Investment appraisal of technology innovations on dairy farm electricity consumption

Electricity market implications of volatile energy technology investment costs

A novel farm technology to quantify dairy cow cervix morphology: oestrus versus non-oestrus models

The objective was to quantify and compare cow cervical morphology on oestrus vs. non-oestrus daysusing a new farm technology. The cervical tissues were videotaped using a cervixscope involving newcamera equipment in four Holstein cows on multiple oestrus and non-oestrus days to score tissue morphology as altered by oestrus. The non-oestrous days were in diestrus phases. The videotaped records w...

Investment Risk Appraisal

Standard financial techniques neglect extreme situations and regards large market shifts as too unlikely to matter. This approach may account for what occurs most of the time in the market, but the picture it presents does not reflect the reality, as the major events happen in the rest of the time and investors are ‘surprised’ by ‘unexpected’ market movements. An alternative fuzzy approach perm...

Whole-farm Phosphorus Management on Dairy Farms

Most dairy farms in Wisconsin continue to follow a fairly generalized formula of how to produce milk. Cows and replacement heifers are fed primarily homegrown feed from crop rotations comprising alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.), corn (Zea mays L.), oats (Avena spp.) and soybean (Glycine max L. Merr.). Protein and mineral supplements are purchased to compliment dairy diets. However, the dairy indust...

Dairy farm cost efficiency.

A stochastic cost equation was estimated for US dairy farms using national data from the production year 2000 to determine how farmers might reduce their cost of production. Cost of producing a unit of milk was estimated into separate frontier (efficient) and inefficiency components, with both components estimated as a function of management and causation variables. Variables were entered as im...