As evident by this year, life is full of uncertainty, and dairy farmers face this every day in their operation. To best mitigate this, it is sometimes best to look at history for clues into where our operation is headed. By looking ahead, we can adjust early to ensure a successful year overall.
Now that harvest season is (mostly) behind us, we must live with what is in our bunkers, on our feed pads, or in our bags and silos until next year. By sampling the feed on the way in, there should be little surprise when we open the new feed and get it in front of the cows, heifers, or dry cows.
Kyle Sigg takes a sample of freshly chopped corn silage to send to our lab.
To some extent, we never quit adjusting our operation. The farmers with the most productive and profitable dairy cows make minuscule changes on a daily, weekly, monthly, and even yearly basis. Taking questions out of the operation builds sustainability. Capitalizing on what has worked in the past and building from success broadens the landscape of profitability.
In the world we currently live in, we all have access to instant information like never before. By questioning our decisions and the inputs we go into next spring based on research, leaving no room for the careless mistakes.
Making substantial adjustments to your operation without a distinct strategy is not a solid business plan. Adapting to new ideas and implementing ideas with a plan, however, is an excellent approach. Many of the best results are yielded because there was a clearly defined plan set for it from the beginning.
When dairy margins are tight, having a plan and specific approach while keeping the end goal in mind is essential. By increasing small efficiencies and extrapolating them over our operation, we get less affected by uptrends and downtrends in the marketplace over time, which is a place we cannot control. By acknowledging what we cannot control and controlling what we can, we remain in the driver’s seat of our dairy for the long haul. At Prairie Estates Genetics, our philosophy focuses on absolute consistency, creating better results year over year.
Kyle Sigg
Forage Manager
Prairie Estates Genetics