Questions
Frequently asked
What this is, where the numbers come from, and what we will not say.
What is this?
A weekly reading of the US feed by-products market, plus always-current data pages: a substitution leaderboard that ranks every by-product by cost per unit of protein and energy, prices by ingredient and region, and the corn and soybean-meal benchmarks the whole market is priced against. Built for feed-mill buyers, dairy and feedlot nutritionists, and ingredient merchandisers.
Where does the data come from?
Public USDA Agricultural Marketing Service feedstuffs reports: the Grain and Oilseed Processor Feedstuff report, the Mill-Feeds and Miscellaneous Feedstuff report, the Animal By-Product Feedstuff report, and the Grain Co-Products report. Every price traces to a structured report row. No private data.
How does the leaderboard work?
It does the calculation a nutritionist does by hand. Each ingredient's board price is put on a dry-matter basis, then divided by that feed's protein and energy content to get a cost per pound of crude protein and per pound of TDN. Every by-product is then ranked against corn on energy and soybean meal on protein. The nutrient values are book values verified against named extension and NRC feed tables, listed on the methodology page.
Why is a wet feed not automatically the cheapest?
A wet by-product looks cheap per ton because most of the ton is water, which carries no nutrient. The leaderboard removes the water first (the dry-matter basis) before comparing, so a wet feed and a dry feed are compared on the nutrient you are actually buying, not on the water.
What is the corn and soybean-meal benchmark?
Corn is the energy anchor and soybean meal is the protein anchor. Nearly every by-product feed exists as a substitute for one or both, so the useful question is whether a by-product beats corn on cost per unit of energy or soybean meal on cost per unit of protein. The corn number comes from the USDA Grain Co-Products report's plant input cost, US number two yellow.
Why is my ingredient priced but not on the leaderboard?
Because we could not verify a dry-matter-basis nutrient coefficient for it against a primary extension or NRC feed table at build, and we never guess one. A guessed protein or energy figure would produce a wrong ranking, which is exactly the mistake the leaderboard exists to avoid. The price is still tracked; it is just not scored.
Why is there only a few years of history?
USDA migrated these feedstuffs reports to its current reporting platform in 2022, so the machine-readable history goes back to early 2022, not five full years. We report the real floor and never pad it. There is enough history for a real five-year-style band on most series, and the methodology page says which.
Is this ration-formulation or purchasing advice?
No. This reports public USDA prices and does the cost-per-nutrient math on them. It does not tell anyone what to feed, when to buy, or how to formulate a ration. Effective fiber, palatability, handling, inclusion limits and animal response are the nutritionist's call. We report the math, never the ration.