Feedlot / Weaner Break-Even Calculator (South Africa)

The calculator adds up everything a weaner costs you on the way to slaughter weight, purchase price, feed, yard or feeding fees, health and processing, transport, finance on the capital tied up, and the statutory red meat levy, then spreads the sunk cost of any animals lost to mortality over the survivors. That total, divided by the weight you'll actually get paid for after shrinkage and auction commission, is your break-even price in rand per kilogram. Sell above it and you profit, sell below it and you lose money, whatever the entered numbers say.

The 6:1 feed conversion ratio default and the 1.5kg/day average daily gain default come from South African feedlot benchmark sources, SA Grain's own published feedlot worked example and SASAS, the South African Society for Animal Science. SASAS puts the real industry FCR range at 4.5 to 7.5:1 and cites over 1.6kg/day as the optimal average daily gain, both adjustable in the calculator to match your own feedlot's actual performance.

Those three prices move too often, by season, by region and week to week, for any calculator to publish a safe default without misleading you. Every other input here is a structural benchmark that changes slowly, these three are market prices that change constantly, so you enter your own current numbers and the calculator does the rest.

Most of this calculator's defaults come from a named, dated South African source, SA Grain, SASAS, or the current statutory red meat levy and SARB prime rate. Two fields, the yard or feeding fee and transport cost, could not be pinned to a current sourced South African figure after two research passes, so they carry a distinct "typical range, not sourced" tag and ship with a rough starting estimate instead. Always replace those two with your own feedlot's actual quote.

It is a statutory per-head levy on cattle sales that funds the Red Meat Industry Forum and related bodies, set under the Marketing of Agricultural Products Act. The 2025/26 base rate is R15.05 per head, escalating 5 percent a year, which puts the 2026/27 rate at roughly R15.80 per head. Unlike the market prices above, this is a published, current statutory figure, so it is safe to default rather than leave blank.

An animal that dies in the feedlot has already eaten feed, used yard space and been processed, all real money spent, with nothing to sell at the end. That sunk cost has to come from somewhere, so the calculator spreads it across the animals that do reach the scale, which is why the survivors' effective cost per head is slightly higher than the raw purchase, feed, yard, health and transport total suggests. SASAS puts the industry mortality target under 0.8 percent and under 1 percent as acceptable, adjustable here if your own record differs.

Buying weaners and feeding them out ties up real capital for the whole feeding period, and that capital has an opportunity cost or an actual overdraft or loan interest cost, whichever applies to your operation. The calculator treats the purchase price, health and transport costs as spent on day one, financed for the full days on feed, and treats feed and yard fees as accruing gradually through the feeding period, financed on roughly their average outstanding balance. It defaults to the current SARB prime lending rate plus a disclosed spread, adjust it to match your own actual finance rate.

SA Grain's own published feedlot economics example states the weaner price needs to stay under roughly 65 percent of the carcass price for the deal to work. That rule is stated against carcass price, not the liveweight sale price you enter here, so the calculator converts your liveweight sale price into an estimated carcass price first, using the same 58 percent dressing percentage that source's own worked example uses, before comparing. Get that conversion wrong and the warning would fire on perfectly ordinary, workable deals, since carcass price per kilogram is always higher than liveweight price per kilogram. Above that 65 percent line, feed, yard, health, transport, finance and the levy get harder and harder to cover from the margin left over.

Shrinkage, sometimes called pencil shrink, is the weight an animal loses in transport and handling between leaving the feedlot and being weighed at the point of sale, mostly gut fill and moisture rather than actual tissue loss. It is a genuine, routine part of how cattle are marketed in South Africa, and ignoring it would overstate the weight you actually get paid for. Three percent is a commonly used industry rule of thumb, adjustable here.

The defaults are national averages, not breed-specific figures, real feed conversion, daily gain and days on feed vary by breed, frame size, sex and season. Every default is editable, so if you know your own feedlot's actual FCR, ADG or days on feed, enter those instead of the defaults for a more accurate break-even. The underlying cost structure, purchase plus feed plus yard plus health plus transport plus finance plus mortality loading plus the levy, holds regardless of breed.

Yes. Some feedlot deals are priced on the hook, carcass or dressed weight after slaughter, rather than liveweight at the scale, so a toggle next to the expected sale price field lets you enter either. Switch it to carcass and the calculator converts your figure to its liveweight equivalent using the same 58 percent dressing percentage SA Grain's own worked example uses, shown as a small conversion note so you can check the number. The break-even price itself is always shown both ways, liveweight as the main figure with the carcass equivalent alongside it, whichever basis you actually think in.

It reruns the same calculation with one input nudged up or down, purchase price and feed cost by 2 rand a kilogram, feed conversion ratio by 0.5, average daily gain by 0.2 kilograms a day, while holding everything else exactly as you entered it, so you can see at a glance which number your profit is actually most sensitive to. A batch where a 2 rand feed price move wipes out the profit carries a different kind of risk to one where the same move barely dents it, even if today's headline profit figure looks identical. If you've set a days-on-feed override, the average daily gain row drops out of the table, since the override means average daily gain no longer has any effect on the result.

There isn't one universal answer, it depends on the gap between what lighter and heavier weaners cost you per kilogram and what feed costs at the time, since a lighter weaner needs more days and more feed to reach the same exit weight. Rather than assume an optimum, this calculator lets you test it directly, run the same exit weight and prices through at a couple of different entry weights and compare the break-even price each one gives you. The right buy-in weight is whichever one your own numbers say is cheapest to finish, not a fixed rule that holds regardless of the season.

Mostly, with one adjustment. Custom feeding is when you pay a feedlot a management fee to feed out weaners you already own, rather than selling them to the feedlot outright, common enough in South Africa that it's a recognised alternative to a straight sale. There's no real purchase transaction in that case, so treat the purchase price field as the weaner's opportunity cost, what you could have sold it for at that weight instead, and add your management or custom feeding fee into the yard or feeding fee field alongside the physical feed cost. The rest of the calculation, feed, health, transport, finance, mortality and the levy, works the same way either way.

Exclusive, throughout. For a VAT-registered feedlot, the standard rate applies on both sides, output VAT charged on the sale and input VAT reclaimed on feed and other costs, so it nets out and does not change true profitability, which is why enterprise budgets like this one are normally built excluding VAT rather than trying to model the cash-flow timing of charging and reclaiming it. If you farm below the VAT registration threshold, you can't reclaim input VAT, so your real cost on feed, transport and other paid inputs is the VAT-inclusive price, enter those inclusive figures in the relevant cost fields to get an accurate break-even for your situation.

Yes, as three separate optional fields, all defaulting to zero rather than a guessed number. Feed wastage covers spillage and refusal at the trough, feed bought and delivered rather than actually eaten, left at zero because published feed conversion ratios aren't always clear on whether wastage is already included as an as-delivered figure, only raise it if you know your own FCR is measured on intake. Ongoing veterinary and treatment covers bloat, acidosis, respiratory disease and other illness during the feeding period, separate from the entry dipping and dosing cost, left at zero because no current, reliable South African per-head figure could be found, though one 2006 South African feedlot study put respiratory disease alone at roughly R30 per animal entering the feedlot, a useful sense of scale for one disease category, badly out of date. Insurance covers a mortality or loss premium if you carry one, added on top of the mortality loading already built into the break-even, not instead of it, since that loading reflects the real expected cost of death whether or not you're insured against it.