Dr. Greg Bethard, G&R Dairy Consulting, conducted a presentation at the pre conference symposium, sponsored by Prince Agri Products, titled, “Keys to a Good P&L: Strategies to Make Money. He presented a number of key components to managing your dairy. One of those is knowing statistics on your business like volume of milk shipped. He says “We’re a commodity business and so the volume of product shipped everyday is a crucial part of a good P&L.” He says this isn’t just milk per cow which is important but also the volume per cow. Dairies that can figure out how to get more volume out the door will be the ones that are more efficient. Some of the best investments a dairy can make are incremental like adding a few cows at a time.

Some other key elements included:

• Keep a full barn
• Healthy fresh cows
• Offer a career change to unprofitable cows
• Realize quality and component premiums
• Maximize income over feed costs
• Minimize feed cost/cwt
• Procure high quality forages
• Generate pregnancies (heifers and cows)
• Minimize replacement costs
• Cut costs intelligently
• Control labor costs

Listen to my interview with Dr. Bethard here: Interview with Dr. Greg Bethard

Prince Agri Products Dairy Pre-Conference Symposium Photo Album