Managing Measures of Feed Costs: Benchmarking Physical and Economic Feed Efficiency

摘要

Problems associated with the measurement and monitoring of physical feed efficiency are reviewed. We propose targets for gross feed efficiency based on milk production and stage of lactation and present elements to diagnose possible causes when actualresults depart from the proposed targets. This is followed by the development of a meaningful benchmark of economic feed efficiency based on market prices for milk components, amounts of major nutrients required for the production of these milk components, and market prices of these nutrients derived from market prices of all feeds traded in a given market. The resulting index, the Cow-Jones Index, is used as a proxy to a benchmark of income-over-feed-costs with the clear benefits that: (1) it doesn'tuse a specific benchmark diet, (2) it uses market information for both milk components and feeds, and thus, can be regionalized, and (3) it can be easily calculated for different levels of target milk production.