Finding ways to boost income on your dairy farm

There are a number of ways to boost your current income, such as keeping milk quality up to optimise your milk cheque, selling excess silage or selling surplus calves. 

It’s important to recognise the effects of contract penalties for high Bactoscan and somatic cell count (SCC) readings. It's worth understanding the financial impact on your business and the potential benefits of putting them right.

Support on SCC control is available through QuarterPRO, while guidance on Bactoscan can be found on the NADIS website.

How can you make the most of what milk buyers want in terms of butterfat and protein? Check what your contract is rewarding you for – it may not always reflect where your milk is going. 

Milk solids can be manipulated through feeding, as can volume, but be careful to ensure that that additional feed costs are generating sufficient additional income.

The Milk Price Calculator can help you to look at what changing your Bactoscan, SCC, butterfat and protein may, or may not, do to your milk income.

A feed and forage budget will allow you to work out whether you have excess forage that you could sell.

The Milk Forecasting Calculator looks at the number of milking cows you have in the herd and shows how changes to this can affect production.

Our webinar Taking stock – Forecasting feed budgets and milk volumes shows you how to:

• Create or adapt a feed budget or adapt
• Forecast milk volumes
• Understand the impact on your income

Cull cows

Bringing forward culling dates can reduce milk production. Selling cull cows saves on feed and housing costs, as well as generating income.

Optimising cull cow value depends on market access and stocking capacity on the farm. Assess costs to see if keeping culls to gain condition is of benefit to you.

Dairy youngstock

• Work out how many dairy replacements you need to satisfy your herd size
• Understand why you're losing cows out of your system and see what improvements could help reduce replacement rates
• Calving replacements earlier (22–24 months) can reduce the number of heifers required. With better-quality feed, the overall costs of rearing might stay the same but you'll be able to do a better job with fewer heifers. This could also reduce the cost of rearing replacements

Dairy beef

Dairy beef calves are an important part of the supply chain, making up 37% of prime age cattle slaughtered in 2024.

Maximise your dairy beef calf income by making sure the breeding decisions you are making fit the market requirements. 

Farms can often have a lot of kit, in times of need these could be streamlined or downsized.

If you have a big tractor with expensive repayments, could a smaller tractor do the same job? Do you need all of the machinery you have, or could some of it be sold?

This webinar, Machinery for farming or farming for machinery, explores these decisions. Although it focuses on arable kit, the thought processes are just as applicable for dairy-based units.

Diversification

Diversification can make your business more resilient, but it needs to be properly planned for success.

Our webinar Diversification or distraction? helps you consider:

• Whether now is the right time to diversify
• What to consider before starting
• Which tools are available to support planning 

Rear heifers for others

Rearing heifers on contract for another dairy business can take advantage of your skills and infrastructure.

Heifers are usually delivered to a contract rearer at 2–6 months of age and returned to the farmer at 4–6 weeks before calving.

Contracts should define each party's responsibilities, and the rearer should be insured for any third-party claims involving the contract-reared heifers.

You must understand the costs of heifer rearing so that you price your service correctly.

Hire out cows

Cow hire agreements allow you to earn income from hiring cows to another dairy farmer for a fee.

Ownership of progeny from the hired cows usually remains with the farmer hiring them in (the lessee), but the owner may have the right to buy them.

Should any of the cows die, or become unproductive, the owner will replace them. 

Work as a contractor

Agricultural contracting can be a viable option, provided you go in with your eyes open, do the right research and ensure there is a market for your proposed services.

Contracting can take a number of formats, from specialist farming services (such as drilling, harvesting, crop spraying or livestock services), to more complex contract, whole farm and joint farming arrangements.

Getting the costings right is a vital step to making it work. Overheads can be crippling and, with machinery replacement costs escalating each year, it is critical that jobs are carefully calculated, to make certain that capital is wisely invested and a return is possible.