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Corey, our dairy's feed manager, didn't call me, but he texted me that we possibly might run a little short on corn shredlage. That's not a text I want to get, but it forced us to readjust rations and reexamine costs. We have a little extra haylage and dry corn for grinding available so the nutritionist quickly readjusted the ration. That was the easy part, figuring out if we are profitable is a little harder.
When I looked at the February milk check, I saw we actually shipped 85 pounds per cow per day verses the dairy computer showing the cows milking a little better than that. We need to improve in that area. Our excuse could be overcrowding due to ongoing construction and rebuilding freestall pens, but we need to be closer to 90 pounds per cow per day. The milk check also told me we had a 3.6 percent butterfat, and a 3.05 percent protein, which is acceptable if the cows were milking a little more. I can't tell you the mailbox price because of milk plant competition but later we will look at income over feed cost and February profit or loss.
Our milking ration consists of 3.6 pounds of dry hay, 55 pounds corn shredlage, nine pounds haylage, 7.2 pounds wet corn gluten, 5.25 pounds whole fuzzy cottonseed, 2.85 pounds canola meal, 10.5 pounds fine ground dry corn and 7.5 pounds other minerals and protein sources. For February, the dairy paid the farm $56/ton for the shredlage plus a $5 processing fee, $7.30/bu for dry corn and $125/ton for haylage. The dry hay and all other ingredients were purchased from other sources. The cotton, canola and some of the soy meal prices were locked in last July and August when the drought started looking serious. Now those prices look about five percent above current protein prices, but how did we know?
The dry cow ration has 9.4 pounds wheat straw, 20.7 pounds shredlage, 3.5 pounds dry hay, 1.5 pounds haylage and 7.25 pounds of a commercial pellet. The heifer rations are age appropriate and include bean, corn and wheat straw to keep the costs down.
The milking cow ration cost per cwt for February was $9.29; however, real dairies need dry cows and replacement heifers to stay in business so our total feed cost per cwt of milk was $12.08. At this time in late March (when I was writing this) we were shipping 89 pounds per cow per day which lowers the total feed costs to $11.38 per cwt. What a difference four pounds per cow can make.
All other non-feed costs, including veterinary service, electricity, heifer raising, insurance and payroll, add up to a cost of $6.01 per cwt. I used principal payment cost instead of depreciation because that is a cash cost every month.
Taking the milk income and adding cull cow and bull calf sales, subtracting all costs, we had a profit of $1.50 per cwt. That is a little better than I expected, but hardly enough to replace some worn out freestalls. Hopefully we can hold the higher production level and work our way out of some high feed ingredient contracts.
On a side note, thank you to all the dairy farmer friends I encountered at the Central Plains Dairy Expo who encouraged me to keep writing. It meant a lot! I appreciate feedback from readers at any time. Please call, text or email. And I appreciate Corey for feeding our cows for the last 17 years.
Vander Kooi operates a 1,200-cow, 3,000 acre farm with his son, Joe, and daughter-in-law, Rita, near Worthington, Minn.[[In-content Ad]]

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