Animal Feed Audit &

Action Plan

1. What is its purpose?

The Animal Feed Audit is an annual review of the source, content, and cost of your animal feed.
This regular review is important for monitoring costs, tracking quality and value of feed, and it
can also encourage you to source feed as sustainably as possible.

The Animal Feed Audit forms the basis of the Animal Feed Action Plan which can help put steps
in place to feed your livestock as efficiently as possible, meeting nutritional requirements. Use
this plan alongside your Livestock Health Plan, to create future actions and targets which can
be used to positively contribute to more sustainable farming practices.

2. Animal Feed Audit – What should it include?

Requirements of the audit:

• Background information on the farm enterprise

• Types of feed- whether it be home-produced or bought in
• Monitoring the source of feed and its composition
• Details of feed assurance schemes
• Nutritional requirements of your livestock

Other areas to include:

• Quantity and costs of feed

• Quantifying feed intake (e.g dry matter intake) to make sure you are meeting
nutritional requirements

These details and records will enable you to benchmark against previous years as well as
industry standards. Aspects to monitor include the source of the animal feed and its
composition. It may be helpful to have your livestock’s nutritional requirements to hand, so
that you can compare this against the nutrient content of the animal feed.

The Animal Feed Audit can be completed by yourself, a vet, or a qualified animal nutritionist
and should be reviewed annually. This information may be best collected as part of your feed
planning, using spreadsheets such as Tried & Tested Feed Planning for Cattle & Sheep and
AHDB’s Feed Budget Planner. Feed assurance schemes and/or labelling may also provide vital
information when conducting your audit.

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 3. Animal Feed Action Plan - What should it include?
On completion of your Animal Feed Audit, you can then move onto the Action Plan which can
help you to identify opportunities to make your feed sources more sustainable whilst
improving the productivity and health of your livestock. It also considers ways for businesses
to minimise waste of feed and/or nutrients.

Think about how to guarantee long-term continuity of supply and consider the environmental
impact of any protein sources. This could be achieved by using suppliers accredited by feed
assurance schemes.

The Animal Feed Audit should cross-reference with your Animal Feed Action Plan.

Requirements of the plan:

• Background information on feed use including home-grown and brought in.

• Short-term and long-term targets to improve sustainability
• Plans to minimise waste of feed and/or nutrients
• Identify ways of reducing dependency on bought-in feed (in grazing systems)
• Measurements to reduce GHG emissions
• Plans to optimise sustainability of feed sources

Other areas to consider:

• Benchmarking against previous years

• Plans to minimise feed wastage through diet:
o Matching diet to animal requirements (size, breed, age, stage in the production
cycle)
o Palatability and digestibility
o Supplements
• Plans to minimise feed wastage through storage

It may be beneficial to link your Animal Feed Action Plan with your Livestock Health Plan, and
where applicable, your Soil Management Plan and Crop Health and Protection Plan.

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 4. Review and update
The Animal Feed Audit and Action Plan should be reviewed annually, and your records updated
as appropriate. Consider any new challenges you have faced, new sourcing options that are
available to you, and the practicality of the targets that have been set.

The implementation of the Action Plan should also be reviewed at least annually, recording
achievements and progress towards all targets. This should also consider how the strategies
have been implemented, and whether this can be improved. The findings from this review
should inform updates to the plan.

LEAF’s Management Plans and Policies are designed to help you implement Integrated Farm Management. Producing them enables you
to reflect on your management practices and consider efficiencies and improvements, as well as focus on certain priority areas in more
detail and consider how to use them effectively for internal communication and in some case, externally. They also ensure your plans are
integrated across the whole farm business.

These Management Plans and Policies reflect the best available information on the topic as of the publication date. While all reasonable
endeavours have been made to ensure the accuracy of the investigations and the information contained in this report, LEAF does not take
any responsibility for any and all liabilities contingent or otherwise that may arise from the use of the information.

Following these guidelines does not automatically assume that you are compliant to the LEAF Marque Standard, you must always refer to
the current LEAF Marque Standard and the requirements held within that.

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