Nutritionist Salesmen?

[Ben H]

Ok, ever since college when I took a "livestock and the environment" class, it has always bothered me that the feed salesmen balances your ration. In this class, the first half of the semester in the lab was re-balancing the rations to use a higher forage/concentrate ratio and reduce the phosphorus in the manure. The second half of the semester was doing a Comprehensive Nutrient Management Plan. My thought has been reinforced becoming a "grassfarmer." So the question is, isn't there a conflict of interest having the feeds salesmen balance your ration? Especially when he's paid a commission on his grain sales? One of my buddies who went to the first college I went to and transfered with me to Cornell, pledged AGR with me and so on, he went on to work for Cargill. He was an Ag Business major, not Animal Science. He decided to do some catch up, got into Adavanced Dairy Nutrition, struggled with it and as I said went on to Cargill. What was it they desired, he could sell. His brother worked for them and had a good reputation as an excellent salesmen. Just stirring the pot a little, I think this is worse in the dairy business.

 

[Grassfarmer]

Fair comment but as long as you are aware of it it shouldn't be a problem. You can hire an independent nutritionist which should level the playing field a little but costs money. Or buy the CowBytes program to run your own rations through which also costs money. Up here we can call Alberta Agriculture toll free # and get them to run rations through CowBytes free of charge. Or you can let a feed salesman formulate rations for you which is probably free and then alter them or ignore them as you feel appropriate. I find the CowBytes program is over generous in its suggestions of how much to feed - that's my experience with our cattle anyway so now I use it but shave off a %. You need to eyeball the cows too and that's maybe as good a way as any to be your own nutritionist - you know them better than anyone else afterall.

 

[PATB]

My cows are on free choice hay/haylage and mineral during the winter and pasture and mineral in the summer. It is up to the cows to balance their diet. Those that fail are so off as beef.

 

[RobertMac]

My cows are on free choice hay/haylage and mineral during the winter and pasture and mineral in the summer. It is up to the cows to balance their diet. Those that fail are so off as beef.

Cull the cows to fit the environment
or change the environment to fit the cows.
Balance a ration to finish slaughter animals.

 

[Ben H]

My cows are on free choice hay/haylage and mineral during the winter and pasture and mineral in the summer. It is up to the cows to balance their diet. Those that fail are so off as beef.

I'm on the same program, no grain.

I use Cornell's CNCPS software, I doubt there is a program out there that does more, plus as alumi I'm entitled to always get updates for free.

http://www.cncps.cornell.edu/

This discussion probably is more dairy related, but I switched focus to beef. If you can balance a dairy cow's ration, beef is easy.

 

[Denny]

Get Vigortone to do your rations they test all your forage that you intend to use then give them the gain your after and they will work out your least cost ration. I had a local feed store do one for me a year ago we had 2 semi loads of corn screenings their ration came back with a pellet as the main ingredient no screenings what so ever.

 

[Soapweed]

As far as hiring the services of a nutritionalist, I'd rather just spend that money on nutrition instead. :wink:

 

[gcreekrch]

As far as hiring the services of a nutritionalist, I'd rather just spend that money on nutrition instead. :wink:

Have you ever tested your hay Soapweed? It is a good tool to use every three or four years.
A few dollars on hay tests has saved us a bunch of money on our mineral mix for our ranch as compared to the general mix for the region.

Years back the provincial govt. would do free sampling of hay and build a ration for your cows. We got the local ag rep to do the ration for us and according to him we were only feeding half enough to our fat cows as far as dollars went. :roll:

 

[Soapweed]

As far as hiring the services of a nutritionalist, I'd rather just spend that money on nutrition instead. :wink:

Have you ever tested your hay Soapweed? It is a good tool to use every three or four years.
A few dollars on hay tests has saved us a bunch of money on our mineral mix for our ranch as compared to the general mix for the region.

Years back the provincial govt. would do free sampling of hay and build a ration for your cows. We got the local ag rep to do the ration for us and according to him we were only feeding half enough to our fat cows as far as dollars went. :roll:

There is so much variety to our hay, that I've never felt it worthwhile to get it sampled. We have a lot of slough grass that can't possibly have much protein value, along with some fairly good stuff. Each meadow has the same problem, and there are three or four varieties of hay in each meadow. Since we generally need to buy extra hay every year anyway, it is just as easy and more cost efficient to buy cake. 20% cake is costing $220 per ton delivered. With our Hydra-bed pickups we can feed both cake and hay in the same operation. By feeding a bunch of cows cake first, it keeps them off our backs until we can get into a hay yard to get bales loaded. :wink: Years ago, we were feeding only hay during a hard winter, and admittedly it was pretty rough hay. A few of the older cows weren't getting enough nourishment, even though they had all the hay they could eat. These cows went down and didn't survive. Buying cake seems to be a good investment, and the cows sure look good and have healthy calves when feeding it.

When comparing our Sandhills to the area north of us in South Dakota which has hard grass, an old real estate agent used to say, "The Sandhills are never very good country, but they are always pretty good country." The hard grass is really good on a year with ample rain, but our Sandhills tend to be more drought-resistant when the rains don't come.

 

[Just Ranchin]

Ben H,
I agree with your comments to a point. I was, and still am a dairy nutritionist but have moved over to some beef nutrition for Cargill. Dairy producers are in a higher value position, so every litre that is produced is dollars in the pocket. Production levels are very easily measured and they know if you screw up. I don't care if you work for Cargill, Vigortone, Co-op or Feeds R Us, if you do not have the trust of the customer, you are not going to be doing business with that account. Having said that, who measures cattle performance? It is almost impossible to measure, especially in a cow calf environment. 99 times out of 100, cost is the driving factor, with little thought put into how the cattle will do. I can balance you a least cost ration using straw, boot leather, gravel and 2:1 mineral and the computer will say all is good. We know it isn't, so just monitor the cows, always keep an eye out for good buys on forages and concentrates, and be willing to challenge the norms of your thought process on feeding cows. If nutrionists that work for a feed company are not looking after your bottom line, then that individual will not be in business anymore.

 

[Ben H]

Ben H,
I agree with your comments to a point. I was, and still am a dairy nutritionist but have moved over to some beef nutrition for Cargill. Dairy producers are in a higher value position, so every litre that is produced is dollars in the pocket. Production levels are very easily measured and they know if you screw up. I don't care if you work for Cargill, Vigortone, Co-op or Feeds R Us, if you do not have the trust of the customer, you are not going to be doing business with that account. Having said that, who measures cattle performance? It is almost impossible to measure, especially in a cow calf environment. 99 times out of 100, cost is the driving factor, with little thought put into how the cattle will do. I can balance you a least cost ration using straw, boot leather, gravel and 2:1 mineral and the computer will say all is good. We know it isn't, so just monitor the cows, always keep an eye out for good buys on forages and concentrates, and be willing to challenge the norms of your thought process on feeding cows. If nutrionists that work for a feed company are not looking after your bottom line, then that individual will not be in business anymore.

Good point about companies competing against each other. I get ticked off with my current job. The feed company has a ration for their goat herd. They are fed hay and grain once a day, usually between 8-9am. Most of the pens are empty by 5pm. What does that tell me? They aren't fed enough hay. I put the rations in a spreadsheet I created for small ruminants, the requirements can be fed with more hay, no grain and a mineral supplement. Naturally, I showed that they can be fed for less.

I will add that we don't do our own husbandry for the goat herd, we pay the company who we lease the facilities from to do it. So we don't have a lot of say, they are a price setter. Finally, my boss is looking at getting her own facility.