Feed prices rise again
12 02 2008I’ve just come back from the livestock feed merchant where I had a very unpleasant surprise when I went to pay for a new batch of poultry feed.
Prices have risen again — and very steeply.
Organic layers pellets have gone from £404 a tonne to £499.60 a tonne. That’s a 23.7 per cent rise in seven weeks and is on top of a rise of 3.5 per cent four weeks before that.
Organic mixed corn ( a mix of wheat, oats and barley) has gone from £416 a tonne to £478.40 a tonne, a 15 per cent rise.
Last February, we were paying £387.50 per tonne for layers pellets and £310 per tonne for mixed corn.
Layers pellets are now 28.9 per cent higher year on year, while mixed corn is 54.3 per cent higher.
There’s no way we can absorb rises like that so the cost will be have to be passed on to the people who buy our eggs, and that’s not going to go down well with some as it will be the third time we’ve had to put egg prices up in the past year.
The feed merchant also warned me to expect similar rises in the price of rolled barley and sow rolls, which will have even more drastic consquences.
We already make a small loss on weaners sold for fattening while our pedigree weaners for breeding just break even.
We haven’t been able to push prices higher as people up this way won’t pay any more for pigs, even if they are pure-bred animals from good lines.
Even more unfortunate is that fact that people see cheapness as everything and think a cross-breed weaner of uncertain provence for £10-20 in the local paper is better than pure-bred animal with excellent provenance at £55. (And those £10-20 weaners are sold far below production cost even for them.)
We haven’t the margins of a business, so we can’t carry a loss.
Egg sales have helped subsidise the below production costs of the meat weaners, but with chicken feed rocketing too we’re going to have to do some serious thinking.
Cheap prices for pigs, pork, chickens and eggs can’t be sustained in the face of rocketing livestock feed prices, rising oil prices and rising energy prices, but the consumer still expects everything to be cheap.
Something has to give.
I haven’t picked up feed for two weeks - no doubt the price will have risen when I go tomorrow. I put the price of eggs up a month ago and no-one murmured but they might if I have to do again. It isn’t helped by the fact that some local producers haven’t raised theirs at all - they must be making a loss and that’s not
part of my game plan. I don’t expect to make a fortune either, just a reasonable return for a top quality product.
I was talking to an organic dairy farmer this morning. He said that with the rise in organic milk last summer, it was financially worthwhile for a short period. Unfortunately organic feed has since shot up in price and they are back towhere they were.
As you say, something’s got to give.
do you have enough space to grow your own feed at all?
We are getting that here too–mostly it’s land being converted out of grains and into corn for ethanol. And corn being sold for ethanol, not food.
GRRRRR.
Ironically, in my new job, we have a huge grant to look at biofuels.
I am having a hard time with that, since I think they are an unsustainable fad.
We grow a lot of vegetables, including many on a field scale, but don’t have enough land to grow cereal crops.
Ideally, we’d have five acres that would include the house, fruit and vegetables, outbuildings, woodland, bee hives, lambing pens, and the like. Then we’d have six 2.5 to 5-acre fields so we could run a six-year crop rotation (grass for two years, potatoes, legumes, brassicas, cereals and back to grass). We’d also have a burn/stream/creek with fishing rights. Then we could have a boar and four sows, a small flock of sheep, a flock of chickens and a house cow. All up, 20 to 35 acres.
We’ve seen a few places like that but they’ve either been too remote (especially for the Other Half who needs a secondary school within a reasonable distance as she’s a teacher) or too expensive.
It took five years to find the croft, so it would probably take a lifetime to find a farm with everything!
Where do you get your feed from Stonehead?
We’ve not been over to Norvite for a few weeks but hope to go this week sometime as we need to stock up…. that all depends on whether our cars are back on the road or not though.
I know this is probably stupid, but maybe you can look for organic feed online, and ask people you know how to rate online feed ?
I use the cheapest of four local or reasonably local feed merchants, plus I keep an eye on internet prices. The problem is that most of the internet suppliers are based in England and it costs upwards of £88 a pallet for delivery (a pallet is one tonne).
At the moment, chicken feed prices are slightly cheaper online but pig feed prices are higher online. As I buy more pig feed than chicken, using online sources would be more expensive for now.
Ah ok, well I know nothing about chickens or pigs. The last time my mother or grandparents had chickens, was over 45 years ago. When a neighbor gave my uncle and mother two colored chicks for Easter. They grew up to be roosters and they had them a year or two. I think they mostly survived on feed, which back then I am sure was a ten cents a pound. And leftovers. They were pets. And one of them spent most of his time in a bird cage that had come with the bird. After that they ended up their grandparents farm, I don’t know if they were eaten. They also had a boxer at the time, who was a puppy and raised with the two chickens and a female duck called Quack Quack. Rusty the dog loved the birds, and even saved the chickens once from stray dogs.
The duck loved Rusty best, and would follow him every where. And would start fussing up a storm if the dog escaped. Quack Quack also chased cars with the dog, and when the dog got sick of Quack Quack. He would put his paw of him, and put plop the duck down. And the duck would just go flat. I know they also liked to play chase me. I think ducks will play. The duck would also let Rusty pick her up, and carry her. He never hurt her, though. The duck ended up a local farm after a few years. I think as a pet.
