As the demand for milk increases, so does the demand to be more efficient. Today’s market volatility requires dairies to pay attention to the details – and most importantly – their costs.

Simply put, milk is what pays the bills and if you aren’t paying attention to your source of income, then you might be missing some profitable opportunities.

Many producers have milk testing done monthly, but not much can be decided with information received once a month.

On most dairies, feed costs will represent the largest single expense. With escalating prices, feed is eating up what otherwise could be pretty good milk prices. Now more than ever, controlling shrinkage is imperative.

What is shrinkage? It is simply defined as the amount of feed delivered or raised on the farm that is not consumed by the cattle for which it was intended.

If you don’t measure the shrinkage, you can’t manage it. And the larger the dairy, the more important this factor is.

To understand the right order of ingredients that should go into the mixer wagon, we must consider the physical properties of the ingredients that affect mixing, such as size, shape, density, water absorption capacity (hydroscopy), static electricity and adhesiveness.

Ingredient moisture
Dry ingredients of small particle size will stick to high-moisture ingredients such as silage or molasses. Therefore, it is important to properly mix the dry ingredients before adding the wetter ingredients.