The objective of this study was to describe close-up cow (CU) recipes prepared on 25 California dairies ranging in size from 1,100 to 6,900 cows. Records from a consecutive 12-mo period were extracted from the feeding management software FeedWatch 7.0. The variables included were date, recipe, recipe number, ingredient, loading sequence, target weight, actual weight and tolerance level. Descriptive statistics were conducted with SAS 9.3. Dairies prepared a median of one (n = 24) or 2 (n = 1) CU recipes per day. The median number of ingredients included in the CU recipe ranged from 3 to 5 (n = 18) and 6 to 9 (n = 7); and varied over time within dairy, by one (n = 7), 2 to 3 (n = 2), or zero (n = 16) ingredients. The most commonly used ingredients in CU recipes were rolled corn (n = 19), premix (n = 17; 5 prepared it on farm), liquids (n = 8), mineral-vitamins (n = 7), anionic salts (n = 6) and canola (n = 5). The most common forages included were corn silage (n = 24) and alfalfa hay (n = 20), and some dairies also used straw hay (n = 5) and oat hay (n = 7). The ingredients most frequently added first were alfalfa hay (n = 11), straw hay (n = 5) oat hay (n = 5), premix (n = 2), yeast (n = 1) and wheat (n = 1). The ingredients most frequently added last were corn silage (n = 11), liquids (n = 7), premix (n = 2), mineral-vitamins (n = 2), canola (n = 1), earlage (n = 1) or rolled corn (n = 1). The tolerance level (TL) (kg) of the various ingredients for all dairies enrolled was: 0 (11.2%), 0.5–20 (31.7%), 25–40 (33.5%), 50–75 (18.0%) and 100–150 (5.6%) kg. The TL allowed a deviation from the median formulated target for the various ingredients across dairies of: 0% (11.2%), > 0–2% (14.9%), > 2–5% (25.5%), > 5–10% (18.0%) and > 10% (30.4%). Deviation from target > 10% was allowed on 20 ingredient types on 20 dairies [alfalfa hay (n = 11), rolled corn (n = 8), mineral-vitamins (n = 4), corn silage (n = 3), canola (n = 3) and others (n = 2)]. Corn silage, alfalfa hay, rolled corn and premix were ingredients commonly found on CU recipes. In many dairies, the TL allowed to CU ingredients should be re-evaluated.