grassfarmer?

[cswilson]

Ok here's one to think about-are you better to graze later and use up your grass or to feed a bit sooner and turn out earlier in the spring. My self I'd tend to start a bit earlier in the fall-my cows in early spring will graze anything with relish-especially the pastures we fed on a year previous-the winter seems to make that heavily manured grass a bit more palatable. Also when we wean early @120 days you can winter those old cows pretty thrifty. Our native grasses don't cure on the stem really well-I have one pretty good bluegrass meadow that would make nice spring pasture.

[smcgrath76]

Interesting topic. How many of us would cut our hay crop when it is only 3 inches high or less, then come back in two weeks and harvest it again? Not likely, but that is how a lot of grass is managed under continuous grazing systems. In our area that means 25 cows on a quarter for 5 months. As nearly as I can determine, with no management that quarter should really have no more than 15 AU's on it. I am not sure that comparing a harvesting situation with a continuous grazing system is really a fair comparison.
We have done quite a bit of math at home and we can run cows on grass cheaper than we can feed them, particularly if we don't want to work for free.
CSW - I would pick grazing later into the winter and a later turnout, but only because we have less crested wheat than native forage in our situation, and by letting our fesuces/wheatgrasses/speargrasses get a better start we can produce more than double the forage/nutrients of a continuous/early grazed pasture that in our area shifts to a blue grama/junegrass mix.

[grassfarmer]

Farmers_son, I think you missread kpb's post - he stated the $20 a ton was for silage in the pit including seeding and fertiliser. As you say though it does not include a land use cost. As a price per area comparison I am paying $25 a ton just now to buy silage cut, hauled and packed which I think is a great buy as we will mix it further with straw in winter to cheapen the cost. I agree kpb it's great to let someone else own the metal!
cswilson, I'm with you on early versus late feeding. Our late April/ May calvers are very cheap to feed in December on silage and straw allowing us to save enough banked grass for an early April turnout. Until we have enough grazing available for every day we don't have deep snow cover (1st April - ? December) I'm not worrying about growing swaths to feed them through the deep snow season.

[wd40]

A wise old (late) Alberta grassman told me years ago that a cow "walks on, lays on, and deficates on 2 1/2 time what she eats".
Probably not far off.

[kpb]

farmers_son, As grassfarmer pointed out I think you missed in my post that the $20 per ton in the pit includes everything--seeding, seed, fertilizer, spraying and silaging. It does not include land costs but I didn't figure that in because, if you are going to graze grass longer or swath graze you still need the land, right?

I could save the cost of silaging by swath grazing but, like grassfarmer, I like to feed some straw as well as silage and mix some mineral in too. My yardage costs are quite low since I mostly feed silage to the calves so the machinery is running anyway and the cows overwinter in a 90 acre field so there is no pen cleaning.

although the $160 per acre cost may seem high to you, farmers_son, I challenge you to work out what it would cost a farmer to produce an 8 ton per acre crop if he bought his own seed and fertilizer, cultivated and silaged himself. If you include the interest costs, fuel and depreciation on the machinery I think you may find it is above $20 per ton to grow and harvest this crop.

kpb

[PureCountry]

Just a note...my friend down the road is a real number-cruncher when it comes to his costs, and he split his depreciation of equipment over the different "sectors" of their operation. But even with doing that, his silage costs him $22 per ton.

I'm sure it has a bit to do with the fact that silage in the Hardisty area only averages 5-6 ton an acre, but those are the numbers anyway.

[grassfarmer]

wd40 "....walks on, lays on, and deficates on 2 1/2 time what she eats". - and so revolves the nutrient cycle!
A comment that I read from Don Campbell's holistic column in Cattleman's magazine comes to mind. He was saying that once you have grown grass it is impossible to waste it - this challenges the thinking of most producers who think of grass as something that grows seasonally and has to be harvested each season or it is wasted. Grass trampled into the ground, preferrably manured on as well creates the perfect conditions for a healthy pasture in future, adding litter and fertility. Don was saying we should look at the land as our bank - in years of good growth you can store this asset up for the future - to be drawn down in years of drought or poor grass growth. We should always look to grow as much grass as possible and only harvest as much as we need as $ (through selling our cattle) while we continue to build our "bank accounts".

