Making the Right Business Decisions on a Dairy Farm

My wife and I often accompany our seven grandchildren on their apple picking trips in the fall. They choose the “most hanging apple” for ease of picking. Occasionally they pick rotten apples. “No,” they said and threw it away, never wanting to pick another apple.

Why talk about picking apples in the dead of winter? Dairy farmers harvest milk every day of the year. A dairy farmer works his 24/7 so you can enjoy fresh dairy products every day.

As you enter the new year, reflect on your new goals and make the right decision between the good apple and the rotten apple. Making the right business decisions determines business outcomes. The “easy-to-get” principle in agriculture is that a task is easy to accomplish, but it may not improve overall business performance.

Dairy farmers make hundreds of decisions. Choosing the right questions can determine the outcome of your farm business. Get bogged down in too many daily tasks and don’t forget important questions that often go unanswered. Business areas such as finance, expansion, farm size, labor force, land (crops/fodder), buildings, machinery and heritage are important. At a seminar I attended on farm profits, he described five ways to run a profitable multi-generation dairy farm. These five are milk and repeatable performance, efficient labor, high components, low cost, and overall efficiency.

All these farms had common elements: comfortable cows, excellent facilities, high-quality feed, a reliable workforce and good transitional cattle management.

Best management practices (BMP) for transitional cattle have been identified in the areas of housing, stocking density, nutrition, cattle grouping and health. Familiarize yourself with these BMPs and get educated on how to implement them in your dairy products.

Do all practices work on all dairies? No, I know. Not everything works on all farms. However, educate yourself and understand why it works and why it doesn’t work on your farm. Find out why BMP didn’t work for your farm. This will allow us to identify more specific practices that we can change to yield higher returns.

Instead of spending time picking “easy-to-get fruits,” seek out what the rotten apples are that limit your progress, and educate yourself. An excellent source of insight and information is an educated advisor. A veterinarian must have her CEU per hour to maintain her professional license. Crop advisors require CEU certification. The well-educated professional nutritionist is accredited by the American Registry of Professional American Scientists and her CEU is required for licensure.

What are the barriers that keep farmers from implementing the BMP? I believe you are doing well.” Proactive managers plan for the long term. A progressive farm recently told me: Managers who are content with the status quo are somewhat satisfied with the status quo and do not seek change.

A veterinarian recently told me that he has several clients who believe, “Well, that’s good enough, and if it wasn’t broken, they wouldn’t fix it.” I know that Reactive managers make changes as issues and relationships with advisors and suppliers change. “If all of a sudden we have a lot of problems, we look into it. But most of the time we don’t really see much.”

What questions should you ask about your herd and transition cows? By choosing ‘easy to achieve’ you can patch your current dilemma. A better decision is to look for options to improve, educate, and implement. A few rotten apples shouldn’t ruin an entire bushel.