The advent of a new milk board payout to producers that encourages less milk fat production will likely prompt dairy producers to reformulate their lactation diets and may significantly change their feed costs.

I’d be the first to admit that I like to pencil out the “dollars and cents” of such cost-effective dairy diets.

It’s a matter of matching their nutrient requirements to diets, which support vital functions, rumen health and lactation performance.

In the latter, I target early to mid lactation dairy cows (60 to 150 DIM) that are producing 40 kilogram milk production, four per cent milk fat and 3.3 per cent protein.

Both 2025 and 2026 lactation diets and their daily costs are illustrated in the accompanying chart.

Needless to say, these diets are also designed to promote good dry matter intake in lactating dairy cows.

I do this by laying a foundation of high-quality forages supplemented with palatable grains and grain byproducts.

A complementary dairy premix is added that contains essential macro-minerals as well as important trace minerals and fat soluble A, D and E vitamins.

Limit-fed by-pass fat and dietary feed additives are formulated in the final dairy diets.

When I see $9.39 spent per day on each lactating cow in 2026 and compare it to the 2025 feed cost, there is a $0.67 per head, or seven percent, savings. This difference translates into about a $20 decrease in the monthly cost of feeding each lactating cow.

It doesn’t seem like much of a decrease, but if a dairy producer milks 200 dairy cows, the real decrease is about $4,000.

Subsequently, the largest 2026 savings in feed costs is due to less grams of palm fat being fed.

Like most commercial dairies, I had followed the mainstream feeding rate by adding “500 grams per head per day” of rumen bypass palm fat to my 2025 lactating dairy total mixed rations.

In doing so, I expect any herd that fed my 2025 diet would have a 0.2 to 0.4 per cent milk fat advantage.

However, with the new focus on producing less kilograms of milk fat, I reduced it to 225 grams. As a result, there was about a $1 feed cost savings and it significantly dropped the percentage of palm fat costs of the entire lactation diet from 15 per cent to a nominal five per cent.

Reducing palm fat in the 2026 diet is really only one way to reduce the cost of feeding lactating dairy cows. Yet, I look for other ways where substantial feed costs might be saved without sacrificing lactation performance.

Here are some cost-saving measures to consider:

• Implement a strong forage foundation. For example, high quality corn silage supplies a significant amount of dietary energy and digestible fibre to support good milk and milk fat. It reduces the need for more expensive grain or off-farm purchases of other feedstuffs.
• Shop for feed protein. With the significant drop in the current price of soybean meal, canola meal and corn distiller grains, it is tempting to buy one or another simply on a lower price. However, when each one is examined for its crude protein/bypass protein content, it may change the final choice of a “better buy.”
• Analyze forages and grains. These feed tests help match their dietary nutrition with the nutrient requirements of high producing lactation cows. It also helps avoid feeding excessive amounts of nutrients. Test moisture of silages and their final TMR diet on a weekly basis.

By using current prices for forages and other feeds and implementing some cost-cutting measures, I can draw a picture as to what it actually costs to feed a lactating dairy cow.

In doing so, I believe dairy producers can format their own true economic feeding budget.

It’s a wise choice because gestating cows need more dietary vitamin A as they move throughout the winter and onto the last few months before calving. In this way, we ensure that no beef cow gets caught short on providing such an essential nutrient to their beef cows.

To ensure enough supplemental vitamin A is formulated into a mineral-vitamin premix, I calculate the total amount of vitamin A supplied to each cow, which is based upon the premix’s dietary vitamin A concentration (iu/kg) and its daily feeding rate (grams/head/day).

For example, a feed label of a commercial cow premix might list its vitamin A level as 700,000 iu/kg and it is to be fed at 112 grams (4oz or 0.25 lb.) to each gestating beef cow.

As a result, it provides 78,400 iu per head of vitamin A per day.

In this case, this final amount exceeds the cow herd’s specific NRC requirement for vitamin A.

Some producers forgo feeding highly fortified mineral and instead give vitamin A shots directly to their beef cows.

The objective is to either build them up for a few winter months or reverse a suspected vitamin A deficiency.

In either case, the general recommendation is to inject one to 1.5 million iu per head of vitamin A with the option of periodic injections where warranted.

In storage

Regardless of which practice is taken, vitamin A is a fat-soluble vitamin in which cattle build vitamin A status by storing large amounts in their liver. This happens when daily intake is three to five times greater than the average cow’s daily requirement.

An average gestating beef cow can store up to four months’ worth of vitamin A requirements in its liver, yet its rate of depletion varies tremendously when the cow needs it.

For example, university field trials demonstrate that cows grazing lush green pastures (more than 50,000 iu/kg, dim) throughout the summer store tremendous amounts of vitamin A in their livers. Yet, these reserves can be quickly used up due to high rates of depletion during the winter.

This happens especially when the cow herd is not consuming enough vitamin A, as well as needing more vitamin A as they move closer to the calving season.

Consequently, vitamin A deficient cows may suffer from permanent internal damage due to failure to metabolize dietary vitamin A as well as reduced liver storage capacity.

In these situations, it may still make cows continue to exhibit common deficiency signs of vitamin A, such as reduced feed intake, high incidence of disease, edema, diarrhea, poor quality colostrum (for newborn calves), a high incidence of stillborn/weak calves and reproductive and post-calving problems.

