Dairy producers urged to cut feed costs

There may be little festive cheer around for dairy farmers operating in a falling milk price environment, but many producers could cut feed costs by between 15p and 40p per cow per day by tweaking current winter rations.

“An average 100-cow herd could quite easily make an extra £1,200 a month by replacing 3-5kg of proprietary blend with straight cereals at the moment. That’s well worth chasing,” says nutritionist Malcolm Graham from FiveF Alka Limited.

Graham says that some of the factors driving down milk returns have also put downward pressure on cereal prices – so much so that dairy farmers have a great opportunity to capitalise.

“Cereals are a very high quality, high energy feed and full of starch to aid milk production, but do come with a cautionary flag attached. If a diet is unbalanced, feeding high levels can predispose cows to acidosis, which is obviously highly counter-productive.”

Graham said the answer lies in better dietary balance and taking advantage of alkalising feed ingredients to allow more cereals to be fed.


“The alkaline systems we have developed over many years allow milk producers to now feed up to 8kg of wheat to high performance dairy cows, leaving plenty of scope for typical farms to use more cereals. It’s achieved simply by replacing some dietary protein with an ammonia-releasing protein source that reduces the base acid load of the diet.”

“We can ensure excess acids in the diet are quickly turned into ammonium salts, which are then metabolised as an highly effective rumen degradable energy and protein source.

"This improves rumen function, as well as helping to reduce the requirement for high protein feed ingredients like soya and rape meal. Alkagrain can be made quickly on farm using bought-in cereals during the winter – it does not require specialist storage,” Mr Graham says.