Milk Replacer VS Tank Milk

I’m sure this has come up as a topic of discussion when it comes to your calf program, whole milk or milk replacer?

While this is a very complex question for many reasons, we are going to stick to talking about cost here, and even more specifically, the cost of saleable milk vs milk replacer. 

The first thing to consider when making this decision for your calves is the current CWT for tank milk. When saleable milk is $14/CWT, your tank milk would have to be less than 10.5% solids before milk replacer would make sense economically. As we increase in dollar increments, that percentage of time where tank milk is cheaper than milk replacer gets smaller and smaller, and when we get to $20/CWT, milk replacer will be cheaper under almost all circumstances.

If we look at milk prices today (June 2022) at $25.87 CWT, there are very few circumstances where milk replacer isn’t a more economical option. Even if your tank milk is consistently 15% solids, you would still have to be paying over $83/bag of milk replacer to make that make sense, and most times, cow's milk is around 12.5% solids. 

Of course, milk prices aren’t always going to be that high, and milk replacer prices tend to move with milk prices so let’s go through a couple examples to see how this could look on your farm. 

For consistent, high quality milk replacer, prices can vary, but there are options out there that will offer the best of both worlds. Milk replacer costs have gone up significantly in the past few months, but so have milk prices! 

Example 1:

Tank milk is $20/CWT, and on average is 12.5% solids. In order for you to break even on milk replacer and tank milk, you would have to be paying $80/bag for milk replacer.

Example 2: Tank milk costs $25/CWT, and is 12.5% solids. The milk replacer breakeven cost would be $100/ bag of milk replacer. 

Percent solids for your tank milk is an important number to know when it comes to deciding if tank milk or milk replacer is a better option for you and your calves. You need to know this number because of the fact that lower solids = lower nutritional value for your calves, you have to feed more tank milk at 10% solids to get the same nutritional value as you would feeding milk replacer.

The counter argument? I feed non-saleable/treated cow’s milk to my calves, so I wouldn’t be using saleable tank milk, this doesn’t apply to me. 

While this may be true on your farm, there are many other factors to consider when deciding if milk replacer may still be a better option for your calves! Our next article released will cover hidden costs of tank milk vs milk replacer that you may not consider when deciding what is better for your farm! 

If you are looking for additional guidance on deciding whether tank milk or milk replacer is right for you, please reach out, we would love to help! And if you are looking for more information on the milk replacer we use, follow this link to learn more: https://denkavit.com/usa/products/denkamilk-performance-21-19/