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| Your starting point in this is to determine available strengths and weaknesses of your own farm, ie: if you are better with cows or crops, topography and layout of your farm, available labor and your ability to manage labor, age of machinery and your ability to keep it running, financial condition, etc. I think there are 2 ways to milk cows, total confinement with high inputs and high production or seasonal grazing with low inputs and lower production. We have done both, and speaking as a single family operation, the seasonal grazing has made farming fun again, but to clarify our own operation, I am better managing cows, our farm layout is better suited to grazing, I am terrible with hired labor, and my machinery was junk and I was tired working on it !
Financially, we couldn't keep up when we were in confinement. Most of my friends sold out, this was late 90's early 2000. When we switched to grazing, we quit spending money. The seasonal grazing model is a total system approach, as is total confinement, you can tweak it, but don't lose sight of the end result. As far as the comment about starving cows, that is true and has happened, but as a dairyman, one of the most important things to understand is dry matter intake and how it relates to your farm. At the end of the day, the cow must be filled.
No matter what direction you chose, one of the best tools you can have is a mentor , or a few people you can bounce some ideas off of. Somebody that you trust what they say and won't B.S. you . I'm not sure Agtalk qualifys, because I've seen some very good ideas on here, and I've also seen some total B.S.[grin] Good luck, Ron | |
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high input vs low input dairy