[grassfarmer]

kpb, a thought struck me this afternoon relating to your earlier post where you say you produce 16,000lbs per acre wet, under a silage system and no-one in your area can equal that with grazing. That may be true but financially the grazing can be looked at in a different light.
If I can get 100 Auds per acre off pasture with no fertiliser that is probably 8000lbs of wet matter - half your silage yield. But excluding land costs as you did there is essentially no cash cost to this grass. So compare my 100 AUDd per acre at no cost to your 266? AUDs per acre produced by silage (60lbs a day fresh weight which is a conservative estimate I think?). So you are only really producing 166 AUDs per acre more than me and it is costing you $160 (8x$20) an acre to do so - close to that $1 a day figure again!
In fairness we have both excluded land costs and yours would be less per AUD as you are getting double the yield. On the other hand we are all tending to compare grazing pasture with cow/calf pairs to winter feeding a dry cow which has lower feed requirements.
Another way to look at it would be if I took the fertiliser you apply to get an 8 ton silage crop and apply it to intensively managed pasture how much grass would we get?
You obviously have a good system, I'm impressed that you can put silage in the pit for $20/ton all in.

[kpb]

grassfarmer, you know it's funny because I've been thinking lately that silage is too expensive to put up. There's a couple of interesting things about getting everything done on a custom basis. The first is that the costs have not gone up much in 10 years. Does that seem strange to you because it does to me. But I've got records that show the cost per ton 10 years ago was about $17.50, all in. Last year, with an admitedly excellent crop, the cost was just under $20 per ton. I have had the same guy do everything for every year of that 10 so I assume he's making something. I would have thought things would go up more than that over that time span but I've come to learn that if I count on $20 per ton in the pit, that will be darn close to what it is.

The second thing is this, you've got silage made, not on your land, in your pit for $25 a ton. That is a better deal than what I'm doing because you have no land costs. If we say that a quarter yields 1,280 tons at 8 tons per acre then your extra cost over mine is just over $6,000. But I've used my own land, which takes it out of doing something else (like grazing) plus I have to make land payments, taxes, etc. Your deal is a lot better than mine.

Which brings me back to what you've talked about a lot and I've been thinking about--if you can graze your cows a long time in the fall, then early in the spring and buy in the feed for the difference, that might be the lowest cost feed of all for the cow-calf guy. My problem is that I also feed calves. However the backgrounded calves over the winter have not been nearly as good as grassing calves, at least for me in the last few years. I wonder if the best thing to do would be to overwinter cows as cheap as possible, not feed calves over the cold winter months, then buy a whack of calves in the spring, put lots of grass pounds on them and finish them in the late fall. That way you avoid feeding hard in the worst weather months of the year and most of the weight gain comes on the grass.

kpb

[grassfarmer]

The things you propose are moving closer to nature and that is the way to go if we have to compete with low cost imports from South America in future. People talk about not being able to compete because of our cold winters - well you can compete better if your animals feed requirements are shut down as much as possible in winter and working flat out in summer. It could reduce the custom machinery / fertiliser and fuel costs component in your operation as well.
Having said that you can consistantly make silage for $20 - this is the first time I have bought silage this cheap. I am in a cheaper feed area and the opportunities for forage abound around here. I have a good relationship with my neighbours at the colony and they always have at least one or two quarters that have too many weeds or some other problem. Ultimately I am still dependant on someone else farming and selling byproducts (silage or straw)at a price I couldn't produce them for - which is OK as long as it lasts.

[cswilson]

I think as long as there are farmers there will be a cost effective source of winter feed-we buty all our feed and only winter on hay maybe 1 in 3 years -one year we bought heated canola bales and shredded them and swath grazed all winter. Have wintered on flax straw and pellets,straight canola hay,pea straw and pellets,wheat straw and pellets-even during the worst of the drought our feed costs have never exceeded $1.00 per day per cow. I try to keep equipment costs pretty miniscule-we usually try and get our feed delivered to the cows mouth as much as possible. My equipment inventory consists of a 1986 1 ton with a bale deck,a team of horses,a bale sleigh and a combine hopper for feeding grain. We feed 4-600 head of cattle a day with that-I have neighbors with 100 head who 'Need' a front wheel assist tractor,bale shredder etc-I think you can't have more money tied up in iron than in cattle. Ohh I forgot I have 20- 5 gallon pails too lol.

