I was reading some stats last week... and what I found quite interesting was the cost per HL or hundredweight... however you want to express it. Basically... at 200 cows you capture most of the available efficiency. Perhaps you're 70% as efficient as the largest herds. The curve then levels out up to around 600 head where you're probably 98% as efficient as the very best... and then I think it basically flatlined out to several thousand head, just gradually declining in production cost. The bottom line... at 600 head you're about as efficinet as you're going to get because the ineconomies of scale (bureracy/management) that come with an operation of that size outweigh most of the economies that can be had by bulk purchases... and equipment/overhead starts growing into multiples of big ticket items... so you're not really gaining anything. On the other end... the small 30 head tiestall setups often had costs that were 3-4 times higher than even the 600 cow herd. Basically... most of the overhead is still there because you still need a lot of the same equipment anyway... and you don't have the cows to carry it.
People who b!tch about large herds need to decide wether they want cheap milk or small farms because those two don't travel together. That essentially applies to all other forms of agriculture as well.
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