FeedFIT® into the New Year

Profile Picture of Post's Author Jordan Hunt | Posted December 12, 2022

Season’s Greetings to all of you and your families, I hope 2022 is closing on a high note for all of you. If you were able to join our team at our GPS Leaders Forum last week, this blog might be a bit of a review, but I will try not to disappoint! For those that were not able to attend, I am going to leave you a few breadcrumbs to get you thinking and please consider attending 2023 Leaders Forum. In my general session presentation, I highlighted the nine modules in FeedFIT®

with an emphasis on our newest developed ones, Feed Lean and Feed Costs & Budgets. There is a lot of valuable resources and information within FeedFIT® that we are excited to bring to you and with that it can be a little overwhelming to dissect it all.

So for today, I want you sit back and review the current state of your feeding center. The goal of FeedFIT® is to provide the framework and resources to understand the financials, trace the inventories and track the KPI’s of the feed center. Think of it similarly to what we have done with our milking parlors. There are clearly defined KPI’s and maintenance schedules to follow that are reviewed and scrutinized on a regular basis. In the feed center, we have not done as much of this type of tracking… until now!

To get you thinking more about this I will share some interesting information we have been collecting the last two years. Efficiency is key in today’s dairy world, whether you like the word or not it’s the reality we all face. As we have the chance to evaluate farms in collaboration with RP Nutrients, we are finding a large spread in the day-to-day efficiency that takes place on a farm. One way to numerically summarize this is by collecting the costs associated with mixing feed – Ownership, Maintenance, Labor and Fuel. In the farms evaluated, we are finding a range in total cost per ton of as-fed TMR from $1.92 to $7.17. There are many other metrics being evaluated as well, but for this blog post let’s keep it simple and talk about cost per ton.

What does this mean for your operation? Well, if it’s costing you $5.25/ton to mix and deliver 150 ton of feed per day and your neighbor (same size) can do it $2/ton cheaper, that’s a $109,500 annual difference. The key differences in these evaluations lie in labor and fuel. These are a direct tie to how efficiently we carry out the daily tasks in the feed center. Some things that can be looked at that don’t require capital investment are:

  • Equipment Idle time – if you’re not sitting in the seat, the key should be off
  • Organize work process, reduce the chaos
  • Reduce ingredient delivery interruption with loading process
  • Unloading traffic pattern – smooth surfaces without obstacles (gates, sharp corners, eliminate/minimize turning around, etc)
  • Utilize premixes to speed up loading time
  • Bulk options vs. tearing bags

Now as you look to 2023 give this some thought and be willing to challenge yourself and feed team on what else can be achieved to ensure efficiency and stellar cow performance. Maybe Feed Lean is not a module you have interest in at this time because forage quality or feeding software is a bigger priority, and that is okay too! With several modules launched and available to you, our GPS Team is confident that we can bring you value in the coming year!

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