Getting a ROI on your calf data.

Tracking calf data is something that often gets overlooked. Knowing how much weight a calf gains per day doesn’t directly translate to money on the milk check like it does with cow data. 

With calves, it’s much more nuanced. The data you collect likely won’t be very useful to your “bottom line” for 2 years. Which makes it hard to make an investment in something that far off. 

With that being said, here are some ways that you can see a return on your investment right away when it comes to tracking calf data. 

Tracking medication rates. Something that many people overlook is keeping track of health incidences and treatments. How can this save you money today? By keeping track of the medication usage specifically in the calf barn, after a few months you can do some math and come up with a dollar amount that you are spending per calf on medication. Depending on your situation (sale barn calves will always be more expensive than dairy calves), you should be aiming for around $20 per calf in medication and vaccines. With that information available to you, you can make management decisions to improve that! If you raise 500 calves per year, making management decisions to decrease your medication and vaccine bill from $50/calf to $30/calf can save you $1,500 per year. That’s a pretty good ROI to us!

Where else can you see immediate ROI in your calf barn by tracking data? By taking weights at birth, weaning/moving, and one more time before calving. The timing isn’t as important as being consistent. What are those weights going to help you do? 

First, they are going to help you know if each part of your calf program is working. If you are moving calves at 80 days and they are only gaining 1.2 lb/day, what can you do to increase that? Does it have to cost money or is it something that you can adjust your management around to help those calves get a couple extra pounds on them (i.e. Making sure they are eating enough grain at weaning, making sure their buckets are clean, making sure they don’t run out of grain). Small management adjustments can have huge payoffs for low input costs. 

Say you find out that your ADG in the first 80 days is 1.2lb/day and you are willing to invest some money Adding extra milk to the program might be something you can do, but it’s important to compare that to your previous ADG. If you add 20 lbs. of milk replacer and your ADG at 80 days is still 1.2lb/day, then you know that there are other things you need to work on. 

Tracking costs and data are both great ways to figure out how you can get the most “bang for your buck.” For example, we were paying $0.26/pound for an 18% starter. We changed feed companies in November, and were then paying $0.21/pound for 18% starter. Well, we ended up getting the same or better ADG after switching. We now know for a fact, that our cost per pound of gain decreased because of tracking that information. 

Another example of this; last November, we went from feeding 2 quarts 2x/day for 49 days to feeding 3qts 2x from day 14-35. By adding an extra 13 lbs. of milk replacer we added an extra 0.22 lbs. of ADG. If a pound of milk replacer costs $1.36, we added $17.68 worth of cost, but we also added 17.6 pounds of weight to an 80 day old calf. If we were selling cross calves, that could be the difference between a premium on weight or not. 

As you can see, there are MANY ways to use data to save you money AND increase calf growth and health, these are just a few small examples of how you can make that happen. 

If you are looking for someone to help you start tracking data, figuring out your costs, and guide you and your calves on the path to success, message us. We have tools, experience, and worksheets to help you get to where you want to be with your calves. 

Reach out before you get too busy with planting! Winter is a perfect time to challenge your calf program.