Feed efficiency is certainly a buzzword in the dairy industry today. Is it the goal we all should be striving for?
From a nutritionist's standpoint, Brian Perkins from Diamond V Technical Services explained that feed efficiency is how an individual feed is digested and absorbed. The better-suited term may be dairy efficiency, he told the audience at the Leading Dairy Producers Conference in Wisconsin last week, as dairy efficiency represents the transformation of TMR into milk.
The nutrient requirement of a cow has two primary components: maintenance and production. The main influence on feed intake after maintenance is milk. Production pulls intake, he explained; feed intake does not pull production. The nutrient requirements per pound of milk are the same whether you are going from 50 to 51 pounds or 80 to 81 pounds.
What you want to do is dilute maintenance costs out with more production. Think about a cow like it is a McDonald's, Perkins said. The mortgage payment for the restaurant doesn't change, no matter how many burgers they flip. What a farm needs to do is ship as many hundredweights as they can to spread out those maintenance costs.
Perkins advises you know your cost per pound of dry matter so you can calculate income over feed costs. "Income over feed costs is more important than feed efficiency," he said. "It's not about having the highest feed efficiency on the block."
So, are high feed costs always a bad thing? No, he said, because it means cows are eating a lot and producing a lot. There are factors, however, that can be controlled to prevent you from paying more than necessary. Perkins gave the following suggestions:
- Minimize feed shrink and waste
- Minimize feed mixing errors
- Optimize the use of pushouts (refusals)
- Don't overfeed nutrients
- Minimize cow maintenance costs by providing protection from extreme weather
- Optimize milk production, components and animal health
