Summary 



New England agriculture is rapidly becoming more specialized. In the 

 past, dairy farms in this region had many profitable alternative enterprises, 

 such as potatoes, field crops, poultry, and other livestock. Modern machin- 

 ery, improved production practices, and increased competition from other 

 agricultural areas have gradually reduced the economic advantages of these 

 supplementary enterprises on the dairy farm. 



The trend toward specialization raises questions concerning the di- 

 rection future specialization should take to achieve more economic utili- 

 zation of resources on New England dairy farms. An adjustment oppor- 

 tunity, in which there is widespread interest, centers around whether a 

 New England dairyman should raise or buy replacements for his dairy herd. 

 In the last 10 years, not enough replacements have been produced in New 

 England to fill the needs. Under what conditions does raising of dairy herd 

 replacements represent the best use of individual farm resources and de- 

 velopment of the dairy farm economy in New England? 



Nature of the Study 



In New England, it is often argued that for two reasons a program 

 of raising all replacements for the dairy herd is superior to buying some 

 or all replacements. First, purchased replacements are thought to be in- 

 ferior to home-raised replacements so far as risk of disease, herd life, and 

 milk production are concerned. The second traditional argument that favors 

 a program of raising replacements is that it is cheaper than buying them. 



The study reported here is directed primarily at developing informa- 

 tion on the physical relationships involved in dairying and a method of 

 using information about these relationships in making economic decisions 

 on how best to provide dairy herd replacements. A dairyman needs to 

 decide how he can best use his roughage, his barn space, his labor, and 

 his other production facilities to achieve maximum income in view of his 

 costs of production, the price of purchased replacements, and the price of 

 milk. 



Feeding Rates for Young Stock and Cows 



The feed inputs for producing home-raised replacements used in the 

 economic analysis were those quantities of forage and concentrates that 

 are typically fed to calves and young cattle on the sample of New Hamp- 

 shire dairy farms surveyed in the study reported here. Feeding rates for 

 cows were based on physical relationships observed under controlled feed- 

 ing experiments. Records obtained in the farm survey indicate that they 

 are representative of the level of feeding on New Hampshire dairy farms. 



Milk Production Rates — Raised and Purchased Cows 



Raised and purchased cows produce about the same amount of milk 

 and therefore are comparable in terms of quality. This is based on a 

 sample of cows with such factors as breed, date of freshening, manage- 

 ment, fat content, and age eliminated. 



