Efficiency innovation and dairy production: a multi-market case study

The poultry and pig industries have for many years had a focus on feed efficiency (more meat per unit of feed), but the dairy industry has not paid sufficient attention to this. For the past decade Joseph Keenan and Sons has been researching and innovating to raise feed efficiency in dairying and be...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors Jolly, Robert, Artz, Georgeanne M, Colman, David, Beever, David E, Drackley, James
Format Conference Proceeding
LanguageEnglish
Published 01.04.2013
Edition355
Subjects
Animal Health
Dairy
Farm Management
Feed Efficiency
Innovation
Livestock Production/Industries
Productivity Analysis
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Summary:The poultry and pig industries have for many years had a focus on feed efficiency (more meat per unit of feed), but the dairy industry has not paid sufficient attention to this. For the past decade Joseph Keenan and Sons has been researching and innovating to raise feed efficiency in dairying and beef production in concert with the sale of its feed mixer wagons. From 2006 onwards it has collected basic production records on the impact of its system on over 64,000 herds and nearly 1 million cows in 26 countries. This paper presents a number of separate approaches to analyse the effect of the system in the first 12-months in Australia/New Zealand, France, Ireland, Northern Europe and the UK. Over 70% of producers coming onto the system make positive margin gains, and the analysis is aimed at characterising the type and scale of response as well as to disentangling the reasons for success and failure. Two forms of graphic analysis have been developed based on a typology of response. Stochastic dominance analysis examines the overall effectiveness of the system and multinomial logit analysis is used to explain response in terms of conditioning factors.
DOI:10.22004/ag.econ.157758