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REALISING THE POTENTIAL FROM CONSTITUENT-BASED MILK CONTRACTS


The milk processing industry has given clear long-term signals that kilogrammes (kg) of milk solids (MS) will play a large part in the way farmers are paid in the future. Knowing what milk solids you are producing, how to increase this and, crucially, how to do this in the most efficient way, will be key to realising the potential of your constituent- based milk contract and the future of your business. We regularly ask farmers at meetings to calculate what their yield of kg of MS are. Do you know what yours are? There is a pretty simple calculation you can do to give you a good indication. Take your latest milk quality sample and add together your percentages of fat and protein, then multiply that by your yield per cow, to give you a good indication of the level, see the example calculation below.


M


4% fat + 3.3% protein = 7.3% 0.073 x 30 litres x 1.028 (conversion of litres into kg) = 2.25 kg of MS/cow/day


You can also do the same calculation on rolling figures: A 9500 litre cow on the same fat and protein percentages as above = 0.073 x 9500 litres x 1.028 = 713 kg of MS/cow/year


MONITOR AND BENCHMARK Comparing your milk constituents with other similar farmers makes good technical sense. Not only will it tell you how you are performing, it will highlight what is possible in your system. Kite’s own MilkMonitor service provides key performance indicators on MS. This service has recently changed to reflect the growing importance of kg MS/ cow/day. Don’t get too caught up in thinking that the percentage of milk solids is key to maximising your contract. What’s important is the total kgs of fat and protein produced over the year and this is a combination of constituent percentages and total yield. You can benchmark your MS in a number of ways, per year or per hectare for example, but Kite has developed a concept to look at kg of MS per kg of liveweight (LW).


aking the most of your milk contract could help farms maximise income in the current dairy climate, as Kite Consultant David Levick explains.


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