Most producers may not realize that essential vitamin A, which is contained in their stored forages and purchased cattle mineral-vitamin premix, is really a generic term.

Science uses the name to cover a number of compounds with similar chemical structures and biological activities to a compound called retinol to prevent vitamin A deficiencies in cattle.

Plus, most forages contain yellow beta-carotene, which is converted by enzymes on the animals’ small intestine wall to retinol and absorbed and metabolized.

Commercial feeds use highly bioavailable retinyl acetate or palmitate forms as their source of vitamin A.

It is easy to envision that lush alfalfa grass that is harvested and without issue contains a lot of vitamin A.

Sometimes it should be enough vitamin A to technically meet all the overwintering cows’ metabolic requirements.

However, a lot of hay is not harvested in such a perfect way.

Rebalancing

It is common to have some cut-down fields with one or two rains on it before it is made into round bales.

In addition, vitamin A degrades as hay is stored over winter. That is why I rely only on adding commercial vitamin A in a commercial mineral-vitamin premix at recommended rates.

A few years ago, I worked with a beef cow operation in which its 250 early-gestation cows were brought home after their calves were sold in late October.

These cows spent most of the summer grazing alfalfa-grass pasture touched by drought. Therefore, I recommended a well-balanced winter mineral to be mixed into a nearly all-forage TMR.

Its vitamin A level was fortified to supply 100,000 iu per head daily to ensure that all of their essential vitamin A requirements for gestation and well into lactation were easily met.

To the best of my knowledge, it contributed to a 96 per cent calf crop in the spring.

One trip to Canadian Tire and we were on our way, driving north on Highway 7 in Manitoba.

It didn’t take long before I saw a herd of well-conditioned Angus cows that were munching on rolled-out green feed round bales near the roadside. My first reaction was, how do they survive such bone-chilling temperatures and are they going to be ready for calving?

Luckily, these temperatures don’t stick around long, which gives them a chance to retain good body condition with the help of some well-balanced diets.

When well-fed late-gestation cows maintain an optimum body condition score of five to six on their calving-date, most of them calve out without many problems during the actual birthing process and their post-partum days (cleaning and uterine recovery).

It also helps the fresh cow to produce about 10 litres of milk for her hungry newborn calf (60 to 75 per cent of all milk is produced during the first few months).

Plus, first-time mums tend to recover faster from their first-calving experience and tend to grow faster into maturity.

That’s not all. When such optimum body condition is carried weeks beyond into the breeding season, there is a higher proportion of fertile beef cows with stronger first-estrus cycles, which results in high conception rates.

Their next-year calves tend to be born earlier in a desired shortened-calving season, which also results in higher autumn weaning weights by as much as 23 to 25 kilograms.

Consequently, a beef cow in transition from late-gestation, calving and into post-calving stages requires about 25 to 50 per cent more dietary energy, 20 to 25 per cent more protein and nearly double the minerals and vitamins compared to an early gestating beef cow.

Her forage-based diet at this time should contain about 58 to 62 per cent TDN, 11 to 12 per cent protein, 0.70 per cent calcium, 0.50 per cent phosphorus and a fortified complement of other macro-minerals, trace minerals and vitamins.

It’s going to be the cow herds that calve out at the beginning of February to the middle of March that will be further challenged nutritionally, during the coldest weather of the season.

As noted by university and extension research, the cold-weather rule of thumb is that for every 1 C drop in temperature below 0 C, beef cows’ TDN energy maintenance requirements are increased by an additional two per cent.

All of these heavy nutrient demands placed upon beef cows at this time could result in a poor calving season. However, it surprises me that just the opposite occurs when nutritious overwintering diets are fed at this time.

The plane truth

I spoke to a half-dozen beef producers and asked them how they feed their late-gestation cow herds to prepare for the upcoming calving season, particular during periods of frigid weather.

One producer who runs a 150 cow-calf farm just brought his cows home to a 20-acre plot from an open pasture and now rolls out good alfalfa-grass hay bales every morning.

He plans to feed to about three to four pounds of barley once they calve out at the end of March.

Another producer, who runs a 300-cow purebred/commercial operation, feeds them a TMR of high-energy corn silage and mixed hay and adds four to five lb. of a 14 per cent protein/65 per cent TDN grain-screening pellet during the coldest weather.

Still, another producer makes up a TMR with barley silage, grass hay and three to four lb. of dried distillers grain to maintain optimum body condition of her late-gestation cows (plus replacement heifers) throughout the entire winter.

Most of the producers also make use of tree stands and portable windbreak fences that reduce wind chill temperatures by 5 to 10 C or have pole barns that their cattle could go into when a northwest wind picks up.

All these producers provide a clean source of water for their cows and put down fresh straw in the loafing pens to allow cows to lie down on an insulated and comfortable bed.

Their stories vary a bit, but their philosophy is very much like my own when it comes to feeding late-gestation beef cows as they roll into the calving season.

That is — the sole purpose of their feeding strategies is to increase the cows’ plane of dietary energy (and other essential nutrients) in a timely fashion to maintain vitality and optimum body condition toward calving as well as cope with frigid weather.

The payoff of this plan is that a healthy herd of cows will be ready for a successful calving season and beyond.