Tractorman810 Posted February 9, 2011 Share Posted February 9, 2011 after watching a bit on the local news recently about rising costs in oil and animal feeds in particular for farmers, i was wondering, how do most people now feed their livestock , home made grown stuff, or bought in pellets from say mole valley or bocm .when we farmed a good 50 % of our own grown wheat/barley was kept in the big permastore silo providing us with arround a years worth of "meal" mix for the pigs , all done in our own grinder in the grannary beside the silo, this was either sacked up and trailered to the old units, or with the later units ones blown into a mini feed silo for auto feeding do many farms use their own arable crops for this now, or has everyone nigh on gone to buying in feed?? given the costs of buying in feed, does this still work out cheaper than growing your own, or does the current cost per ton of selling the wheat pay better Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tommy Gough Posted February 9, 2011 Share Posted February 9, 2011 I wouldnt know about prices but i know of a few farms around here who grow wheat for feeding. We dont ourselves though. Ours comes from two suppliers: Mole Valley for in the parlour and A.Nichols for outside with the silage. The outside also gets mixed with some high energy pellets that come in 25KG bags instead of bulk. The outside is also mixed with a little seaweed (another supplier for that) and fed to all of the youngstock in the mornings. it may seem a faff to some of you, possibly the non farmers, but it seems to work well. A downside is that there are a lot of reps to keep in touch with which can waste time at silage/straw time when theres a lot to organise and keep track of. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gav836 Posted February 9, 2011 Share Posted February 9, 2011 We buy in a protein meal mix for our suckler herd along with minerals but we also feed them on home grown maize silage and baled silage along with ammonia treated straw, unfortunately we've now run out of the last two so have bought in rejected sugar beet as all ours was accepted, they also get ordinary straw for feeding on a daily basis along with stockfeed spuds. I can't remember what Protein Feeds charge for the meal but I know it isn't cheap Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Farmermilkin82.050 Posted February 9, 2011 Share Posted February 9, 2011 we buy most of our feed in bags mostly for the calves e.g. dairy nuts calf nuts ( lakeland dairy nuts ) And we get a ton of nuts in our trailer for the heifers and bullocks out in the fields. The heifers also have a bucket of "lick" which I have been told gives the heifers protein or something like that!!! Not forgetting the baled silage we have about 190 bales and there are nearly all gone so every year we buy bales off a neighbour. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tractorman810 Posted February 9, 2011 Author Share Posted February 9, 2011 i know cattle feeds are slightly different,the reason i asked was the article was actually about pig farmers in the region. now i know these are getting pretty rare to find in the uk, every time i go up suffolk another 2 or 3 farms have gone , ok pork prices aint high, but the 3 they spoke to were all blaming feed prices,along with derv/oil prices, but mainly feed cost and all 3 appeared to have arable land to grow crops on, one had a combine in the barn behind him as he spoke so he has that option to make his own Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
masseyjack590 Posted February 9, 2011 Share Posted February 9, 2011 we use our own oats and baled silage for feeding we only buy in a few bags of minerals Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
schw84 Posted February 9, 2011 Share Posted February 9, 2011 We feed all of ours to pigs to try and make more money out of it....... up till end of summer times for Pigs were ok... but the the euro has now got weaker so pork prices are down.... We dont grow enough to feed our pig heard as my father increased it slightly and had low mortality rates... wheat is over £200 per tonne and you cant make money with the price of pork at present. I know that Peter Criton has 2 sales soonish of big sow heards in east anglia where the out door boys have had enough... our next door neighbour used to only do weaners, but last year got fed up with being messed around by the fattener that he spent £600k on 2 massive fattening sheds and now takes them through to bacon weight. he has about 3000 acres so grows enough to feed them.... It gets better we sell the female meat to the local wholesaler who supplies the butchers, this means the boys go to Cheal meats on a lorry every 2 weeks and end up in Tesco and about 75 females go to the local slaughter house each week for the butcher.... we take the females on a tractor drawn trailer so they can go in one go, the lorry drivers laugh cos some weeks if its a slow week there could only be 30 on there compared to their 150 odd, anyway theres more and more people who turn up with one pig..... Now that is where the money is.... bloomin Townies!!!! All in all, its getting harder to make money with livestock, and all these stupid townies who have one pig are probably the smart ones.... the days of cheap food are over.... livestock farmers are selling up all over europe, its the supermarkets fault and we all will be worse off for it..... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ploughmaster Posted February 9, 2011 Share Posted February 9, 2011 i know cattle feeds are slightly different,the reason i asked was the article was actually about pig farmers in the region. now i know these are getting pretty rare to find in the uk, every time i go up suffolk another 2 or 3 farms have gone , ok pork prices aint high, but the 3 they spoke to were all blaming feed prices,along with derv/oil prices, but mainly feed cost and all 3 appeared to have arable land to grow crops on, one had a combine in the barn behind him as he spoke so he has that option to make his own The thing is, when pigs weren't making big profits to start with, and the price of wheat shoots up to £200 a tonne, there is probably more profit in slaughtering the pigs and selling their wheat at £200, rather than feed it to the pigs which still don't make any more money than they were before. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
