Feed supplements for profit, not for the fun of it

Plenty of dollars are thrown away on the whim that putting a lick out might be a good idea.

Some producers have recently discovered, when they actually did the calculations, that cattle intake of a supplement was as much as six times above what was needed, said David McLean, from national agricultural consultants RCS.

"This is one area where complacency has crept in and now that markets and seasons are tightening at the same time, it is critical to ensure you are feeding for profit, not just for the sake of it," he said.

Mr McLean said there were several key areas to keep on top of.

The first is to know exactly why you are feeding.

"The leading question should always be what is the deficiency we are supplementing for," he said.

"Energy, protein and minerals are the three main areas a producer would likely be looking to address.

"Are we substituting or supplementary feeding? The first is making up for a lack of quantity, or energy shortage, while the second is quality - proteins and minerals.

"With substituting, you will really need to do the numbers carefully because the freight and labour aspects will be so much higher.

"To answer these questions, you will have to assess what class of animal you're feeding and consider that against the available feed."

The second 'must know' is what and how much the stock are actually getting.

"A lot of lick labels make it hard to understand the actual ingredients," Mr McLean said.

"It's different from a nutritional analysis - ask the company you are buying from for an ingredients list."

Once you have those answers, the question becomes is this an economical move?

"This is where you have to understand your costs well," Mr McLean said.

"Is the production benefit in addition to what they'd do without the lick sufficient to cover the costs?"

With growing animals, it's about weight gain but with breeders it will be about body condition.

Another common mistake was not having sufficient trough space for animals when feeding urea, Mr McLean said.

The rule of thumb for trough space is 4cm per head for cattle and 1cm for sheep.

Regular intakes and 100 per cent access is critical.

"If this isn't right, dominant animals can push others out. Their rumen ammonia levels drop, then they happen to get access to the trough again some days later and get an ammonia spike and that can be fatal," Mr McLean explained.

Supplementary feeding can be a powerful investment, when everything is done right, he said.

"But just putting some lick out without knowing what you're feeding, how much and the cost benefit is not a strategy to feeding for profit," he said.