Project Summary
Objectives:
- Find the lactating feed costs per hudredweight of milk at 20 participating dairies in
Sacramento, San Joaquin, Stanislaus, and Merced counties.
- Calculate their gross margin per cow (milk revenue minus feed cost)
- Evaluate their cow care/cow comfort -> relate it to feed conversion
- Compare the information obtained from different dairies
Value:
- Creates awareness of the importance of having a handle on Gross Margin
- Provides a summary of results including observations that may aid the producer
- Allows participants to compare their performance in relation to other producers in the
North Valley.
Scope:
Lact. Herd Size Range (90 -1300) Average lact. feed cost/cwt milk 4.92
Milk Production Range (55 90 lbs.) Average Gross Margin (GM) 4.62
Feed Cost/Cow/Day Range ($3.00 $4.59)
Results:
The information provided for this project is for the month of June and/or July depending on the availability of the data. The summary of the results can be seen in the summary tables enclosed. Each table is sorted for a different variable to rank the dairies under different criteria. From these tables, various graphs are obtained, that show the relationships between the different factors.
As can see be observed in the tables, the top 5 dairies in milk production are, for the most part, the top 5 dairies in cow care/comfort score, feed cost/cwt of milk, and gross margin. We see a very close relationship between milk production and gross margin (income over feed costs). The better the milk production, the higher the Gross Margin for the dairies The correlation between cow care/comfort and gross margin is also high. Now, there are some dairies that might have a better overall cow care score but their milk production is below that of dairies with lower scores. This could be due to other factors such as quality of the feed, the ration itself, or simply that, even though their overall score is high, they might be lacking in cow cooling.
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