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| Hi Russ, Had a thread started a couple of months back that I hoped you would respond to about swithching from dairy to beef, whether to breed the dairy cows to a beef breed ,or just sell them as dairy cows and buy a beef herd. The replies were pretty well split.
As far as holsteins and grazing goes, the answer is it depends. I think there are two ways to milk cows. The first way is straight confinement, High production, Holstein or Jersey, focusing on the income side of the ledger. The second way is low input, grazing a smaller jersey or jersey cross cow, focusing on the expense side of the ledger. We've done both , we'll never go back to confinement! The third way to milk cows is a blend of the first two. I f you are comitted to milking and grazing holsteins,you'll have to do this , because it takes more dry matter to fill the bigger cow, and she will never be able to eat enough grass in a day without feeding something like corn silage to fill her up. Where the problems start is when you have to replace infrastructure { mixer wagons, silo unloaders, etc. } with lower income and higher expenses. Before anybody beats me up, I will conceed that there are very sucessful dairyman doing it this way, but for young guys geting into dairying, they need to pick one of the first two ways.
We may have hijacked this thread pretty bad, But it was good knowing your still alive in Idaho!
Ron | |
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why is this
