A pasture eaten calculator is a great tool to help assess whether you are making money from purchased feed, and whether you are using as much pasture and grown crops as high performing farmers.
In an earlier blog, we talked about using a pasture eaten calculator to assess how much pasture and crop was grown on your farm and how this stacked up with other farms of a similar type in your locality.
A pasture eaten calculator also identifies the proportions of supplements and pasture/crop eaten on farm during a dairy season.
The fictional sample below shows how a pasture eaten calculator can be applied. The sample shows pasture/crop is 95.45% of total Diprose Miller intake, and bought in supplements 4.55% of total Diprose Miller intake.
These proportions ratio can be applied to total milk solids produced to give an estimate of how many milk solids are produced from pasture and how many milk solids are produced from purchased supplement. For example, 115,000 kgms x 4.55% = 5,233 milk solids produced from purchased supplement.
By multiplying the milk solids produced from purchased supplement by the payout, you can compare this figure to the cost of purchased supplement and see if there is a profitable margin or loss from purchased feed.
As shown in the sample, 5,233 ms x 5.00 payout = $ 26,165 from 66 tonnes of supplement costing $23,100.
Decisions regarding the return on purchased feed must consider many factors, for example:- the costs of storage, transport and feeding out of supplements (including labour, machinery purchase and machinery repair and maintenance
- the benefits of purchasing feed, for example, more days in milk through cows in better condition or less empty cows or maintaining production in feed shortage.
To find out more about using a pasture eaten calculator, contact your Diprose Miller accountant or farm advisor.
Fictional sample of how a pasture eaten calculator can be applied
