Playing the long game.

It’s getting trickier and trickier to make livestock feeding decisions considering the variability (actually, downward trajectory) of markets and the consistently high hay and grain prices.  I would urge you to play the long game. Think forward 6-12 months and consider what animals you want to be still on your farm and productive at that point.  Things will change.  Concentrate on your breeders, pare back anything that is not pregnant, structurally unsound or you just don’t like it. Yep, these won’t make much in the market, but they cost a lot to feed.  Look after your land, if this means locking stock up or early weaning into confinement, do it.  Talk to your bank or your financial advisor earlier, rather than later.  And try to make feeding as streamlined as possible so that it doesn’t take up your entire day.  I’ve been developing some resources to help make this easier.

Bunk scoring is an important thing to assess if you’re feeding a TMR.  We want the sheep or cattle to have a really consistent diet - a little bit of fresh feed in the bunk at all times. We don’t want it to be licked clean and there to be a gap in their intake. We don’t want there to be large amounts of stale feed in there - they’ll refuse to eat it.  Although when we do our calculations, we might say that they need to be fed 10kg per head per day (for example), sometimes this will be 9.5kg and sometimes this will be 11kg and it will depend on things like the weather. Read the bunk, adjust the amount fed and keep accurate records.

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