The Farmers Mart Apr/May 2014 - Issue 33 | Page 34

DAIRY

Dairy Farm Costing from
a Vet’s point of view
By Rose Jackson BVSc DBR MRCVS
Vet and Medicine Costs –vDisease Costs
The top three costs for a dairy
farmer are:
• Feed (8.9ppl)
• Labour (4.8ppl)
• Replacement costs (3.3ppl)
Note that Vet costs are not on
this list! Vet and Medicine costs
in the UK range from 0.5-2.0ppl.
It will obviously vary from farm to
farm but average costs for our
clients are around 0.8ppl – this
is based on a 260 cow 9500l
herd on fortnightly routine visits.
So basically only 10% of your
feed costs! But what are you
getting for your money?

‘an extra £2’
Regular fertility visits help
to keep your calving interval
down; national average calving
interval is 424 days but a
sensible target is 409 days.
For every day a cow exceeds
a 409 day calving interval, she
is costing you an extra £2. It
is a complicated equation and
will vary between farms but this
is made up of increased feed
costs, lost milk from the next
lactation and the fact that she is
taking up space that could be
filled by a high yielder. Cows
with longer calving intervals also

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Apr/May 2014 FarmersMart

have an increased risk of being
culled and so this will impact on
your replacement costs.
Another big cost in terms of
disease is mastitis and high
cell counts. An average cost
of mastitis is around £200 and
cows with a SCC over 200 will
be losing 0.5l milk per day.
Example:
A 250 cow, 9000l herd with
84 mastitis cases/100 cows/
year and an average herd SCC
of 234 with 20% of the herd
over 200 will have the following
annual costs.
• £42 000 mastitis costs
• 25l per day in lost milk due to
cell count £2737 (at 30ppl
milk price)
• This doesn’t even include
penalties for SCC if it was to
creep up above 250
Taking time with your vet to
carry out the DairyCo mastitis
plan has been shown to reduce
clinical mastitis by 30% which
could save this farmer £12 600
per year.
Although we use average
figures, it is most useful to work
out how much mastitis is costing
you on your farm – our vets have
access to simple disease cost
calculators to work out how
much disease and infertility is
costing you.

Feed Costs
In the previous section, we
mentioned that feed costs
represent the most significant
cost for dairy farmers at an
average of 8.9ppl. Costs will
vary massively between systems
as grass based low yield farms
will obviously have much lower
costs than year round housed
mixed ration fed units. Forage
quality is the main driver for
the quantity of purchased feed
so it may pay to spend a little
on silage additives in order to
reduce the need for concentrate
feed down the line. There
are still costs associated with
conserved forages though such
as contractors and fertilizers etc
so you will get better margins if
you can maximise the amount of
milk you get from grazed grass.
There are also costs associated
with feeding a mixed ration –
purchasing, maintaining and
running a feed wagon, tractor
and load-all accounts for around
1.5ppl including depreciation.
Monitoring your margin over
purchased feed (MOPF; i.e.
monthly milk cheque less
monthly feed bill) per cow per
month is a useful exercise – a
target figure is £150. Looking
at the details of what you are
actually feeding and what return

it can give you can pay off.
For example, your nutritionist
recommends that you start
feeding RP10 at 0.5kg/cow/day
to increase your butter fats from
3.9% to 4.1%, you have 250
cows giving 28l, is it worth it?
• RP10 is £800/Tonne which is
40p/cow/day
• The increase in butter fat is
only worth 11p/cow/day
• Therefore, unless the price of
RP10 came down to £220/
Tonne, it is not worth including
it in the ration!
Although many farmers feel
forced to be constantly chasing
more milk and so push stocking
densities to the limit, there
are other ways to increase
efficiency of production and
your vet should be a key role in
implementing this on your farm.

‘many farmers
feel forced to
be constantly
chasing more
milk and so push
stocking densities
to the limit’
Rose Jackson BVSc DBR
MRCVS graduated from Bristol
in 2004 and subsequently
joined the farm team at
Scarsdale Vets. She gained
the DBR (diploma in bovine
reproduction) from University of
Liverpool Vet School in 2010.
Her areas of clinical interest
are cattle fertility including bull
fertility examinations, and farmer
training including DIY AI training
courses. Rose became an
Associate Partner at Scarsdale
Vets in May 2011.

To read more, visit www.farmers-mart.co.uk