If you are like most producers, at one point or another you toy with the idea of re-designing your feed center. Today there are lots of good examples of indoor feed centers and it yields the question, do I need a fancy feed center? If I take the plunge what will it do for me? Before jumping to a re-design, perhaps an efficiency audit is in order...
The main purpose of a feed center is to protect the integrity of your commodities. Chances are, the single biggest expense on you dairy is feed, the cost of which is usually estimated to be 4 to 5 dollars a day for a lactating cow.
In recent years there has been much light shed on the true cost of feed. I think it is a common understanding that unless you are able to track inventory you can’t measure feed loss and therefore, you can’t understand the true cost of what you feed your cows.
Most would say it is impossible to eliminate feed loss, but by understanding areas within your control, creating a well-planned feed management program, and having well-trained feeders to execute the program, you can properly manage feed loss and truly understand the cost of feed.
With that understanding, the feed center is a big help in managing feed inventory. Some of the main needs to manage inventory are:
From my experience, the feed center is important for many reasons beyond protecting the integrity of your commodities and inventory. It is also used for:
Minimizing shrink is also a reason for good feed center design, but may also be more of a training issue. Having ingredients close to the mixer in a good order will reduce the need for the feeder to feel rushed. Slowing down and focusing on accuracy will definitely help minimize shrink.
Everybody who builds a feed center, no matter how big and how efficient, will almost immediately find ways they want to change it. No matter what situation you are in, you may have the means to change your feed center or maybe not, but the first thing to do is to understand where your financial deficiencies truly lie.
Efficiency is probably the easiest way to evaluate your feed center (and the people who run it). Take time to answer the questions that relate directly to financial loss either in feed or in labor:
After understanding these things, you may find what looks like inefficiency. Now it’s time to ask how… how can equipment hours be reduced? How can I reduce the time it takes to load a particular ingredient?
Really the first step is having the data to evaluate what you are doing. Usually it doesn’t take very many weeks to build that data… it’s just a matter of doing the same things you have always been doing, but incorporating automatic ways to track that information. The following video will shows how you can evaluate this data using EZfeed.