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Through the years we have reduced/eliminated a number of things. Dropped official DHIA and went to owner/sampler, contract all silage harvesting/planting and sold all the equipment, contract all heifer raising and stopped registering/classifying all cattle would be the main reductions/eliminations we made. We spend our time concentrating on the cows. Their comfort, health and quality of feed. Producing and selling milk is our main revenue. All the main reductions/eliminations and a few others have provided a tremendous amount of benefit and allowed us the stay in the dairy business.

A few years ago we decided to stop registering our cattle. We didn't market cattle, show cattle or sell breeding bulls. We still have all the I.D., pedigree and production information on all cows in our computer system. We didn't see any increased value for our cows just because they had a registration paper. At one time that paper did have increased value, but for us, it has no increased value today.

Spot on Tony

We sold nearly all of our silage equipment and contract our planting and harvesting of all our silage. It is done faster, harvested at a higher quality because it is done faster and eliminated all the costs with equipment ownership, maintenance, insurance and headaches.

Many years ago when we increased our herd, we learned to A.I. our cows and stopped using A.I. Technicians. Saved us a lot of money and after about a year our conception rate was nearly identical to that of the professional technicians.

From the dairies I've visited lately it has been thinned enough. The only comment I can make from the outside looking in, I never made any money not feeding something.

Milk testing every 60 days instead of every month