 of these pests would consume 188 pounds per month. Since flocks can number in the thousands, this obviously adds up. And when they contaminate feed with fecal matter, the level of waste goes up.

The impacts of water can be more complicated. Rains can simply wash feed away, or pound it into mud so it is unusable, but it can also add weight back … but in doing so it has obviously diluted the per unit nutrient value. Excess moisture can also leach away nutrients, and promote spoilage.
Even without the addition of rainwater, some feeds are highly susceptible to mold formation or other changes in composition.

Minimizing feed waste

Depending on the operation, there are likely ways to reduce feed shrink during transport, storage, and feeding – but implementation has to balance any additional investment or cost against the value of lowered feed usage.

The following list of suggestions is in no particular order, but each may offer some relief in these times of limited and expensive feed inputs.

Only deliver as much feed as animals will consume daily.
Only purchase as much feed as can be stored effectively.
If making mixed rations, be sure to mix adequately and incorporate a liquid supplement. This will help decrease wind losses, and animal sorting and tossing of diet components.
Keep feed off of mud and snow.
Feed by requirement groups (heifers, thin, with calves) to prevent over‐feeding of lower‐need animals.
Keep a barrier between animals and feed, even if it is just a gate or hot wire. Select bale feeder designs that have been shown to decrease wastage.
Grind or chop hay, to reduce animal sorting and rejection.
Consider taking the mixer to feed storage, rather than hauling feed from multiple places to the mixer. There will be less loss to wind, spills, and tires. If this isn’t possible, plan so expensive and finer‐sized ingredients are stored closest to the mixing site.
Protect ingredients going into a mixer from the wind. Utilize buildings, windbreaks, or stacks of bales temporarily placed for this purpose. Be sure liquid is added through a hose long enough to drop into the wagon.
Discourage birds and rodents as possible. Since birds prefer to eat mid‐day, avoid having large amounts of feed accessible to them at that time. Keeping water in troughs at least 6 inches below the top effectively prevents them from being able to drink.
Look around for spilled and tracked feed, then identify rectifiable causes: potholes, bumps, handling procedures, or location or route of feed mixing routine.
Utilize premixes of ingredients.
Evaluate investment in storage improvements: what is the value of getting a specific feed on a solid surface, under a roof, protected by walls? Eliminate cross‐contamination.