Introduction

The cost gain chart is shown here in the left side of the science screen. on the x-axis are the days of age from 14 to 112 and on the y-axis we have the cost in units of currency per kilo of body weight gain at these various ages.

This statistic tells us the cost per kilo of body weight gain at various periods in the calf’s life ,and, notice early in life when the calf is consuming mostly milk, the cost per unit of gain is much higher than after weaning time when the calf is consuming grain and forage.

Analysis

This is a ratio, so two factors go into the calculation: the cost and the gain. If, for example I change the cost of the milk in the feeding program, my milk replacer here is $3 per kilo or $3,000 per ton. If I change this to something lower, let’s say 1.5, you’ll notice that there’s quite a change in the cost early in life. By the same token, if I do something that will limit growth or increase growth, we’ll see that there will be a change as well. So if I go to the grain feeding program and increase the maximum,

so the cows can eat more grain and potentially gain more body weight, then the cost per gain early in life may decline. If you look closely at the the 98 and 112 days, you see that the cost becomes lower, when the animals have more access to to grain. This of course is an important statistic and it tells us something about the financial status of our raising program, so a very important statistic for us to monitor. Well, that’s it for this video, thanks for watching.