schw84 Posted February 9, 2011 Share Posted February 9, 2011 The problem is there is a lot of time and money invested in livestock.... if you kill out, you may never get back in again.... if you start from scratch its 9 months to a year before you see any return on your money etc.... plus when wheat prices plummit do you then get out of that? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jakescot Posted February 10, 2011 Share Posted February 10, 2011 All in all, its getting harder to make money with livestock, and all these stupid townies who have one pig are probably the smart ones.... the days of cheap food are over.... livestock farmers are selling up all over europe, its the supermarkets fault and we all will be worse off for it..... yes well thats part of it, the govts and the comon agricultural policy are also to blame .....the CAP is rotten to the core with far too many rules and regulations being imposed on us all and too many folk siphoning off money that should go to farmers. We have this type of discussion regularily but as yet can`t seem to find any sensible and achievable answers................off topic there sorry Sean to the feed prices I can`t comment on pig producers but i can tell you one guy in wigtownshire used to buy 1800 cattle a year , grew silage and cereals to feed them , has now sold all his cereals,bought less and only fed them silage with a little hard feed.........the price of the fat cattle isn`t high enough he says to make money. the problem highlighted above by schw84.................how he`s going to get back into big numbers of cattle remains an issue...perhaps he`s not too worried .........up horn down corn and vice versa . feed to us for cattle and sheep has rocketed too , I can`t grow enough to be self sufficient so perhaps a radical rethink is needed.........who knows , in our wet west where harvesting the cereal is the biggest problem ,perhaps we need to think more about forage rape , kale etc. One thing is for sure with the price for sheep feed quoted to me at £ 224 a tonne , cattle hi magnesium rolls at £212 and beef cake at £208 , theres going to be no cheap winter feed for me and this will leave little money later in the year for doing any reinvestment...........another age old problem. Add the fuel and fertiliser price to that and its getting ridiculous. perhaps we do need to have a pig or two, a few hens for eggs and a bigger than current veg plot to try and minimise the effects of these rising food prices... at least as farmers ,we can do this for ourselves. its a funny old game but long term farming , well at least food production has to be a good industry to be in.With a rising global population, food is going to become scarce,perhaps wont be too long until were getting paid more to grow more , intensify and all that goes along with that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tractorman810 Posted February 10, 2011 Author Share Posted February 10, 2011 The thing is, when pigs weren't making big profits to start with, and the price of wheat shoots up to £200 a tonne, there is probably more profit in slaughtering the pigs and selling their wheat at £200, rather than feed it to the pigs which still don't make any more money than they were before. spoken by a non livestock farmer?? i dont know you tell me , as mentioned above, wheat prices rise and fall, they crash where does your money come from. ok not everyone has enough acreage to grow their own, but my question was how many try to grow as much as they can to keep costs down still or infact as mentioned above, all of their own till they got more in, we farmed pigs for 100 odd years till the familly sold up, all the time growing our own and selling of the rest,including loosing the whole lot to swine flu with a 3 year lack of pigs after that , this seems to be slowly becoming a dying act from what i can see, and its not just feed prices as seems to be the current blame point, meat prices in total are also paying a ig part, and the article seemed to totaly ignore that Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jakescot Posted February 10, 2011 Share Posted February 10, 2011 sean, yes you are correct, globally the price meat is fetching is too low to make it highly profitable for UK and much of europe to make it profitable and if meat get much more expensive folks will stop buying it , it will become a very luxury item then the type of livestock numbers we currently have wont be around and then what do we all do?...................... there used to be 90 pigs here,never in my day though some of the old pig houses are still around........ they made cheese you see so the whey was surplus......from the ayrshire cow dairy.many farms in this area did and the dairymen often moved on if they had a liking for making cheese to a "cheese dairy" if you happened not to do so.My family were dairy folks before they got the farm tenancies in their own right. I`d love to have a farm that was capable of growing everything I needed with some surplus to sell occasionally being even better.I`d then be able to have some BIG fancy kit even if it was only on whilst the contractors did the job........ round here I`d say 85% of us don`t grow our own cereal ,some farmers grow some but very very few , less than 5% I`d estimate would grow enough to feed their stock. As for pig farms I only knew of 4 large units , 2 over in wigtownshire , Dourie farming,messrs Christie and Robinsons of Culbae one sold them a few years back and can`t tell you whether the other one still has pigs or not...The 3rd at Lockerbie , I`ve forgotten his name...... was taken out by foot and mouth , I don`t know if he re stocked.One of my vets was at the slaughter..............chilling to hear him recount that story.The 4th was buccleugh estates and I think they sold them too as uneconomic a fair few years back. if we only had a crystal ball and something to show us the way forward things might be easier Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