[cowman]

Now I will be the first to admit I don't know much about silage, but I often wonder about the economics of it? Grassfarmer bought silage, delivered in the pit for $25/ton? I assume this is a very decent price?
If silage is taken at 65% moisture how does that compare to baled hay at 13% moisture? How much actual dry matter do you get for your $25? If silage was brought down to 13% moisture(like hay) then in fact you are paying for 791 lbs.? Or in fact $63.21/ton for an equivalent value of hay? Which I guess is in the ballpark for hay this year?
Now I would suggest that might be the way to go if you have the equipment to feed silage and there isn't any more waste than with hay? There are lots of ways to feed hay and it too can be very wasteful if you aren't careful? A classic example is the round bale feeder?
50 lbs. of silage at 65% moisture is equivalent to 17.5 lbs. of 13% hay? That certainly isn't enough feed to satisfy a cow...at least on its own? Straw could be a filler without a doubt...just like it can be with hay?
I think Cs Wilson has the right attitude about trying to do it as cheap as possible and being adaptable to changing feed conditions? One thing we all learned from the drought is cows can do very well on canola straw!
As I said I don't know much about silage, but it does seem strange to me to be hauling a whole lot of water around? That costs money.

[farmers_son]

Cswilson: Our feeding equipment is similar to yours. You could also mention a fork in addition to the 5 gallon pails.

Kpb: I did not read your post carefully enough, my mistake. I would usually not include land costs if doing costing on my farm either but if you are comparing custom off farm grazing costs to your cost of wintering using farm raised silage then I would think you need to include a value for the use of your land to keep the comparison fair.

I think silage is expensive feed but it does capture the nutrients that are available. At some point the cost of putting up feed does exceed the advantages of having it in the pit or in a bale and then having to haul it out to the cows as the cows are capable of harvesting the crop themselves. The point at which cost exceeds advantage will vary from operation to operation.

I believe costs and returns should be expressed in terms of the production limiting resource. Examples include per acre, per cow, per square foot, per man hour. How best to express costs could then vary from operation to operation. I tend to think that for many producers the limiting resource is cash. I therefore tend to view returns in terms of income versus cash outlay. If I can find a way to get the job done using on farm non cash resources versus having to write a cheque then that is the preferred course of action for me and my cows tend to get to do the harvesting if the other course of action is hiring custom.

[cswilson]

Had a friend with a master's degree in an. science stop in the other day-we weere talking bought charging out labor costs-he'd just came home to haul all his bales. His reasoning was labor is a cost if it means you are missing out on earning the money-if it just means two less hours in the coffeeshop a day thenit's just being more productive.

[grassfarmer]

Cowman,
To correct your relative value calculations 65% moisture silage is costing $71.42/ton of DM where hay at $63.21 at 13% moisture will cost $72.65/ton of DM. I know I will get better feed value out of this silage than hay delivered in at $60 a ton. It also is more convenient to feed straw with, mix minerals in with, snow water cows with, hold over for another year as well as having substantially less wastage both in storage and in feeding. Having said that I am not tied to silage - I will feed straw, hay, canola silage, pellets whatever is available at least cost/best value.

Farmers_son, I also use pails and a fork but these things are a lifestyle choice and should be done in moderation! I noticed a real difference on moving to Canada in the amount of this type of physical activity undertaken. Having spent many years forking bale silage to cattle in archaic 1800s stone buildings and using a hand sc****r and shovel to remove the manure at the other end I sure appreciate how easy everything is in Canada - the outdoor corrals, bale processors to bed etc etc. My back doesn't miss sheep shearing or spending 2 weeks with three men to gather the stones off a 20 acre ploughed field! I'm trying to find the balance between doing some of the simple manual tasks I've done all my life and going native - it seems there is a tool for every job in Canada with a motor on it! Exercise is good for you but too much hard physical activity can lead to health troubles too.