The Feed Cost Report

The Feed Cost screen turns your feeding log into the number that matters: what each set of cattle is costing you per head per day.

How to Get There

Go to Production → Feed and click Cost Report.

Filters

• From and To — the date range. It opens on the last 30 days.
• Fed To — all targets, groups only, or pastures only.

Everything on the screen is recalculated from the feedings inside the range.

What You See

A Total allocated feed cost across the top, then one card per group or pasture that was fed in the range. Each card shows the target’s own total, four statistics, and a breakdown by feed.

The Four Statistics

A statistic shows as — when it cannot be worked out, which happens when the head count or the days fed come to zero.

The Feed Breakdown

Under the statistics, each feed fed to that target in the range gets a line with its category, total quantity in its own unit, and total cost. This is where you see that the mineral is a tenth of the bill and the hay is the rest.

How “Days Fed” Works, and Why It Matters

Days fed counts the days you actually fed, not the days in the range. Run a 30-day report on a group you fed hay to ten times, and days fed is 10 — so cost per head per day is the cost on a feeding day, not spread across the month.

That is the right answer for cattle you feed on a schedule and the wrong instinct for cattle on a daily ration. Two feeds on the same day count as one day, so a morning and evening feeding do not double it.

Allocated Cost, Not Cash Spend

A notice at the top of the screen says this, and it is the most common source of confusion. The report shows the cost of feed consumed in the range. Hay bought in one month is usually eaten across the next two, so this number will not reconcile to what left your bank account. For cash out, use Financials.

Reading It Well

• Compare like with like. A dry-lot group on a full ration and a pasture that got one load of hay in a snow week are not comparable numbers, however similar the cards look.
• Watch the avg head figure. If it looks wrong, a feeding was saved with a stale or hand-typed head count — open the log and check.
• A missing Lbs / head / day usually means one feed is missing its pounds per unit. Fill it in on the Feeds screen and the figure appears.
• A target you expected is missing because nothing was fed to it in the range — or because those cattle were fed as a pasture on some days and as a group on others.

Tips

• Run it across a whole feeding season, not a calendar month. That is the window the number actually means something over.
• Use it before you buy. Knowing last winter’s cost per head per day is what tells you whether this year’s hay price is worth locking in.