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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Today's Featured Article - Third Brush Generators - by Chris Pratt. While I love straightening sheet metal, cleaning, and painting old tractors, I use every excuse to avoid working on the on the electrics. I find the whole process sheer mystery. I have picked up and attempted to read every auto and farm electrics book with no improvement in the situation. They all seem to start with a chapter entitled "Theory of Electricity". After a few paragraphs I usually close the book and go back to banging out dents. A good friend and I were recently discussing our tractor electrical systems when he stated "I figure it all comes back to applying Ohms Law". At this point
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