Our Energrow Story:
- We completely replaced our robot pellets
- We cut our feed bill by more than 65%
- Robot visits increased from 2.8 to 3.2
With 48 cows, robot pellets were costing us about $3,600 per month ($660/tonne with the mill adding our own corn and barley to the pellets).We now feed Soyex with dry shelled corn as a mash at a rate of 8lbs (3.6kg) per day as a complete replacement for robot pellets at $133/tonne. We didn’t change the intake volume in the robot at all and we cut our overall feed bill by more than 65%!
Our Soyex is mixed with dry shelled corn (1/3 Soyex, 2/3 shelled corn) and a bit of yeast in the TMR and then it’s augered into a bin that feeds into the robot with a flex auger. The Soyex pellets attract and control the dust from the rolled corn. We are really happy with how the pellets stay mixed and don’t separate from the corn.
The cows cleanup the mash well, there is some fine dust left behind in the back of the dish, but there are a couple cows in the herd that love going through 3-5 times in a row to lick it clean.
Robot visits increased from 2.8 to 3.2, to as high as 3.8. Not only did our feed costs go down significantly, but our cows came up in milk by 2 to 3 litres per cow per day! The cows love Soyex and it feeds really well in the robots! We don’t see why more dairies aren’t using their own mash through their robots, especially with the money you can save by using Soyex.
Aside from the robots, we feed the mash to our calves. We used to have all kinds of trouble with our calves but soon after adding the mash, they had a nice shine and less health problems too. When we added Soyex to our TMR bunk mix our milk average went up from 28L to 34L.
Instead of picking up the phone once a month to order a batch of pellets, the only inconvenience is that every 6 weeks it takes 1.5 hours to make our own mash and transfer into our bin that feeds the robot. Our soybeans are pressed by a local Energrow crusher right now and we’re paying $50 per tonne to do that. But that’s a small price to pay for the return we get!
If anyone has questions about how we feed Soyex in our robot setup have them give us a call!
