Aim for zero feed refusal
By Dairy Herd news staff
| Sunday, May 10, 2009
“There’s no reason (why) we should overfeed heifers,” says Greg Bethard, of G&R Dairy Consulting in
“I don’t think there’s any reason why we should push out anything other than sticks and crumbs and rocks,” Bethard said last month at the Dairy Calf & Heifer Conference in
The cost of feed bunk losses adds up fast, said Bethard, who also is assistant director of dairy technology at Dairy Records Management Systems in
Take, for example, a pregnant heifer that is eating 20 to 22 pounds of feed per day. At a ration cost of $1.75 per day, a 3-percent weigh-back amounts to a loss of over 5 cents per head per day. “That is serious money,” Bethard said. “We just can’t afford 3 percent.” Even a 1-percent weigh-back is too much in today’s feed market, he said.
Design feed bunks to minimize waste. Most heifer diets tend to be bulky, Bethard explains. If you’re feeding just once or twice a day, there’s a lot of dry matter in the bunk for heifers to spill over the top or pull back into the feed line where they stand. A flat feeding surface wastes less feed because it allows you to push up feed several times per day.
