The milk-to-feed ratio continues to decline as producers see less money remain after feed has been purchased. In August 2008, the ratio fell to 1.89 compared to 3.19 only one year earlier. With the lowering milk price and sustained high feed costs, margins are expected to remain tight for the balance of the year. Tight margins bring out the best and worst among dairy producers. Historically, dairy producers are adept at making adjustments and sacrifices to make ends meet, but sometimes those decisions save a dime only to cost a quarter. When tough decisions need to be made, it’s often best to work with an assessment team from outside the dairy.

In recent years, unions have increasingly targeted dairies in their organizing efforts. As organized labor searches for ways to avert a decades-long decline in private industry union representation, unions have targeted industries that employ Hispanic workers, and have focused on industries that cannot be “off-shored,” including the hospitality, construction and janitorial industries. The dairy industry fits this profile, and more and more milk producers find themselves confronted by union-organizing campaigns.

Milk production and reproduction are two key management areas that are relied upon to maintain and advance profitability on the dairy. Because of their integral role in the dairy’s success, it’s no surprise that recent research conducted in Denmark identified these areas as ones that, when improved, resulted in the greatest increase in gross margins for the dairy operation. The study, published in the February 2008 issue of the Journal of Dairy Science, concluded that improving the herd-level lactation curve increased gross margins 2.6 times more than an improvement in reproduction. In turn, enhanced reproduction improved gross margins an additional 5.9 times more than management related to heifers, body condition scores, mortality and somatic cell counts. These top-ranked management areas improved profits the most when even small management changes were implemented.

Editor’s note: The following is the second of two articles by the authors discussing precision farming techniques and their application on dairies today.

As dairy operations continue to grow and become more progressive, veterinarians have become a valuable member of the assessment team.

Too low milk prices once again are rolling into local dairy farms.

The trend of consolidating small dairy farms into larger operations means that more dairy producers are spending more time dealing with workers and less time managing cows.

Managers have the opportunity to influence the motivation of employees through design of their jobs.

When we live through political moments in time, we often forget the issues we face are simply being recycled.

In a time when adjustments to feed rations can be compared and made at the drop of a hat using well- developed spreadsheets, when dairies can be monitored at remote distances by camera systems with online viewing capacity and when people communicate through a diverse offering of technologies, producers can also view, analyze, research and access the very prices that predicate the profitability of their livelihood.