Plain Farmers - Benchmarking

Last month Plain Farmers, with the help of DairyCo MilkBench+  and the RDPE Northwest Livestock Programme, undertook benchmarking of their costs of milk production.

This involved all members of the group submitting their figures before the meeting, which was held to discuss the results.

Libby Bellamy and Derek Carless co-ordinated the meeting, where members were able to identify their strengths and weaknesses and discuss openly with each other their business performance. There was a lot to be gained from each other's experiences and understanding each other’s business constraints  whether its milk price , land and NVZ’s stopping growth, parlour size, quality of forage or buildings available to name a few.

Members went home with action points set by themselves, which will reviewed later in the year.   

Action points from the group members:

• Target parlour and dairy expenses - identify what they’re made up of and try and reduce
• Be aware of fertilizer costs
• Maximise profit

• Look all costs, concentrate on controlling all costs - individuals all have low costs in certain areas, but not overall.
• All aspects of the business needs to be monitored
• Vet costs are too high for all group members

• Concentrate on % cows calved – need to increase it
• Reduce calf deaths - under two weeks survival rate to be improved, and too many stillborn.

• Retire on a high - difficult to maintain these figures.
• Do more, increasing cow numbers would mean the need for a new parlour; can’t expect staff to milk for four hours.

• Concentrate on increasing production, two million litres plus wanted
• Drop feed costs
• More land needed

• Concentrate on fertilizer costs/use – but too late for this year, some of the extra costs due to extra land this year
• Increase cow numbers by 20, but restricted by NVZ
• Should he contract rear youngstock to release space for cows? But enjoys rearing his own.
• Quality of life important

• Work a bit less
• Want more cows and pay someone else to give more time
• Concentrate on replacement rate
• Become self sufficient in youngstock

• Build large enough shed for all cows under one roof
• 300 plus new lagoon

• Increase output, but with same feed costs
• Achieve via yield per cow rather than cow numbers
• Add more cows if NVZ land available
• Currently with 3.5 staff but if had 400 cows and youngstock could go to 4 full time.

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