Income over service life cost – Estimation of individual profitability of dairy cows at time of death reveals farm-specific economic trade-offs

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Managing a dairy farm requires a farm- and cow-specific assessment of the required resources and the revenues obtained from the production process. Due to scientific and practical reasons, the various types of data from a farm, e.g., economic and biologic data, commonly lack connectivity and compatibility at animal level. This means that the economic impacts associated with differences in rearing, productivity and culling as well as the economic values of cow-individual service lives often remain hidden under average figures. This work is based on a two-fold hypothesis: (1) large differences in cow profitability exist between farms but also between individual cows within one farm, and (2) knowledge about the farm-specific economic impact of service life characteristics provides new options for action. In this article, a farm-specific full-cost calculation that links routine herd management data and key economic figures gained from business sheets of the farm's dairy branch is introduced. The new methodology for the calculation of individual income over service life cost was exemplarily tested on a sample of 4,962 culled cows from 32 German dairy farms. Median income over service life cost of culled cows was negative for 19 farms (59%) and varied largely between farms (-€3,502 to €3,323). Within a given economic situation, i.e., cows of the same farm, the number of lactations was identified as the major lever to cow profitability for most farms, followed by the individual milk yield level and the number of days in milk at culling during last lactation. This indicates that the economic sustainability of the farm is inherently linked to the ability of cows to cope with their environment. The vastly different monetary value associated with, e.g., productivity and longevity parameters and the heterogeneity in the ranking of their effect sizes between farms also show that the economic impacts of herd characteristics are highly farm-specific. Evaluation of the overall lifetime profitability of culled cows along with identification of economically poor farm-specific herd characteristics can help to pinpoint problems, optimize herd management, and prioritize investment necessities.