The course of productivity and profitability during the construction and reconstruction phases of dairy cattle stalling

Of 70 leading dairy farms in northern Germany which were members of the "Ar beitskreis Forschung und Praxis" (Working Group Research and practice) of t he FAL between 1976 and 1996, 20 replaced their stalls and equipment, and t hus created the preconditions for increasing their livestock holdings. Thes e farms were all above-average in size and in the quality of their manageme nt. In this article the authors show that this investment-dependent transit ion to new forms of husbandry and modernised supply and waste-disposal tech nology was attended by a variety or teething troubles, which produced adver se yield/expenditure ratios in mill; production during the (re)construction Phase. The essential causes of these poor results in the year of(re)constr uction and thereafter appear to be the exacerbation of the labour situation on these Farms caused by the building operations, and the mistakes made wh ilst learning the new farming system and adapting to it. The farms with cattle stalls initiated the expansion of their livestock hol dings in good time by increasing the numbers of animals reared From their o wn young animals and the amount of feed available. Due to the problems expe rienced by the animals in adapting to the new rearing methods, the year in which the (re)construction took place and the first few years which followe d were characterised by above-average fluctuations in livestock holdings. E xpenditure on concentrates per kg milk rose; the composition of the basic r ation shifted in favour of silage at the expense of fresh grass. This may b e explained by the labour bottleneck which arose in the year when building building took place. Although the number of working hours required for animal husbandry dropped significantly after the new accommodation had been taken into use, in the y ear of (re)construction itself it was extra high due to the intensified rea ring of young animals. Harvesting of the fodder was usually delegated in go od time to the machinery syndicates and private contractors in order to sav e labour. However, the individual burden of work scarcely dropped because a t the same time the workforce was, or had to be, reduced. The economies acc ruing from the use of hired labour were not so great as expected as, once t he work in the cattle stalls had been rationalised, most of the milkers wer e allocated additional tasks on the farm. The dairy performance per cow declined both absolutely and relative to its mean level in the investing farms. These farms also showed a modest drop in their milk prices explainable by a slight fall in the fat and protein cont ent of the milk, and by occasional, short-term problems arising in connecti on with the quality of the milk. The gross margin per cow in the investing farms in the year of (re)construc tion and in the following years dropped by 5 to 8 % on average against the mean of all farms, but subsequently rose to its original above-average leve l. Nevertheless, the overall gross margin from dairying on these farms rose clearly in comparison with the average of all farms because the investing farms had significantly increased their livestock holdings. It was not poss ible to make any analysis of the profits accruing from dairying as only the fiscal annual accounts were available for the farms under study. Further a reas, such as the financial effects of the investments, also had to be disp ensed with on data-technical grounds. The mean figures presented here conceal farms of very different structure a nd profitability. These investments produced no significant changes in the level of profitability achieved by individual farms.