A feed budget is one simple idea done properly: line up how much feed your animals need against how much your pasture and supplements can supply, across the weeks ahead, and find the point where demand runs past supply. That point is the feed gap, and the whole game is seeing it early enough to fill it cheaply instead of expensively.
Your stock's requirement is driven by how many head you're running and what each class needs — and that's not flat. A dry cow ticking over on maintenance is a different number to a lactating cow or a growing weaner putting on weight. Energy is the currency: requirement is measured in megajoules of metabolisable energy (MJ ME), maintenance plus whatever production you're asking for on top.
Pasture supply is growth rate across your grazing area, plus anything conserved or bought in. Growth isn't constant either — it tracks the season, which is why rainfall and temperature matter so much. Warm and wet enough and the paddock is growing good green feed at high energy and protein; cold or dry and growth stalls and quality drops, even if there's still bulk out there.
When projected demand climbs above projected supply, you've got a gap. Budget ahead of it and your options are cheap and calm — hold stock, adjust numbers, line up a supplement while it's still reasonably priced. Hit the gap without warning and you're buying feed in a rising market alongside every other producer who also left it late.
When you do reach for a supplement, the decision unit isn't dollars per tonne — it's cents per MJ ME, or per kg of dry matter. A dear feed can be cheap energy and a cheap feed can be dear energy. Compare on the energy you're actually buying.
Feed is often the single biggest variable cost on the place, which means the feed budget and the cashflow budget are the same conversation viewed from two ends. A decision that looks right on the paddock can be wrong on the bank statement, and the two need to meet.
TheFarmOS builds rations against the season you're actually in — set up each animal group and its ration, and it pulls your local rainfall and temperature to read pasture growth and anchor the budget, then the groups flow straight into your financial plan.
Related: Farm cashflow forecasting · Enterprise gross margin