Loan Officer Kelly Langmaid attended the Dairy Calf & Heifer Association (DCHA) profit seminar at the Miner Institute in Chazy, NY on Thursday, October 30, 2008. This seminar was one of several one-day profit seminars put on by the DCHA at various locations thoughout the United States. At the Chazy meeting the keynote speakers were Jason Karszes of Cornell University and Normand St-Pierre of Ohio State University. In addition to the keynote speakers the group was updated on the Beef Check-off program and the DCHA during the lunch hour.
Dr. St-Pierre talked about "The 10 Best Ways to Mess-up a Good Ration." The discussion talked about how you can have the perfect ration and still not have it turn out right due to weather and moisture changes, as well as human and mechanical error.
Jason Karszes followed with a discussion on the importance of the replacement program to the dairy. This discussion talked about how to take the replacement program out of the dairy and treat it as a different entity to really see how the program is doing.
In the afternoon Dr. St-Pierre continued with a discussion on feeding heifers during these financially difficult times. He looked at different commodities, commodity prices and how they can be incorporated into the ration, while still allowing the most effect for the least cost.
Jason also discussed how to prioritize and make improvements to the replacement program by looking at the numbers. Using a series of spreadsheets Jason led the group through an example of tracking expenses. The spreadsheets are available for use at the Pro-Dairy website: http://www.ansci.cornell.edu/prodairy, select the Winter Dairy Management Tools.
This rounded out the day of a very informative meeting. Both speakers gave excellent information and were very interactive with the group. The meeting was sponsored by various companies including Yankee Farm Credit.
