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Show OasryniGii itlGG I got iiiarniEiG Use production records extensively and cull cows at higher production levels if you want to continue making hind increasing costs. Lower Low-er prices received for milk compared to advancing costs of its production necessitates neces-sitates higher production per cow just to break even. They advise eliminating unprofitable cows that produce pro-duce below the breakeven point. Unless the unprofitable unprofit-able cows are removed from the herd, they will eat into the income from those that are profitable. Dairymen must be more critical of cows with mastitis, mas-titis, poor conception and other problems. Realize that those animals contribute to added costs of treatment, medication, discarded milk and repeat breeding fees. Increase the average efficiency effi-ciency of the herd by selling sell-ing the cows with such problems prob-lems if their production is not well into the profit levels. lev-els. Feed the high producing cows more and alter their ration to provide more enr-gy enr-gy and protein and the needed need-ed fiber to obtain the desired desir-ed composition of milk. This will increase feed costs for those cows but the additional addition-al milk produced should more than offset the extra cost of the feed. By the same token, feeding feed-ing more precisely according accord-ing to production will reduce re-duce the number of cows being overfed on rations that are more expensive than are just if ed by the lower production produc-tion potential. Feeding different rations almost necessitates dividing the herd into different production produc-tion groups unless automated automat-ed feeding devices are used, say the specialists. Computers can be used to formulate rations that will maximize their income over feed costs. It will consider the myriad of factors such as milk price, cost and nutrient nu-trient content of each available avail-able feed ingredient and the average production of the cows to be fed. It will tell the optimum combination of roughages and concentrates and the amountof each ration ingredient to use. The specialists recognize that dairymen who are committed com-mitted to a heavy interest and loan repayment schedule sched-ule have less flexibility to operate at smaller margins. mar-gins. They must maintain a high enough cash flow to meet these obligations. Unprofitable Un-profitable cows will only compound the problems of these dairymen. To effectively implement the management practices recommended they require use of production records, DHIA records which provide pro-vide the foundation for practically prac-tically all phases of dairy management. For dairymen facing the greatest squeeze, the specialists speci-alists advise makinga series of income projections for the immediate years ahead. That will help identify weak financial fin-ancial spots in the operation and will alert dairymen to the hard decisions that won't go away. |