archbarch Posted February 13, 2011 Share Posted February 13, 2011 like everything in farming companies and research turn simplicity into science. I would guess labour cost has alot to do with less on farm milling plus feed companies like agronomists have a way of making farmers think they wont make a profit unless things are precise. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MJB1 Posted February 13, 2011 Share Posted February 13, 2011 yes feed costs are up . how do you expect me to get a new lorry if the prices don't go up , a few £ more would be nice as i'd then get a leather interior ;D seriously the price is increasing , the straights market is quite pricey & with some comodity's being in short supply especially as Argentina has dramaticly cut their exports on soya to ramp their domestic price up & brazil cant just fill the gap that quickly. i do see more mill n mix lorries about but the farmer still has to pay for the raw material to be added to his home grown barley/oats or wheat , MVF are really pushing their blended products at the moment , but because of the straights prices it's now proving to be as expensive as a nut / pellet / roll product . some farmers have stopped their dairy fed ration altogether & prefer to up the forage fed requirements with minerals & a smaller ammount of nuts being mixed in with it . only one farm this year have i seen fodder beet as well , that was up near Cardigan although i dont know if that was home grown or bought in Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tractorman810 Posted February 13, 2011 Author Share Posted February 13, 2011 like everything in farming companies and research turn simplicity into science. I would guess labour cost has alot to do with less on farm milling plus feed companies like agronomists have a way of making farmers think they wont make a profit unless things are precise. see to us the labour costs were quiet low, the whole system was pretty much automated with ours, took 1 guy half a day to sack up the required feed sacks for the week ,that included the ones for my grandads farm as that was fully manual feeding, the mixing/ crushing ect was a 1 buton push and leave it, used to fill the mini silo its self, i have noticed a good few more feed beet appearing this way over the last few years, a beet harvestor was a pretty rare thing to see this way, however i know of 2 maybe 3 down here now ,1 is a farmers own machine ,nice almer salmon, the other two are tims and i belive they both belong to a contractor, so clearly people are starting to grow there own again . as for you marcus, leather seats and a booster cushion dont mix, brake heavily and you will be of the front of the seat ,stick to cloth, and help the farmers keep going by keeping prices down Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
archbarch Posted February 13, 2011 Share Posted February 13, 2011 i know the pig industry is different, but for the beef industry rising feed costs cant be all bad, logically a shift to native breeds that finnish on grass can only be good thing in my mind. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MJB1 Posted February 13, 2011 Share Posted February 13, 2011 as for you marcus, leather seats and a booster cushion dont mix, brake heavily and you will be of the front of the seat ,stick to cloth, and help the farmers keep going by keeping prices down why you cheeky ? i havent had my booster seat for years ................tris hasn't given it back when farmers give us bulk delivery drivers the same nice clean concrete to stand on like milk drivers do then & just then i might , but if you saw the cr^p & $h1( we sometimes have to put our pipes down into & walk in, then trapse it back into the cab , just for farmers to worry about desease precaution when they've sometimes got no one to blame except themselves i might settler for the cloth seats , but seriously sean , if you saw some of the $h19 hole farms i deliver to seriously you'd never drink milk again Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MJB1 Posted February 13, 2011 Share Posted February 13, 2011 and for any eco warriors who might be reading this , organic farms are the worst offenders Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tractorman810 Posted February 13, 2011 Author Share Posted February 13, 2011 i have been in some marcus, many a bad farm arround on dartmoor, and the mid cornwall area, nothing but mud and gravel for yards, work know i dont mind that sort of place so i used to get them jobs Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jdeere6910 Posted February 13, 2011 Share Posted February 13, 2011 i know the pig industry is different, but for the beef industry rising feed costs cant be all bad, logically a shift to native breeds that finnish on grass can only be good thing in my mind. You make a good point archbarch, however we keep beef cows, we have 5 feilds of grass totaling about 40 acres, the rest of our land is down to cereals. Our cows fit perfectly as they eat the grass but their progency need feeding and we dont have the acreage to grass rear them. They also eat all our own barley which follows our crop rotation. Also we rear black and white bulls, there is no way dairy bull calves can be profitable on grass as they are really struggling on cereals currently. They might now be making much money however they do form a vital and stable part of our cashflow for the year. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.