Have you ever had a dog bond with chickens or ducks ?
Pigs I know dogs don’t get along with. I have heard of ducks and dogs being friends, even geese. Espically labs, I think they like to play fetch. I have seen a lab fetch a live duck, and then let them go. And for a pet duck to go and sit on the back of a lab while swimming.
How ironic then, that the term ‘ chicken feed’ used to mean ‘almost nothing’ !
The free range eggs I buy from my local farmer have increased in price, but nobody quibbles… I’m sure everyone understands the problems.
Unfortunately, the increase in fuel costs affects almost every aspect of life somehow or other.
Unfortunately I think a lot of people don’t understand the problems. They are used to cheap food and don’t see why that has to change.
It has got to the point with feed prices going so high that our next door neighbour will not buy anymore barley for his fattening cattle as he would be making a loss so he is just keeping them on silage until august when his barley will be ready. It has got to the point where he has had to rent another 100 acres to put into barley to ensure that he has enough to see him through next year. We buy from lindsays in keith and we are still around £5 for 25 kg of bruised barley and £5 for a 25kg bag of there banff blend which we feed to the fattening lambs and add to the bruised barley for the cattle along with high mag rolls which come from Norvite along with the chicken feed. We stopped buying sow rolls for the couple of pigs we have because of the price we make our own mix of soya, barley and minerals, we save quite a bit doing this. Luckly the cattle and sheep get hay and haylage which cuts the feed bill massively. Hoping to make our own next year to lower costs further. I take your point about weaners and the prices but if people are only fattening them off for themselves they are not worried about if they are pedigree or not. When you think that pig producers are losing £25 on each pig they produce the thing that is going to give is the pig industry.
Went to the feedstore this afternoon and yes, the price had gone up to £8.40 per 20 kilos of Smallholder pellets.I’m looking into ways of bulking out the bought food. I know a lot of people are thinking that way at the moment!
Well, you’re welcome to use my 2 acres, but something tells me the shipping won’t be cost effective.
[...] was reading stoney’s blog yesterday and he has a very interesting post regarding the increased cost of animals feeds. I [...]
Ouch! Here in the States we’ve had enormous increases in the price of people food. Do you have a double whammy now (or yet) of higher feed costs plus having to spend more at the supermarket?
when the chicken feed price went up at my local farm shop, the summer floods in the south of england was blamed. ok but will the price go back to normal if we have a good harvest this year???? me thinks not
First, the difference between pure-bred stock of good provenance and cross-breeds of uncertain parentage does matter, even if you’re just fattening a pair of pigs.
Pig keepers should take into account proven performance (fed correctly, the offspring of our breeding stock tend to reach 80kg at 28 weeks and have 73-76 per cent kill out ratios), temperament (especially important for the novice keeper), carcass quality and feed conversion. On top of that, is the need to preserve and protect the genetic diversity of the traditional and rare breeds.
As for bulking out the feed, we do that but that also brings us within the remit of the Feed Hygiene Regulations so we have to keep copious details as to how we mix our feed, what makes up the mix, where it sourced from, etc etc. It’s very time consuming.
Also, it’s not as simple as taking out half the sow rolls and replacing them with barley or vegetables. The lysine:protein ratio has to be appropriate for the pig and its purpose (working boar, dry sow, in-pig sow, milking sow, weaner, grower, finisher), while the ration has to give the pigs a good mix of nutrients.
It’s nowhere near as simple as it sounds!
I know this is also out of nowhere too. I told my grandfather the problem of feed increase. He suggested growing soybeans, this what they use to do.
Probably worthless to you though.
Blimey Stony. This sounds more like chemistry than “i’ll just go and feed the pigs!”
Does the price ever go down or is it always an upward push?
Soy beans don’t grow up here. Wheat doesn’t do well, either. The two main cereal crops are oats and barley.
To get the best results from livestock, a knowledge of biochemistry is useful. I did study chemistry (and physics), plus I read a lot of research papers. It does help.
‘Wheat doesn’t do well, either’
Just shows what the difference in climate you have to me, 1.5 hours down the road. I was surround by wheat last year!
I’ve found an interesting site on DIY chicken feed : http://www.lionsgrip.com/recipes.html . Don’t know how viable it is but it’s worth looking into.
Katie, I edited your comment slightly to make that link work.
Ahh okay, I didn’t know soybeans didn’t do well in Scotland. I am from the USA state of Virginia and my grandfather grew up in North Carolina. It rarely snows in my own part of Virginia or the part North Carolina my grandfather comes from. Soybeans grow pretty readily here. I think, not sure on this part, that when they would rotate the fields for the Tobacco or cotton. They use to plant soybeans. My grandfather still thinks of soybeans as pig’s food, not for humans. He is not a Tofu fan.
This area is pretty tropical compared to Scotland.
One possibility is field peas. Apparently French trials have shown they can be used instead of soy beans. Peas grow reasonably well here (beans definitely don’t) so I’m looking into this further.
Thanks for the suggestions.
Good luck with the peas. And you are welcome.