Thirty-one dairy producers participated in
the Kansas Farm Management Association
(KFMA) dairy enterprise analysis each year
from 2002 to 2004. The dairy farms were
sorted based on 3-year average returns over
total costs and were categorized as high-, medium-,
and low-profit farms. The highestprofit
farms earned an average of $795 more
per cow ($4.20 per cwt of milk) than the lowprofit
farms earned. High-profit farms averaged
$521 more milk sales per cow than lowprofit
farms did. This difference in profitability
was due entirely to greater milk production,
inasmuch as milk prices among profit
groups did not differ from each other. Highprofit
farms produced almost 4,000 lb more
milk per cow per year and had slightly lower
costs than low-profit farms had. Returns for
the mid-profit farms were more than $400 per
cow less than returns of the top farms, but
were more than $350 per cow greater than
those of low-profit farms. The mid-profit
farms had production levels similar to those of
the high-profit farms, but their costs were significantly
greater. Over the 3 years analyzed,
it was better to have high production and high
costs than to have low production and low
costs. But these 3-year averages indicate that
dairies can achieve high production levels
while keeping costs in check, and these operations
are significantly more profitable than
other dairies.
