The poor, lowly penny. Ignored. Forgotten. Discarded. But in numbers they have surprising power, even on dairies.
At current Class III prices, a penny's worth of milk is about 1.6 tablespoons. That sounds like nothing (it's less than an ounce), yet for a dairy that milks 100 cows, just one extra penny per cow per day is $365 in a year. For a 1,000-cow dairy it's $3,650.
Less spending adds up the same way that more selling does, so looking for ways to save pennies pays off too.
Feed is the ideal place to start, since it accounts for about half of all production costs. Are there pennies there that can be saved on your dairy? For instance, do you overfeed protein? Most dairies do, and many overfeed a lot. Even a 1/10th point reduction in protein level can amount to several cents per head per day in savings.
Feeding less is a bad idea, but getting more of what you have into cows is a brilliant one. It's not unusual for wind, waste, spoilage and shrink to add up to nickels and dimes of feed cost losses per head per day. A simple place to start might be an extra feed push-up each day.
The bigger your herd, the more sense it makes to look for pennies.
