How much feed does a cow eat per day?
A cow eats approximately 2.5–3% of its body weight in dry matter every day. That simple rule lets you size any feed budget. A 350 kg cow eats roughly 8.75–10.5 kg of feed per day; a 500 kg animal eats 12.5–15 kg. Multiply by your herd and by the number of days and you have your total requirement.
Intake varies with three things. Breed matters: zebu and indigenous types eat less, and waste less, than large European breeds. Season matters: appetite falls in extreme heat and rises in cool weather. And production stage matters: a lactating or heavily pregnant cow eats far more than a dry one, because she is feeding two. Feedlot cattle on concentrate eat a smaller volume than cattle on hay or pasture, but each kilogram costs much more — so the daily cost can be higher even though the animal eats less bulk.
What is the cheapest way to feed cattle in Africa?
Ranked from cheapest to most expensive per unit of nutrition, your options are:
- Natural grazing — free, but unreliable and almost worthless in the dry season.
- Crop residues — maize stover, groundnut hay, sorghum stalks. Very cheap, widely available, but low in energy, so best as a base rather than a finishing feed.
- Silage — fermented maize or grass. Moderate cost and good nutrition, but it takes preparation and storage.
- Concentrate — maize grain plus cottonseed or groundnut cake plus minerals. Expensive, but delivers the fastest weight gain, so it earns its cost in a feedlot.
- Urea-molasses blocks — a cheap supplemental lick that helps range cattle squeeze energy and protein out of poor dry-season forage.
Typical prices vary widely by country: maize grain runs about ₦280–350/kg in Nigeria, dairy meal around KES 35–50/kg in Kenya, and a feedlot ration about R3.50–5.00/kg in South Africa. The calculator above lets you enter your own local price for an exact budget.
How to make your own cattle feed formula
Mixing your own ration can cut feed costs substantially if you buy ingredients well. A basic, balanced fattening formula is roughly:
- 60% energy source — maize, sorghum, or dried cassava.
- 25% protein source — groundnut cake, cottonseed cake, or brewers' grain.
- 10% roughage — hay or crop stover for rumen health.
- 3% minerals — bone meal, salt and limestone.
- 2% vitamin/mineral premix.
Mixing 100 kg of this ration costs roughly ₦25,000–35,000 in Nigeria, usually well below the price of an equivalent bag of commercial feed. The savings come from buying ingredients in bulk straight after harvest, when grain and cake prices bottom out. One warning: store feed properly and keep it dry. Mouldy feed is not just wasted money — mycotoxins in spoiled grain can sicken or kill cattle.
How to plan feed for dry season
The single biggest financial mistake African cattle owners make is failing to budget for dry-season feed. The maths is unforgiving but simple: herd size × daily intake × the number of dry-season days. A 20-head herd eating 10 kg a day for 90 days needs 18,000 kg of feed. At ₦350/kg that is about ₦6.3 million for the season — a number that ambushes owners who never ran it.
You can cut that bill sharply with planning. Destock before the dry season, selling weaker and surplus animals while they still carry condition. Cut and store hay during the rains, when grass is free, to feed back later — it costs labour but saves millions. Use crop residues from your own or neighbouring farms. And stretch expensive concentrate with cheap urea-molasses blocks. Our dry-season survival guide walks through the full strategy.
Feed costs by country
Typical feed prices across our eight countries (editorial estimates, mixed-ration basis):
| Country | Maize grain | Mixed ration / kg |
|---|---|---|
| Nigeria | ₦280–350 | ~₦350 |
| Kenya | KES 40–55 | ~KES 45 |
| South Africa | R3.5–5.0 | ~R4.5 |
| Ghana | GHS 6–9 | ~GHS 8 |
| Ethiopia | ETB 50–70 | ~ETB 60 |
Prices move with the harvest and the exchange rate, so always confirm locally and enter your real figure above. Pair this with the feedlot profitability calculator to turn a feed budget into a profit forecast.
How much water do cattle need per day?
Water is the cheapest input and the one most often neglected, yet it determines whether all that expensive feed actually turns into weight. A mature cow needs 40–60 litres of clean water a day, and far more in hot weather or when lactating — a high-yielding dairy cow can drink 100 litres or more. The link to feed is direct: a thirsty animal stops eating. Cattle that cannot drink their fill will not finish their ration, intake falls, gain stalls, and your feed money is wasted. Before you optimise the feed budget, secure the water — a borehole, a reliable trough, or trucked water in the dry months — because no ration performs without it. Dirty or distant water has the same effect as too little: cattle drink less, eat less, and grow less.
Should you buy commercial feed or mix your own?
This is the question that most affects a feed bill, and the answer depends on your scale and your access to ingredients. Commercial compounded feed is convenient, consistent and correctly balanced, but you pay for the manufacturer's margin, bagging and transport — typically 20–40% more than the raw ingredient cost. Mixing your own from maize, cake, roughage and a mineral premix can cut the cost substantially if you can buy ingredients in bulk after harvest and store them dry, and if your herd is large enough to justify the effort and a simple mixing setup.
For a smallholder with a handful of animals, commercial feed or a local feed miller is often the practical choice — the savings from self-mixing rarely justify the labour and the risk of getting the balance wrong. For a feedlot of twenty or more head, self-mixing usually pays for itself within a single cycle. Whichever you choose, the two non-negotiables are balance and storage: an unbalanced ration wastes money on nutrients the animal cannot use, and poorly stored feed grows mould that can sicken or kill cattle. Run both options through the calculator above with their real per-kilogram prices and let the numbers decide.
How do feed costs change between the wet and dry season?
Feed cost is not a single number — it swings dramatically through the year, and planning for the average will bankrupt you in the lean months. In the wet season, natural grazing is abundant and nearly free, so a herd on pasture costs almost nothing to feed beyond minerals and a little supplement; this is the cheapest time to put on weight and the right time to fatten. In the dry season, that free grazing vanishes, and every kilogram an animal eats must now be bought or drawn from stored hay — turning a near-zero feed bill into the biggest cost on the farm, sometimes ₦300,000 or more per animal across the season.
The owners who manage this best do two things. They conserve feed when it is cheap — cutting and storing hay and crop residues during the rains for use in the dry months — and they match their stocking to the season, destocking surplus animals before the dry season so they are not paying to feed cattle they could have sold. Run two budgets in the calculator above, one at your wet-season feed cost and one at your dry-season cost, and size your hay store and your destocking plan to cover the gap. Our dry-season survival guide shows how to turn that gap from a crisis into a plan.