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INSTITUTE OF INSPECTORS OF STOCK OF N.S.W. YEAR BOOK.
THE PRESENT ECONOMY IN CONCENTRATES
By H. J. GEDDES, M.Agr.Sc.
Lecturer in Animal Husbandry, Faculty of Veterinary Science. University of Sydney.
Most of us were brought up in the imported tradition that the cheapest feed for livestock was roughage—hay or silage—and that the logical approach to economical feeding was to use the maximum proportion of roughage in the ration. This is the basis of all overseas teaching on the feeding of dairy cattle. It underlies many sound recommendations for drought feeding.
By the same token, concentrates were supposed to be costly feeds, to be used very sparingly; necessities for the city supplier's cows; luxury feeds for others; feeds which the studbreeder might use to establish a phenomenal record or prepare his stock for a show, but not the kind that the ordinary stock-owner could afford to use in any quantity. There was a touch of the devil about concentrates. The use of them was a sign of prodigal feeding; it was almost immoral. There was the constant reiteration of a neighbour who averred that it didn't pay to feed "anything out of a bag."
By and large, this belief in the economy of roughage was and is well-founded. Home-grown low-cost roughage is the foundation of economical hand-feeding of dairy cows. The dairy farmer who has on hand an adequate reserve of such feed can use concentrates with profit—to such an extent that the normal variations in the price of concentrates do not matter greatly. To the sheepman also, the greater economy of roughage is of importance.
Any such statement, however, must rest on more secure ground than simple opinion. Comparative figures are required. Feeds cannot be fairly compared by the price per ton. Some are sold by long tons of 2,240lbs., others by short tons of 2,000lbs. A more serious objection, however, is the variation in food content per ton. The proper criterion is the cost per pound Starch Equivalent, or more simply, per food unit. As a general rule, home-grown roughage is about half as costly per food unit as grain. This relationship is apparently a normal one, even in countries so different as the United States and Australia. Herein is the underlying reason for the American investigations into all-roughage and high-roughage rations for dairy cows.
Under Australian conditions a "normal" cost for home-grown roughage is ½d. a food unit. This is equivalent to 11/- to 12/- a ton for silage and 33/- to 36/- a ton for hay. To be as good value—that is, ½d. a food unit—the various grains would need to be obtainable at these values: wheat and maize. 1/9½d. a bushel; barley, 1/6; oats, 1/-; and pollard at £2/18/4 a ton. Even home-grown supplies of these grains cannot be produced at anything like these figures. A "normal" cost for the grains (wheat, oats, maize and barley) is 1d. a food unit. This is equivalent to 3/7 a bushel for wheat and maize; 3/- for barley; and 2/- for oats.
True. these grains are not all regularly obtainable at such figures. Each year, however, one or another does drop to these base levels. Last year maize was down to 3/7. This year barley is 3/-; wheat has lately been reduced to 3/7.
Despite its economy, home-grown roughage has certain disadvantages for sheep-feeding. It cannot be so satisfactorily "trailed;" it does not store so well as grain; it is costly and bulky to transport actually occupying about six times as much space for the same quantity of nutriment as grain; it is unsuitable for windy areas; it is liable to much greater loss in feeding-out. Yet where hay or silage can be satisfactorily produced and used their production should come first in a fodder conservation programme. From the long-term point of view, the traditional belief is correct; roughage is the cheaper feed.
All the foregoing appears to conflict with the title of this article; but that is not so. All the comment on the value of roughage up to this stage has been confined to home-grown roughage. Purchased roughage is in another category. Although roughage can be produced at ½d. a food unit or less where reasonable crops can be grown and efficient methods of handling are employed, it is rarely possible to land purchased hay on a property for anything like 35/- a ton. A minimum landed cost for hay, even in times of moderate prices, would be nearer £3/10/-. At this figure, hay is as dear per food unit as grain. An easily remembered guide to comparable values is that cereal hay should be the same price per cwt. as wheat is per bushel,e.g., wheat at 3/7 is 1d. a food unit; cereal hay is equally good buying at 3/7 a cwt. But a landed cost of £3/10/- a ton for cereal hay is by no means an unusually high price. As the cost rises, hay becomes a dearer feed than grain.
This year oaten hay has sold around Sydney at £12 a ton. This is equivalent to about 3½d. a food unit—as a source of food, such hay is nearly three and a half times as dear as either wheat at 3/7 or barley at 3/-.
Granted that the best buying among the grains is often as good value as purchased roughage, and that this year such a grain is much better value the question arises as to the extent to which grain can replace roughage. One can split hairs as to whether cattle and sheep actually need roughage or happen to have been built to deal with roughage; in practice—so far at least—a proportion of roughage is essential. But where it can be obtained from material such as standing dried-off grass, burr, or straw, the logical policy to adopt in these times of high hay prices is to incline more to the feeding of grains and let the flock forage for their roughage.
Where no roughage at all is available, the kind of grain chosen is important. One's choice should be guided, in the first instance, by relative economy. A simple method of finding out the cost ner food unit in each is to divide the current landed cost per bushel by the following flgures: wheat and maize, 43; barley, 36; and oats, 24.
The next step is to consider the safeness of the chosen grain. All wheat feeding, without roughage, appears to be risky, though many have fed it to sheep without trouble. The other grains are fairly safe. In the main however, some supplied roughage is apparently desirable if paddocks are completely bare of standing grass or burr, even though White, in Queensland, has kept sheep on grain alone. Yet when some roughage is fed, the chief source of nutriment can well be grain so long as this present inverted relationship in grain and hay prices continues.