Raising dairy calf replacements represents a significant cost on dairy farms. Feeding, especially milk or milk replacer, is the major primary expense during this phase, followed by labor and management. In this regard, planning and implementing an optimized on-farm calf milk feeding program becomes key.

The main objective of developing this model is bringing to farmers, consultants (veterinarians, nutritionists, etc.), researchers and agricultural students a high-level, simple, minimalistic, user-friendly, still powerful and scientifically sound whole-farm decision support model to assess economic and environmental tradeoffs of dairy farming for strategic nutrient management decisions.