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foxleigh
Ex97
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Location: southern,oz
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cost saving ideas

what is everyone doing to try and stay afloat?
we are
- renegoiating loans now interest rates have dropped.
- have an order to rear 15 or so holstein bulls for 300$ weaned (last 53kg bull sold only made $33.00 plus gst and @ 30 cents a litre think I can value add)
- using waghu much more heavily for a $170 contracted week old calf.
- making people wait a little longer for their money if they dont offer a cash discount.
- using cheaper seed for autumn planting
- cutting back grain mix
- only repairing things that are apsolutely essential to running of farm.
-
25/2/2009, 5:28   
 
MAJESTIC1
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Re: cost saving ideas

We are:

Culling cow's quicker good cow's make £1/kg liveweight

Selling anything that is not pleasing when its fresh anything from £750-£1000

Going to sell some fresh calved heifer's probably £1200-£1700 approx

All these help to reduce feed bill and help cashflow.
Don't think negotiating with bank is an option in the UK no one looking new customers as far as I know
25/2/2009, 10:18   
 
Dairylands
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Location: Straid
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Re: cost saving ideas

Feeding less meal (if a kg of meal costs more than a litre of milk I reckon the cut off point for profitability is much lower.)
Dried off stale milkers - they needed more condition and I couldn't add it profitably while milking them in Jan at 16p/litre base (although I ended up getting more but it still wouldn't have been enough).
Feeding whole milk to replacements (not a big saving in it but calves are doing better)
Use less fertiliser - we have a new slurry tank so all slurry is going on now rather than through the winter. A recent article in the farming press would suggest I can expect higher dry matter, higher sugar grass with lower protein at lower nitrogen levels. Going by the ammonia levels in my silage analysis I was over doing it anyway.
Limed ground - our soil is very high fertility but at the ph levels it probably wasn't getting to the grass.
25/2/2009, 10:27   
 
MAJESTIC1
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Re: cost saving ideas

Are you spreading it with splashplate or injecting/dribblebar has anyone done trails of their own i'm always weary of DARD results
25/2/2009, 14:03   
 
mckeague
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cost saving ideas

Spread about 2,000gallons/acre of slurry after first grazing last spring by splashplate, reckoned it saved between 1/3 and 1/2 Urea per acre. Obviously this was done when cows were grazing daytime only and rotation was approx. 30 days and therefore there was no refusal to eat. Its a saving though

---
Work with Cross-Border Farmer Gps. Still involved in home farm, Inishowen Holsteins & Knock Texels! Herd av. 8, 300kg (its gone up) on grass based diet, av. class. around 82 - 83 pts. Need a good Texel ram talk to me!
25/2/2009, 15:15   
 
Dairylands
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Re: cost saving ideas

Yup lots of cows earmarked for culling here as well some with very big frames.

I just used a splashplate. Some fields with more garss look a bit messy - but there might be some rain between now and 1st cut to wash it in.

My notion would be that trailing shoe etc would be a bigger advantage in warm sunny days. I'm reducing my fertiliser based on past experience of slurried crops looked very forced and as I mentioned earlier ammonia levels were high. This year slurry application is up. A friend told me that on his ground an extra bag per acre was only making an extra round bale - that's not a good return.

Here is the figures from the article BTW:

           0N kg/ha 140kg N/ha

Dry matter (g per kg) 157 124
Crude protein (g/KG DM) 198 295
Carb 98 61
Digestibility 741 753


25/2/2009, 20:13   
 
doircath
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…

Never actually did a proper financial budget till this year.In anticipation of a tough year, and a possible cashflow problem in the later part of the year we decided to do one.
So we got the books out to see where the money went last year.

Then we wrote down all the people we have to pay eg Land lease,bank loans,Tax(unfortunately),drawings(should be nearer the top of list). Then we calculated what our projected sales will be for the year.Subtract one from the other. The bit thats left just has to stretch.

It means tough decisions though. All none essential items can wait till next year.eg No embryo work this year, no reseeding of pastures etc. Every cheque thats wtitten has to give a return of at least 1.5 times its value.
26/3/2009, 10:02   
 


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